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AWS X-Ray vs New Relic comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

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
17th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
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 (5th), AIOps (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AWS X-Ray is 1.7%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of New Relic is 4.0%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
New Relic4.0%
AWS X-Ray1.7%
Other94.3%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Muhmad Tabrez A Deewanji - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Software Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Improving performance through efficient trace metrics and data insights
As an application developer and architect, I appreciate AWS X-Ray for checking latency and identifying bottlenecks. I use it for performance tuning, conducting performance testing on applications, getting real-time traces, and gaining data insights. It helps in improving throughput and tuning infrastructure. The trace metrics and data collected provide valuable insights.
BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"AWS X-RAY identifies bottlenecks in terms of stability and performance and how long certain data lives in terms of response time and duration."
"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's endpoints and user monitoring are considered the most valuable features."
"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 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."
"I would give AWS X-Ray a nine out of ten overall."
"The most beneficial feature is that it shows a dashboard for performance intervals, which reveals latencies."
"Previously, without a monitoring solution, a developer could potentially spend a day working on a feature or a bug to try and resolve an issue, but now, with monitoring in place, we can understand if a customer is actually hitting this bug, how often they are hitting it, and how much frustration they are dealing with on a day-by-day basis, then reprioritize our tasks."
"This is one of the best tools that I have used."
"Before New Relic, dev and ops were separate, and now they’ve come together more and there’s less finger-pointing."
"They instrument up from the bottom to the top – every piece of code - they have a very perfect read of what’s being done, and how long it’s taking."
"I feel like it’s the best-in-class, and its differentiator is aggregation and the speed at which you can query large amounts of data."
"I can have my developers find bugs and fix them in one-tenth of time they used to take."
"Saves so much time in debugging our code and environments."
"The alert mechanism is quite accurate when something goes wrong in your system. For example, if you have hundreds of APIs on your server, and any of the APIs is not performing well, you get an alert. When there is a drop or change in the threshold value, the beauty of New Relic is that within a fraction of seconds, all the stakeholders who are configured in the New Relic system will get an alert. That's one good thing."
 

Cons

"AWS X-Ray should improve its implementation process to make it easier for developers."
"They can improve how traces are sent to other providers."
"I do not have any notes in terms of improvements."
"A significant downside is that it is very expensive."
"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."
"It should have X-Ray SDKs for different languages like Node.js, Python, or Java."
"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."
"For some kind of issues when we are trying to get support from the New Relic team, their SLA seems to be long."
"Installation of plugins seem to be really difficult due to the documentation available."
"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."
"Another area for improvement is integration with Kubernetes. Currently, the process isn't user-friendly."
"They could improve the education process and how people understand that these tools are very technical. Right now, if someone was to pick it up from day one, it is a very steep learning curve."
"The pricing could be improved as it is quite high relative to what is offered."
"How granular I could go down at looking at certain data, especially related to the operations, is limited."
"We had a problem where our application crashed because of New Relic."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"The price was one of the reasons we chose this solution."
"The pricing and licensing are too high."
"We're paying for the New Relic APM license annually."
"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 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 and licensing are good if you have an account manager and a partner manager who are looking to help out."
"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."
"New Relic is either free with low retention and minimal functionalities, or expensive with full options and retention."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business65
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise77
 

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?
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 shou...
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 ...
 

Comparisons

 

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

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS X-Ray vs. New Relic and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.