# Grafana vs New Relic: which do AI models recommend for observability, October 2026

IT AI Recommendation Index, October 2026 Edition, Observability platforms. Two of fourteen models named Grafana first on the direct prompt; nine named New Relic. Page: https://it-ai-index.com/operations/observability-platforms/grafana-vs-new-relic/

| | First-choice share | Rank | Negative rate | Labels | Models naming it |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grafana | 27% | #1 of 12 | 8% | 62 | 14 of 14 |
| New Relic | 27% | #2 of 12 | 14% | 63 | 14 of 14 |

## The direct prompt, model by model

- Mistral Small: both first (first choices: Grafana, New Relic) (alternatives: Middleware.io, OpenObserve)
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: both first (first choices: Grafana, New Relic)
- Claude Haiku 4.5: new relic first (first choices: New Relic) (alternatives: Atatus, Datadog, Elastic Observability, Grafana, Grafana Labs' LGTM+ stack, Motadata ObserveOps)
- GPT-5.4 mini: new relic first (first choices: New Relic) (alternatives: Dynatrace, Grafana)
- Grok 4.20: new relic first (first choices: New Relic) (alternatives: Datadog, Dynatrace, Grafana Labs)
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: new relic first (first choices: New Relic) (alternatives: Elastic Observability, Grafana)
- Llama 4 Maverick: new relic first (first choices: New Relic) (alternatives: Datadog, Motadata ObserveOps)
- Kimi K2: new relic first (first choices: New Relic) (alternatives: Grafana, SigNoz)
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: new relic first (first choices: New Relic) (alternatives: Datadog, Grafana + Prometheus, Splunk Observability Cloud)
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: neither first, one named (first choices: Honeycomb) (alternatives: Grafana, New Relic)
- GPT-6 Luna: neither first, one named (first choices: Datadog) (alternatives: Grafana, Honeycomb, New Relic)
- Muse Glimmer 30B: neither first, one named (first choices: Datadog) (alternatives: Atatus, Middleware.io, New Relic, OpenObserve, Sematext)
- Perplexity Sonar: neither named (first choices: Datadog) (alternatives: Coralogix, Middleware.io, Motadata ObserveOps, OpenObserve)
- MiniMax M2.5: neither named (first choices: Datadog, Grafana Labs) (alternatives: Dynatrace)

## What the models said about Grafana

- "Using open-source tools like Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger, and the ELK ... high Total Cost of Ownership" (Gemini 3.5 Flash, negative prompt, soft negative)
- ""The Grafana Ghost" vulnerability (CVE-2025-4123) ... Self-hosted instances require diligent patching" (Kimi K2, negative prompt, soft negative)
- "if you expect "Grafana" to mean one low, flat fee. Cloud usage can be billed across separate meters" (GPT-6 Luna, negative prompt, soft negative)
- "Choose Grafana Cloud if your engineering team has standard microservices/Kubernetes architectures and wants a cost-conscious, highly customizable platform" (Gemini 3.5 Flash, paraphrase prompt, first choice)
- "For a limited budget, start with open-source platforms like Grafana, OpenObserve, or Zabbix for maximum cost savings and flexibility." (Mistral Small, budget prompt, first choice)
- "the best default choice is usually Grafana Cloud with OpenTelemetry, because it gives you a strong free tier" (GPT-5.4 mini, budget prompt, first choice)

## What the models said about New Relic

- "| New Relic/Datadog | SaaS | Limited free | High ($0.35/GB + users) | Avoid for tight budgets |" (Grok 4.20, budget prompt, hard negative)
- "New Relic Why be cautious: - Complex pricing model" (Kimi K2, negative prompt, hard negative)
- "New Relic is recommended for teams wanting all telemetry types on a single ingest meter with a genuinely useful free tier" (Claude Haiku 4.5, direct prompt, first choice)

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.