# New Relic vs Honeycomb: which do AI models recommend for APM, October 2026

IT AI Recommendation Index, October 2026 Edition, Application performance monitoring. Seven of fourteen models named New Relic first on the direct prompt; zero named Honeycomb. Page: https://it-ai-index.com/operations/application-performance-monitoring/new-relic-vs-honeycomb/

| | First-choice share | Rank | Negative rate | Labels | Models naming it |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Relic | 46% | #1 of 12 | 12% | 65 | 14 of 14 |
| Honeycomb | 2% | #8 of 12 | 0% | 10 | 7 of 14 |

## The direct prompt, model by model

- GPT-5.4 mini: new relic first (first choices: New Relic) (alternatives: Datadog APM)
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: new relic first (first choices: New Relic) (alternatives: Grafana Cloud, Sentry)
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: new relic first (first choices: New Relic) (alternatives: Datadog APM, IBM Instana, Site24x7)
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: new relic first (first choices: New Relic) (alternatives: SolarWinds Observability)
- Kimi K2: new relic first (first choices: New Relic) (alternatives: Datadog APM, IBM Instana, Site24x7)
- MiniMax M2.5: new relic first (first choices: New Relic) (alternatives: Datadog APM)
- Muse Glimmer 30B: new relic first (first choices: Datadog APM, IBM Instana, New Relic) (alternatives: AppDynamics, Site24x7)
- Claude Haiku 4.5: neither first, one named (first choices: Datadog APM) (alternatives: New Relic, Site24x7, SolarWinds Observability)
- Grok 4.1 Fast: neither first, one named (first choices: Datadog APM) (alternatives: IBM Instana, New Relic)
- GPT-6 Luna: neither first, one named (first choices: Datadog APM) (alternatives: New Relic)
- Perplexity Sonar: neither named (first choices: Datadog APM) (alternatives: AppDynamics, Dynatrace, ManageEngine Applications Manager)
- Mistral Small: neither named (first choices: IBM Instana) (alternatives: AppDynamics, Site24x7, Stackify Retrace)
- Llama 4 Maverick: neither named (alternatives: OpManager Nexus, Stackify Retrace)
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: neither named (first choices: Site24x7) (alternatives: Datadog APM, IBM Instana)

## What the models said about New Relic

- "New Relic if your team lacks a dedicated observability engineer." (DeepSeek V4 Flash, negative prompt, hard negative)
- "New Relic (Often considered the most generous) ... It offers the highest data allowance among major enterprise vendors." (Qwen 3.7 Flash, budget prompt, first choice)

## What the models said about Honeycomb

- "The Developer-First / Observability Path (Highly Recommended)... Honeycomb is unmatched." (Gemini 3.5 Flash, scale prompt, first choice)
- "If you are building microservices/serverless and want ultimate flexibility in tracing attributes, choose Honeycomb." (Qwen 3.7 Flash, comparative prompt, alternative)

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts over all fourteen models, for a mid-market B2B company; rank is within the category. Comparisons are drawn for the top eight products in each category. Published under CC BY 4.0; the output is the models' output, and nothing here is a recommendation by the index.