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Application performance monitoring · September 2026 Edition

New Relic vs Datadog

Eight of twelve models named New Relic first on the direct prompt; one named Datadog. Both were named by all twelve models and New Relic carries 67 labels and Datadog 62, so the shares are not directly comparable.

New Relic

endorsed leader

Named in five categories this edition.

Datadog

criticized challenger

Named in six categories this edition.

First-choice share54%11%Of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, 0 to 100.
Negative rate15%37%Negative labels as a share of the product's labels, 0 to 100.
Rank in category#1#3A position in a field of 10; printed, not drawn.
Labels6762A count; the two differ.
The two percentage rows are drawn on one 0 to 100 track, New Relic reading right to left. Rank and label count are printed, not drawn.New Relic vs SigNoz · SigNoz vs Datadog

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts over all twelve models, for a mid-market B2B company; rank is within the category; every quote names the model and the prompt it came from. Both figures come from the application performance monitoring page.

By framing

How many of the twelve models made each the first choice, per way of asking, and how many argued against it.
New RelicFirst choices, of twelve modelsDatadog
Direct813 against Datadog
Paraphrase732 against Datadog
Comparative08
Budget-constrained805 against Datadog
Scale-constrained212 against New Relic · 3 against Datadog
Negative008 against New Relic · 10 against Datadog
Bars are first choices, 0 to 12 each sideModels that argued againstA model can name both, so the two sides of a row do not sum to twelve.

The direct prompt

The plain question, one answer per model, grouped by where New Relic and Datadog stood in it.

New Relic first, Datadog an alternative

8 of 12 modelsDatadog was named in the answer but not as the choice, or not at all.
GPT-5.4 miniNew Relic alternatives: AppDynamics, Datadog, Dynatrace, Grafana Cloud
Gemini 3.5 FlashNew Relic alternatives: Honeycomb, Sentry
Perplexity SonarNew Relic alternatives: Datadog, Dynatrace, ManageEngine Applications Manager / OpManager Nexus
Grok 4.1 FastNew Relic alternatives: Datadog, ManageEngine Applications Manager, SolarWinds
Mistral SmallNew Relic alternatives: Datadog
DeepSeek V4 FlashNew Relic alternatives: ManageEngine Applications Manager
Kimi K2New Relic alternatives: ManageEngine Applications Manager, SolarWinds
GLM 4.7 FlashXNew Relic alternatives: AppDynamics, Datadog, Grafana/Tempo, OpenObserve, OpenTelemetry, SigNoz, SolarWinds Applications Manager

Datadog first, New Relic an alternative

1 of 12 modelsNew Relic was named in the answer but not as the choice, or not at all.
Qwen 3.7 FlashDatadog alternatives: IBM Instana, New Relic, Sentry

Neither was named

3 of 12 modelsThe answer made no first choice from these two in this category.
Claude Haiku 4.5no first choice
Llama 4 Maverickno first choice
MiniMax M2.5ManageEngine Applications Manager, SolarWinds APM alternatives: Pandora FMS

Bold names in an answer are the products the judge labeled a first choice; a model naming several gives each of them that label. The full answer text for every row is in the record.

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment and they are never added together. The figures above are the mid-market standing, which is the one the category orders by.
Small business
New Relic leads by thirty-six points.
New Relic51%#1 of 12
Datadog15%#2 of 12
The full small business standing →
Mid-marketThe figures above
New Relic leads by forty-three points.
New Relic54%#1 of 10
Datadog11%#3 of 10
The full mid-market standing →
Enterprise
The order flips: Datadog leads at enterprise.
Datadog26%#2 of 8
New Relic11%#3 of 8
The full enterprise standing →

What the models said about New Relic

Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Three of three in this category shown.

“Pricing model confusion ... Stability concerns - users report "laughable" stability in some regions” Kimi K2 · negative prompt · hard negative
“Price/performance leaders at your size are commonly New Relic (transparent per-GB ingest, generous free tier, easy to defend to finance)” DeepSeek V4 Flash · scale prompt · first choice
“New Relic | Balanced features & predictable pricing | Generous free tier (100GB/month), strong NRQL analytics” Kimi K2 · scale prompt · first choice

What the models said about Datadog

Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Three of three in this category shown.

“High Caution: Major Commercial APM Vendors ... Unpredictable pricing - Bills can triple or quadruple at scale” Kimi K2 · negative prompt · hard negative
“they are generally not recommended for mid-sized B2B companies” Gemini 3.5 Flash · paraphrase prompt · hard negative
“Datadog is a dominant SaaS-based observability platform that consolidates metrics, traces, logs, and security in a single, highly polished dashboard.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · comparative prompt · first choice
Also compared
New Relic vs SigNozSigNoz vs DatadogThe full APM standing

Comparisons are drawn for the top three products in each category. The output is the models' output; nothing here is a recommendation by the index.