AWS X-Ray vs New Relic comparison

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AWS X-Ray

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

New Relic and AWS X-Ray are two powerful monitoring tools with distinct strengths. New Relic has the upper hand in features and ease of deployment, while AWS X-Ray is preferred for its pricing and support.

Features: New Relic offers detailed server metrics, application performance visualization, and a comprehensive monitoring capability. AWS X-Ray provides robust tracing features, deep insights into distributed applications, and easy debugging of programs.

Room for Improvement: New Relic needs better scalability under heavy traffic, improved integration options, and enhanced performance during peak times. AWS X-Ray requires better documentation, a more intuitive setup process, and improved user interface clarity.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: New Relic is praised for its straightforward deployment and responsive customer service, leading to a smooth onboarding experience. AWS X-Ray has a positively rated deployment but receives mixed feedback on customer service.

Pricing and ROI: New Relic users express concerns about higher costs but acknowledge strong ROI due to comprehensive features. AWS X-Ray is seen as cost-effective, providing significant value for its price despite the lower overall feature set.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS X-Ray vs. New Relic Report (Updated: April 2026).

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AWS X-Ray vs. New Relic

April 2026

Helped 896,467 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

AWS X-Ray

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

18th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

New Relic

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

4th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

174

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (9th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (9th), IT Operations Analytics (3rd), Mobile APM (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (3rd), AIOps (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AWS X-Ray is 1.3%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of New Relic is 3.8%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
New Relic	3.8%
AWS X-Ray	1.3%
Other	94.9%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Allan Møller

Consult Manager at Conscia

Provides quick insights into service interactions and identifies bottlenecks effortlessly

The challenges we faced with AWS X-Ray were that some of the AWS services we were using did not support it, which we discovered at a later stage. This was potentially a design consideration we should have known about, requiring us to redeploy some services in another SKU version to get it functioning. This is the only challenge, as AWS X-Ray is relatively new. It is important to consider that not all AWS services support it out of the box. My recommendation for AWS X-Ray would be broader support. We have been working in a relatively small area of AWS, using approximately six or seven services, so I have not explored all other available services. In general, the more services it supports, the better it would be. AWS X-Ray should be able to support more services for improved functionality.

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BasilJiji

System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

Real-time alerts have reduced server outage impact and support fast incident response

In the dashboard, if they could show a little more metrics regarding the application and related things, that would be how New Relic could be improved. Currently, there are things showing from the server level and application level, but it can be improved. That is what I felt. Regarding user interface, I do not feel much concern, but for some kind of issues when we are trying to get support from the New Relic team, their SLA seems to be long. They are taking seven to ten working days for resolving some kind of scenario or issue. That is a bit difficult for us. If they could improve the customer support by reducing their SLA within three to five days, if they could remediate everything, that will be so much helpful. When it comes to the customer support part, I felt they need to be a little more improved on that part. The support overall is good, but they can improve. That is the reason I have given it eight out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"I would give AWS X-Ray a nine out of ten overall."

"AWS X-Ray's endpoints and user monitoring are considered the most valuable features."

"The best feature of AWS X-Ray is the ability to correlate data out of the box, ensuring that if one service calls another service, it will provide a full flow of what has happened without needing to build or develop anything around it."

"The most promising feature of AWS X-Ray is that you can debug the issues through the proper logs. You can also get an analysis out of the logs for some use cases, though I have yet to try all the features of AWS X-Ray."

"The error analysis capabilities of X-Ray are really good."

"AWS X-Ray shows us exactly when there are delays, helping us understand the depth of issues and what is happening point-to-point."

"The most beneficial feature is that it shows a dashboard for performance intervals, which reveals latencies."

"AWS X-Ray shows us exactly when there are delays, helping us understand the depth of issues and what is happening point-to-point."

More AWS X-Ray pros

"It’s just so easy to set up and use with little training, the barrier to entry is extremely low and it adds a high-value."

"New features are added often."

"It is a one stop shop and integrated with PagerDuty seamlessly. The solution is pretty self-contained."

"The breakdown of the response time of different components and getting in-depth details of the slow component are the most valuable features. It is easy to use, and it gets the job done."

"The thing that's nice about New Relic is it doesn't try and do everything, it does what it does."

"New Relic is a great SaaS which I will definitely continue using and will use in future products."

"New Relic has been in the business for a while, it offers a wide selection to attach a monitoring mobile app, server, and cloud, and if you want to go with just one product, it fits all your needs."

