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).

AWS X-Ray vs. New Relic

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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

16th

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

173

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 April 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AWS X-Ray is 1.5%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of New Relic is 3.8%, down from 6.9% 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	1.5%
Other	94.7%

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

"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."

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

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

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

"It is a very scalable solution."

"The most important one is compliance. We're able to achieve our regulatory levels. We're able to achieve the security level that we need for the federal government."

More AWS X-Ray pros

"It’s the flashlight to the core of an issue in a production environment that everyone may have missed in development, QA, and implementation."

"Sometimes, I monitor the user's time of response and use this information to improve the number of servers on the back-end. Or, I can use it to change my back log for front-end developers and improve their response times. It's very important in this case because I can improve the experience of the final user."

"We’re able to see real-time sessions come through, talk directly to customers as they’re having issues with the site, and pull up their email addresses to see what issues they have, which makes it crucial for customer support and engineering."

"We are able to drill down and see what is going on in the system."

"End-user Synthetics and monitoring are very good."

"Server uptime is its most valuable feature."

"With the help of New Relic tools, our organization was able to detect, track, and fix errors in our website, so we focused our efforts in these areas."

"It has the ability to monitor random URLs not tied to the one pinger per application (though it costs extra)."

More New Relic pros

Cons

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

More AWS X-Ray cons

"I would like a feature where I can turn off alerting at a policy level. Thus, when a policy is inactive, I can shut down all of my alerts within the policy."

"New Relic APM can improve the information when we dig deeper to check a problem. There should be more detailed information provided."

"The initial setup can be made easier. Like Mixpanel, New Relic can also have a step-by-step guide for the setup process."

"We had a problem where our application crashed because of New Relic."

"Currently, it is not the only solution we have for monitoring so there are things that it’s missing – for example what Datadog does for us."

"Alerting based on custom insights queries. If I set a custom query to give me some value, I want to be able to set an alert for that."

"New Relic is priced on the higher side."

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

More New Relic cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

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

"The solution is priced reasonably. New Relic APM is one of the best products for me because it's economical, so anyone can easily pick it over other solutions and use it."

"The pricing and licensing are good if you have an account manager and a partner manager who are looking to help out."

"I think it's overpriced for the technical support that we get. We spent over 1,00,000 USD a year."

"New Relic is either free with low retention and minimal functionalities, or expensive with full options and retention."

"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."

"Comparatively, the pricing is expensive."

"The price depends on how many agents you want."

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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889,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

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	50
Large Enterprise	77

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 do you like most about New Relic Insights?

The product's initial setup phase was very easy.

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 ...

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

Comparisons

Sentry vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 10% of the time

Datadog vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 10% 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 7% of the time

Datadog vs New Relic

Compared 6% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs New Relic

Compared 5% of the time

Azure Monitor vs New Relic

Compared 2% of the time

Grafana vs New Relic

Compared 1% of the time

More New Relic Competitors

Product Reports

AWS X-Ray

Download AWS X-Ray product report

Download New Relic product report

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 is a powerful debugging and performance analysis tool offered by Amazon Web Services. It allows developers to trace requests made to their applications and identify bottlenecks and issues.

With X-Ray, developers can visualize the entire request flow and pinpoint the exact location where errors occur. It provides detailed insights into the performance of individual components and helps optimize the overall application performance.

X-Ray integrates seamlessly with other AWS services, making it easy to trace requests across different services and identify dependencies. It also offers a comprehensive set of APIs and SDKs, enabling developers to instrument their applications and capture valuable data for analysis. With its user-friendly interface and powerful features, AWS X-Ray is a valuable tool for developers looking to improve the performance and reliability of their applications.

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

AWS X-Ray vs. New Relic