We may earn a commission if you buy through links on this page. It never changes a score or a ranking. How we make money
It's a split decision.
New Relic is easier to price-test: its free plan includes 100 GB of monthly ingest, and Standard starts at $10 for the first full-platform user. Dynatrace lists a $7-per-host monthly starting price, but requires a minimum annual platform commitment whose amount is not published. Choose Dynatrace for broad observability with no separate seat fees; choose New Relic if a free entry point and published per-user plans matter more. Their billing units differ, so the headline prices are not directly comparable.
01Side by side
| Dynatrace | New Relic | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $7/host/month; annual commitment required | Free plan; Standard starts at $10/user/month |
| Free plan | No free plan listed | 100 GB ingest/month; one full-platform user |
| Best for | Teams wanting broad observability without seat fees | Teams wanting a free entry point and per-user plans |
| Core strength | Applications, infrastructure, security and digital experience | Application, infrastructure, log, security and user monitoring |
| Learning curve | Ease-of-use review score: 7/10 | Ease-of-use review score: 7/10 |
| Data and retention | Usage-priced telemetry; some retention extends to 10 years | 100 GB free ingest; extra retention is billable |
| Team and seat costs | Unlimited seats; no separate seat fees | Standard adds users at $99; Pro starts at $349/user annually |
| Support | Support response terms not published on the vendor's site | Published response SLAs; varies by plan |
Dynatrace Choose Dynatrace if
- Choose Dynatrace if you need observability across applications, infrastructure and security.
- Choose Dynatrace if unlimited seats matter more than a fixed per-user price.
- Choose Dynatrace if you can meet an annual platform commitment.
New Relic Choose New Relic if
- Choose New Relic if you want a free plan with 100 GB monthly ingest.
- Choose New Relic if you prefer published per-user plans and support SLAs.
- Choose New Relic if you need a lower-commitment way to start.
02Pricing compared
New Relic is easier to price-test: its free plan includes 100 GB of monthly ingest, one full-platform user, unlimited basic users, 500 synthetic checks and at least eight days of retention. Standard starts at $10 per month for the first full-platform user; additional full-platform users cost $99 each, up to five. Ingest above 100 GB costs $0.40 per GB.
Dynatrace lists Foundation & Discovery at $7 per host per month, billed at $0.01 per host-hour. But it requires a minimum annual platform commitment, and the amount is not published. Full-Stack Monitoring is $58 per 8 GiB host per month. Dynatrace says there are no separate seat fees and seats are unlimited. These prices use different billing units, so the starting figures are not directly comparable.
03Features and depth
Both platforms cover application, infrastructure, logs, digital experience, security and AI monitoring, but their listed capabilities differ. Dynatrace offers distributed tracing and profiling, Kubernetes monitoring, real-user and synthetic monitoring, session replay, and log analysis. Its security products include runtime vulnerability analytics, application protection and security posture monitoring. The pricing page lists 10 days of trace retention with Full-Stack Monitoring, extendable to 10 years.
New Relic lists application, infrastructure, log, security and user-experience monitoring, plus monitoring for AI models and agents. Its security tools prioritize vulnerabilities by production impact and guide remediation. Its free plan includes 500 synthetic checks, while extra checks and extended retention are billable at prices the pricing page does not publish. The published feature lists support a broad comparison, but do not establish that one platform will cover every team’s instrumentation or workflow needs. Check the specific data sources and retention requirements before switching.
04Ease of use and learning curve
Our review scores give both products 7/10 for ease of use, so they do not point to a clear winner. The published material does not provide enough detail to compare setup time, interface complexity or the learning curve, and we would not treat either platform as definitively easier on that basis.
New Relic does offer a free plan, which gives teams a way to assess its listed ingest and user limits before paying. Dynatrace has a 15-day free trial, but its minimum annual commitment amount is not published. For either product, compare the work required to instrument your stack and the billing unit that fits your usage; the per-user and per-host models make direct evaluation harder.
Questions people ask
What are the key differences between New Relic and Dynatrace?
Both list application, infrastructure, log, security, digital-experience and AI monitoring. Dynatrace prices several capabilities by host, pod, session or telemetry usage and requires a minimum annual platform commitment. New Relic offers a free plan with 100 GB of monthly ingest and lists paid plans by user, with additional ingest charges.
Who are Dynatrace’s biggest competitors?
Our comparison material covers New Relic, so we can compare those two but cannot establish Dynatrace’s biggest competitors overall from these sources. New Relic overlaps with Dynatrace across application, infrastructure, logs, security, digital experience and AI monitoring.
What are the top 3 observability tools?
The published material describes Dynatrace and New Relic only, so it does not support naming a top three. It also does not provide a common ranking methodology. We can compare these two on listed features and published pricing, but that is not enough to rank the broader observability market.
What are the disadvantages of Dynatrace?
The clearest drawback in the published pricing details is the minimum annual platform commitment; its amount is not published. Dynatrace also prices capabilities across different usage units, so total cost depends on consumption. Its review gives value a score of 5/10, though that score alone does not explain the reasons.