"New Relic has changed the way we are dealing with application problems."

More New Relic pros

Cons

"The user interface is sometimes kind of confusing to understand. It's not very user-friendly."

"Compared to other open-source tools, AWS X-Ray needs improvement in providing discounts."

"Like most Amazon products, the user interface, configuration, and tuning aren't the easiest. That's the biggest reason why people tend to go to products like TerraForm and Terragrunt. We use TerraForm and Terragrunt. So, for setting things up and interacting with X-Ray, it's definitely the user interface that can be better."

"Sometimes, the collector agents are confusing to configure initially."

"What needs to be better in AWS X-Ray is the log filtering. Predefined filters could be helpful because the power of analytics comes from how you can filter the data. I also want to see more KPIs from AWS X-Ray."

"I do not have any notes in terms of improvements."

"It should have X-Ray SDKs for different languages like Node.js, Python, or Java."

More AWS X-Ray cons

"In Alert History, while you can see the trending in response time by Request Queuing, .NER CLR and Database, if you had the ability to see which transaction type was the slowest during the timeframe when the critical error occurred by displaying the info within the same “tool tip” hover window which currently gives me the time per request and number of transactions, i.e., if it had the additional correlation information of “StatusCode/403” which you can get from the Events Errors hover."

"The monitoring is only as good as the alerts that it produces. By having it set up fine grain alerting, it is a bit of a pain."

"New Relic can be improved, particularly by enhancing the UI, which is currently a bit off."

"One thing that we noticed was that historical information was only for a limited period, which was not helpful in certain scenarios."

"The price could improve."

"The older view is much better than the new view that they have. We'd like to go back to that previous version. The user interface just isn't as nice as it used to be."

"New Relic does enable frontend performance monitoring by default. However, when we are troubleshooting the issue, New Relic is not able to trace back to the service where the issue is. Other solutions, such as Dynatrace are better."

"There is no proper management of roles and divisions; if I develop a dashboard for myself, everyone else has access to it, and you just add someone to the platform and he gets access to all the dashboards."

More New Relic cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is a bit expensive."

"The pricing for AWS X-Ray is a six out of ten."

"As you develop a relationship with Amazon, your pricing gets lower. You get credits for the amount of the system you use, and then if you're the government, you can get government pricing. For commercial users, there's a hump when you go from small to medium to big enterprise. Small businesses can live pretty easily off the free tier in a lot of cases, but when you go from a medium to a big enterprise, it becomes more expensive on a per-user basis. I'd like to see that curve going in a different way where pricing can be driven down while people are trying to adopt the technology."

"It would be nice if we could buy it annually instead of monthly."

"This solution required a license and it is better than some other competitors."

"The price of the solution could be less expensive. You have to pay a lot for each user. There is an additional cost for extra features."

"This is an expensive tool."

"We're paying for the New Relic APM license annually."

"There is a picture which goes to your browser and it monitors requests from other users. However, it's impossible to use now because the price is very high. The feature is very nice, but I tried it during the trial period, and the current price makes it impossible to use."

"We deploy everything on AWS. Purchasing the product on AWS Marketplace made it easier for us."

"The pricing is fine."

More New Relic pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

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896,467 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Large Enterprise	3

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	65
Midsize Enterprise	51
Large Enterprise	78

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS X-Ray?

While I have not compared it with GCP or Azure ( /products/microsoft-azure-reviews ), AWS generally offers cost-effective services. Some services, like Athena ( /products/odyssey-software-athena-eo...

What needs improvement with AWS X-Ray?

What is your primary use case for AWS X-Ray?

I have been using AWS X-Ray for creating insights to our applications we have developed. It is used to correlate different services in AWS when a transaction happens, allowing us to see the flow of...

Any advice about APM solutions?

There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...

What needs improvement with New Relic Insights?

I have noticed discrepancies between New Relic's documentation and Terraform resources. For example, there have been instances where new features launched in the New Relic UI have not been updated ...

What is your primary use case for New Relic Insights?

My day-to-day activities in New Relic include infrastructure monitoring, APM monitoring, browser monitoring, and database monitoring. In cloud environments, I monitor multiple clouds like AWS, GCP,...

Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs AWS X-Ray

Comparisons

Sentry vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 9% of the time

Datadog vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 9% of the time

Compared 8% of the time

Dynatrace vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 6% of the time

Grafana vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 5% of the time

More AWS X-Ray Competitors

Dynatrace vs New Relic

Compared 6% of the time

Datadog vs New Relic

Compared 6% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs New Relic

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Monitor vs New Relic

Compared 2% of the time

More New Relic Competitors

Product Reports

Download AWS X-Ray product report

AWS X-Ray

May 2026

Download New Relic product report

May 2026

Also Known As

No data available

New Relic Browser, New Relic Applied Intelligence, New Relic Insights, New Relic Synthetics, New Relic Servers, New Relic APM

Overview

AWS X-Ray offers comprehensive visibility into service flow, aiding in error tracking and regulatory compliance. It enhances performance tuning and real-time tracing, allowing users to effectively analyze, debug, and monitor microservices environments.

AWS X-Ray is leveraged to correlate data effortlessly and analyze logs, providing insightful service flow visibility. It aids in debugging and meeting compliance standards. Users rely on it for identifying bottlenecks, real-time issue tracing, and monitoring latency and endpoints via performance dashboards. While integration is smooth, enhancements in navigation and broader AWS service support are needed. Improving log filtering, KPI visualization, and integration with external APIs would benefit deployments. Costs and configuration complexities also present areas for improvement.

What are the key features of AWS X-Ray?

Error Tracking: Correlating data automatically for streamlined error identification.
Service Flow Visibility: Comprehensive insights into service interactions and performance.
Performance Tuning: Identifying bottlenecks and optimizing application performance.
Real-Time Tracing: Effective tracing of requests and issues in real-time.
Latency Checks: Monitoring latency across services to ensure prompt response times.

What benefits should users look for in AWS X-Ray?

Efficient Debugging: Streamlined debugging leading to faster issue resolution.
Compliance Support: Assistance in achieving regulatory and security compliance standards.
Insightful Metrics: Access to trace metrics for detailed analysis and decision-making.
Performance Monitoring: Comprehensive monitoring capabilities for system performance.
Cost Management: Analysis of costs associated with tracing and monitoring.

Organizations in microservices environments use AWS X-Ray to gain insight into system behavior by tracing HTTP requests, monitoring performance, and identifying vulnerabilities. It is integrated with other AWS tools to enhance performance monitoring and code execution analysis, ensuring efficient detection of errors and improvement opportunities.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

New Relic offers real-time application monitoring and insight into performance bottlenecks. Its customizable dashboards and APM integration provide efficient operational support, while server performance alerts ensure quick issue detection.

New Relic provides comprehensive monitoring of application performance, tracking bottlenecks across databases and front-end components. Users employ it for server and infrastructure monitoring, as well as analyzing key metrics such as CPU and memory usage. The solution's ability to integrate with tools like PagerDuty enhances incident management capabilities. However, users have expressed a need for improvements in query language simplicity, more detailed historical insights, and better mobile app monitoring support.

What are New Relic's most important features?

Real-Time Monitoring: Provides instant visibility into application performance.
Detailed Transaction Tracing: Identifies specific transaction issues quickly.
Error Rate Tracking: Monitors and reports on error occurrences efficiently.
Customizable Dashboards: Tailors dashboard views for specific needs.
APM Integration: Seamlessly integrates with application performance management tools.

What benefits and ROI should be considered?

Operational Efficiency: Quick issue detection reduces downtime.
Improved Debugging: Enhanced error analysis supports rapid problem resolution.
Comprehensive Monitoring: Offers a holistic view of application performance and user behavior.
Incident Management: Integration with incident tools helps streamline responses.
Efficient Alerts: Rapid alert systems ensure timely notifications of issues.

In industries like e-commerce and financial services, New Relic supports application performance monitoring to enhance user experience and system reliability. Organizations leverage its insights for optimizing performance, particularly in server operations and infrastructure management. Its ability to monitor API failures through synthetic monitoring is crucial for maintaining high service levels.

Sample Customers

COMCAST, ConnectWise, skyscanner, AirAsia, cookpad, cimpress, VTEX, zowdow

World Fuel Services, Verizon, FootLocker, McDonald's, Trainline, Mondia Media, Confused, Costa Coffee, Ryanair, Marks & Spencer, William Hill, Delivery Hero, Skyscanner, BASF, DAZN, Veygo, Virtuo, movingimage, talabat, Australia Post, Tokopedia, Seven Network, Virgin Australia, Zomato, BigBasket, Mercado Libre, Lending Club