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 896,942 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

19th

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 (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (3rd), AIOps (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AWS X-Ray is 1.2%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of New Relic is 3.8%, down from 6.4% 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	1.2%
Other	95.0%

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

"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."

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

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

"The solution has made it easier for us to trace the problems that we have with our requests and to monitor the timing of each step in each request we do in our endpoints."

"AWS X-RAY identifies bottlenecks in terms of stability and performance and how long certain data lives in terms of response time and duration."

"It is a very scalable solution."

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

"AWS X-Ray is a strong solution and has a smooth integration process."

More AWS X-Ray pros

"We have done the New Relic integration with Serverless AWS, which has helped us with monitoring, and keeping our monitoring from our on-premise part with the cloud part."

"New Relic is now the leader in efficiency improvement."

"The versatility of the solution is its most valuable feature."

"It's helped us to find problems early and to make sure that what we're doing is working."

"New Relic helps us to improve our team quality and to get our projects done with best practices."

"What the product has done for us was expedite our ability to discover actionable data that led directly to improvements in our app which would have taken considerable longer if we'd had to build similar functionality ourselves."

"There are many valuable features in New Relic APM; we developed some software applications and we are able to monitor the errors very easily, and their log security retention is very good."

"The tool's most valuable features were APM and core reliability. We get alerts whenever an anomaly is detected. The solution is very friendly."

More New Relic pros

Cons

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

"They can improve how traces are sent to other providers."

"If you have a small team, it's probably overkill."

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

"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."

"A significant downside is that it is very expensive."

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

"AWS X-Ray should improve its implementation process to make it easier for developers."

More AWS X-Ray cons

"When you look at disk monitoring, it would be cool to see which folders are gobbling most space, so that when we get a full-disk alert, we can go into our servers to purge that without downloading a separate tool to see what’s contending for hard disk space."

"The agents are updated quite frequently, but New Relic doesn't offer tools for doing the upgrade in large environments."

"There may be issues with scalability with individual users sending events up to the cloud."

"The solution does not provide input on how the page performs in a big group. It just says that the page performance is bad, but it does not say what can be done to improve it. If they could provide some insight or guidance on how to make improvements, that would be a big help."

"One thing I'd like to see in any APM, especially New Relic, is the ability to use distributed transactions. When one microservice calls another, it calls another database and microservice. The entire data visualization layer will not be able to correlate from one microservice from end to end and return on that path. Distributed transactions would be a great addition that would make life simpler. Unfortunately, no APM has that end-to-end capability."

"We would like a dashboard feature to be created for this product. This would allow us to monitor both the front and back-end of our UI's performance, and then report on it."

"The product's initial setup phase is not straightforward to manage if you have no experience with installations, making it an area that can be improved."

"I think their dev packages for server monitoring could handle configuration a bit better."

More New Relic cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is a bit expensive."

"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."

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

"I loved this product, but we can no longer afford it, so we dropped it."

"The pricing and licensing are too high."

"I recommend using the free version of New Relic. If you like the free version and understand its importance for your company, you can move to the trial. Then, you can migrate to the paid version."

"The solution is less expensive than AppNeta."

"Cost is significant with a lot of extras."

"The product is neither cheap nor expensive, and I believe that it is a competitively-priced tool."

"The monthly cost os $1000 per server per month, but it could be even more. We pay about $250 for the server, and then New Relic wants over $1000 to give us statistics on those servers."

"The pricing model is a little confusing for beginners. They find it a little expensive, and if you are using it already, then that is not good."

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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896,942 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	79

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?

Sometimes the UI feels like it is not that much user-friendly for any new user who is using New Relic. The user interface could be more user-friendly for someone who is new to New Relic. For alerti...

What is your primary use case for New Relic Insights?

We use Java microservices, so we capture the events with the help of New Relic. Based on that, we add the alerting part inside New Relic. We have enabled the New Relic Java agent inside our microse...

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

Comparisons

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Compared 8% of the time

Datadog vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 8% of the time

Compared 8% of the time

Grafana vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 6% of the time

Dynatrace vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 6% of the time

More AWS X-Ray Competitors

Dynatrace vs New Relic

Compared 6% of the time

Datadog vs New Relic

Compared 5% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs New Relic

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Monitor vs New Relic

Compared 2% of the time

Elastic Observability 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