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Honeycomb.io vs New Relic comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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

Honeycomb.io
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
25th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
AI Code Assistants (10th)
New Relic
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (7th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (6th), IT Operations Analytics (3rd), Mobile APM (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (4th), AIOps (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Honeycomb.io is 1.7%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of New Relic is 6.6%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Diego Gomes De Lima - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use and the dashboard is very intuitive
We faced some OpenTelemetry metrics lost between the communication from the service and the Honeycomb.io. I can't say if this is a Honeycomb.io issue or if there are some limitations in OpenTelemetry. Alerts are very helpful in Honeycomb.io, but we don't usually merge because we can compare queries with queries for making alerts. We can make alerts based on static numbers, which may block us from building alerts that could be generic enough or could be serviced.
Iqbal Khowaja - PeerSpot reviewer
Has a simple user interface and end-to-end monitoring and self-healing features
My organization uses many application performance management solutions, such as AppDynamics, New Relic APM, Splunk, and Datadog. I'm the CTO for the state of Hawaii, and across the board, different departments use different APM tools. I'm using the latest version of New Relic APM, but I cannot recall the exact version. My company has a dozen engineers using and monitoring New Relic APM. I'd tell anyone planning to use New Relic APM that it has to fit what you have. For example, most of my company's payload is in AWS, and the tool has adopters and features that CloudWatch cannot provide. Still, New Relic APM can, so you should do a demo or trial run first and see if it's a tool that'll help you with end-to-end monitoring. New Relic APM is working well for my company, so an excellent way to start is to do a trial run to see how the tool works out for your current applications. My rating for the tool is nine out of ten because my experience with it has been great. New Relic also worked closely with my company and has always been upfront on what's available and what's not. My company is a New Relic APM customer.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution's initial setup process was straightforward since we were getting enough support from Honeycomb.io's team."
"The solution's most valuable features are the queries for the OpenTelemetry events and all the tracing."
"The simplicity of the dashboard is very good."
"New features are added often."
"New Relic's dashboard is nice, and it's reliable. It's also compatible with many services, especially Java and the Python ecosystem."
"What I like best about New Relic APM is its user interface because it's simple. The most valuable feature of New Relic APM is end-to-end monitoring."
"It allows the restriction of privileges and control of users."
"Their technical support is pretty good and responsive. We have a real good relationship with them."
"Working with the solution is very easy. It's user-friendly."
"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."
 

Cons

"We can make alerts based on static numbers, which may block us from building alerts that could be generic enough or could be serviced."
"The process of log scraping gets delayed on Honeycomb.io. At times, it gives false alerts to the application team."
"Some AIOps are missing in New Relic APS, and I would like to see more features in this area."
"Documentation is one of the biggest things that I have a problem with since its documentation is not clear sometimes."
"The solution needs to have staging."
"We would like to receive more AWS-specific details from the New Relic Dashboard, like EC2 health."
"The product has good documentation for Linux, however, their documentation for Windows is lacking substantially. It's something they need to develop."
"The price needs improvement."
"New Relic APM can improve the information when we dig deeper to check a problem. There should be more detailed information provided."
"Data Dog captures the entire session and then provides it as a video player path, which gives more insight into what the user was doing. It's pretty impressive. New Relic does that, yet it only captures using a couple of screenshots, which is not very detailed since you are unable to see the entire user flow."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I think it's overpriced for the technical support that we get. We spent over 1,00,000 USD a year."
"The price of New Relic could improve. It is expensive."
"The product is neither cheap nor expensive, and I believe that it is a competitively-priced tool."
"The pricing is okay comparatively their competitors. The only concern was whether it should be purchased on demand or bring your own license, and which way passes some savings onto the end customers."
"The solution is cheap, but prices can go up when users grow."
"The price was one of the reasons we chose this solution."
"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."
"The solution is less expensive than AppNeta."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Educational Organization
50%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Honeycomb.io?
We faced some OpenTelemetry metrics lost between the communication from the service and the Honeycomb.io. I can't say if this is a Honeycomb.io issue or if there are some limitations in OpenTelemet...
What is your primary use case for Honeycomb.io?
The solution is mainly used for stack observability. It observes service behavior or any kind of failure that may be happening. The tool is also related to research. My company is working more on t...
What advice do you have for others considering Honeycomb.io?
We set up Honeycomb.io on all the services so that we can have all the set traces of the communication between all the services inside the company. This helps us understand where it could be failin...
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?
Email alert customization is limited; it cannot be tailored much, which makes the system more rigid than optimal. The handling of logs from integration tools is not as advanced compared to other to...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Clover Health, Eaze, Intercom, Fender
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 Honeycomb.io vs. New Relic and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.