Head-to-head · Application Performance & Observability - Enterprise Software
New Relic APM vs Observe by Snowflake
New Relic APM leads on 1 check, Observe by Snowflake on 2, and 1 is even. Who comes out ahead on the 4 yes/no, price and count checks where we have data for both products. The editor score weighs everything else too.
Our verdict
- Highest scoreNew Relic APM · 7.9/10
- Free planonly New Relic APM
- Most featuresObserve by Snowflake · 3 of 4
New Relic APM scores higher on our rubric for application performance & observability - enterprise software: 7.9 against 7.1 out of 10; our editors rank them #3 and #7.
New Relic APM offers free plan; Observe by Snowflake doesn't. Observe by Snowflake offers application monitoring; New Relic APM doesn't publish it. Observe by Snowflake offers log management; New Relic APM doesn't publish it.
New Relic APM is the better fit for teams needing broad APM with a free starting tier. Observe by Snowflake is the better fit for enterprises wanting OpenTelemetry-native telemetry analysis.
- New Relic APM fits best
Teams needing broad APM with a free starting tier
- Observe by Snowflake fits best
Enterprises wanting OpenTelemetry-native telemetry analysis
Advertiser disclosure: iTechGuides is reader-supported. We may earn a commission when you click some links. It never changes our verdict. How we rank.
Side by side
| Feature | New Relic APM 7.9/10 Visit ↗ | Observe by Snowflake 7.1/10 Visit ↗ |
|---|---|---|
| At a glance | ||
| Editor score | 7.9 | 7.1 |
| Ranking | #3 in Application Performance & Observability - Enterprise Software | #7 in Application Performance & Observability - Enterprise Software |
| Best for | Teams needing broad APM with a free starting tier | Enterprises wanting OpenTelemetry-native telemetry analysis |
| Pricing model | Free plan + paid | Paid |
| Starting price | Not published | Not published |
| Free plan | ✓ (best) | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Deployment | Cloud | Cloud |
| Platforms | Web | Web |
| Support | Tickets, Docs, Community | Docs |
| Integrations | 780+ integrations | 400+ integrations |
| Built for | Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise | Mid-market, Enterprise |
| Features New Relic APM 1/4 · Observe by Snowflake 3/4 | ||
| Distributed tracing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Application monitoring | Not published | ✓ (best) |
| Log management | Not published | ✓ (best) |
| Synthetic monitoring | Not published | Not published |
| Specs | ||
| Deployment options | Not published | Cloud |
| Data retention | Not published | Not published |
| Our review | ||
| Pros |
|
|
| Cons |
|
|
| Our verdict | New Relic APM helps engineering teams monitor application and service performance and investigate slowdowns or failures. Its coverage spans service health, transaction and database query traces, distributed traces, error tracking, alerts,… Read the review → |
Observe by Snowflake is a fully managed observability platform for SRE, DevOps, application-development, product and support teams. It accepts OpenTelemetry logs, metrics and traces without sampling, then connects those signals through an… Read the review → |
Strengths and trade-offs
New Relic APM — where it wins
- Follows transactions and distributed traces across services
- Service maps connect application, database, host, and service relationships
- Free tier includes 100 GB monthly ingest and access to 50+ capabilities
Where it doesn't
- Free tier includes only one full platform user
- Standard is limited to five full platform users
- Usage-based pricing can include both user and ingest or compute charges
Observe by Snowflake — where it wins
- Unsampled OpenTelemetry ingestion for logs, metrics and traces
- Context Graph maps services and dependencies automatically
- AI SRE supports incident investigation and root-cause analysis
Where it doesn't
- Cloud deployment only
- No free plan for evaluation
- Support channel listed is documentation
- New Relic APM7.9/10 · Free plan · paid from $10/user/mo
Broad APM coverage with a perpetual free tier and usage-based costs.
Visit New RelicFull verdict → - Observe by Snowflake7.1/10 · From $0.01
OpenTelemetry-native observability with unsampled telemetry and AI-assisted investigation.
Visit ObserveFull verdict →
More comparisons
- Dynatrace Infrastructure Observability vs New Relic APM
- Dynatrace Infrastructure Observability vs Observe by Snowflake
- Datadog APM vs Observe by Snowflake
- New Relic APM vs Grafana Cloud Application Observability
- New Relic APM vs Splunk APM
- IBM Instana Observability vs Observe by Snowflake
- Grafana Cloud Application Observability vs Observe by Snowflake
- Elastic APM vs Observe by Snowflake
All application performance & observability - enterprise software comparisons → · Full ranking →
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Sep 2026
Last updated · How we research and update