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

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

| | First-choice share | Rank | Negative rate | Labels | Models naming it |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Relic | 27% | #2 of 12 | 14% | 63 | 14 of 14 |
| Honeycomb | 2% | #7 of 12 | 11% | 19 | 10 of 14 |

## The direct prompt, model by model

- 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 4.1 Fast: new relic first (first choices: New Relic) (alternatives: Datadog, Dynatrace, Grafana Labs)
- Mistral Small: new relic first (first choices: Grafana, New Relic) (alternatives: Middleware.io, OpenObserve)
- 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)
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: new relic first (first choices: Grafana, New Relic)
- 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: honeycomb first (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 New Relic

- "| New Relic/Datadog | SaaS | Limited free | High ($0.35/GB + users) | Avoid for tight budgets |" (Grok 4.1 Fast, 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)

## What the models said about Honeycomb

- "Event-based pricing creates a structural incident risk because volume spikes during production incidents increase costs" (Claude Haiku 4.5, negative prompt, soft negative)
- "Using them now carries a "hold my horse" risk." (Qwen 3.7 Flash, negative prompt, soft negative)
- "Go with Honeycomb if you are a B2B SaaS company that suffers from customer-specific performance issues" (Gemini 3.5 Flash, 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.