AWS X-Ray vs New Relic comparison

Read 174 New Relic reviews

20,904 Views
14,215 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

AWS X-Ray

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

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).

Download the complete report

AWS X-Ray vs. New Relic

April 2026

Helped 896,692 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.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

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."

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

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

"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 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."

"It is a very scalable solution."

"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."

"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."

More AWS X-Ray pros

"Customer Service: The Support has been excellent -- affordable and bringing us meetings and phone calls with great availability and customer-oriented support."

"As New Relic is already integrated with Drupal, we can get our projects done with best practice and with the best value that we believe in."

"We use it for monitoring, identifying when services go down, or when they are outside of what we would consider normal operations."

"New Relic APM is a very good, tailor-made solution."

"The most valuable feature is the transparency into how applications are running."

"With the metrics from New Relic, we can improve the performance and reduce the downtime because we can identify problems and solve them more quickly."

"We have a standard visibility process for any application that rolls out, and it gives us the ability to train our people and provide a more responsive application."

"The most valuable feature is New Relic Insights, and our customers are happy with the dashboard and the data that it displays and the correlation between the components."

More New Relic pros

Cons

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

More AWS X-Ray cons

"There are a number of plugins that New Relic makes. It would be nice to be able to instantly integrate that with APM."

"Stack traces don’t go far enough. They get to a point, indicate a question mark, and then stop."

"There are times when you restart the engines and the servers have a unique ID for the host and you need to remove the server. It is difficult because some are on-premise and others are production hosts. Having downtime is not very good when updating. However, it is not a constant issue."

"The scalability can be improved."

"New Relic is very slow, and the app is a bit frustrating to use, which is something that has been happening a lot in the past year. During the last six months, I have noticed that it has become extremely laggy."

"Mobile APP's Performance Monitoring."

"We have some performance issues with the servers. Sometimes the server is consuming a lot of CPU or memory, and New Relic Insights fails."

"Another area for improvement is integration with Kubernetes. Currently, the process isn't user-friendly."

More New Relic cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"The solution is a bit expensive."

"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."

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

"Pricing is better with New Relic APM than Dynatrace."

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

"The solution is cheap, but prices can go up when users grow."

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

"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was easy. The product is easy to deploy and manage, which is why our company purchased through the AWS Marketplace."

"If I remember it correctly, the pricing was based on the core, and the monthly subscription used to cost us $1,500 or $2,000. We had pre-prod and production services. Costing was different for pre-prod and production. For pre-prod, it was 40% less than the production service cost. It was a combined package."

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.

See recommendations

896,692 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

11%

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?

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

Sentry vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 8% of the time

Datadog vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 8% 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

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