Best Open Source New Relic Alternatives & Competitors 2025

New Relic's complex pricing model and vendor lock-in concerns drive many engineering teams toward open source alternatives. If you're evaluating APM tools that offer better cost transparency, data sovereignty, and extensibility, this guide compares the leading open source options available in 2025.

Why Teams Migrate from New Relic

Pricing Complexity and Unexpected Costs

New Relic's hybrid pricing model combines usage-based billing with user-type tiers (Basic, Core, Full platform users). Engineering teams frequently report billing surprises when metrics volume spikes or when they need to provision additional full platform users for incident response.

Limited Data Control

New Relic's cloud-only architecture prevents teams from:

• Keeping telemetry data within their own infrastructure for compliance
• Controlling data retention policies beyond New Relic's offerings
• Integrating with existing security and governance systems

Vendor Dependencies

Proprietary agents and data formats create switching costs. Teams become dependent on New Relic's roadmap for critical features and bug fixes, with limited ability to extend functionality.

Feature Complexity vs. Actual Needs

New Relic's extensive feature set often exceeds what smaller engineering teams require, making focused open source tools more practical and cost-effective.

Key Advantages of Open Source APM Tools

Cost Transparency: Eliminate per-seat licensing and unpredictable usage charges. Self-hosted options provide complete control over infrastructure costs.

Data Sovereignty: Deploy within your own infrastructure to meet compliance requirements and maintain complete control over sensitive telemetry data.

Extensibility: Modify source code, build custom integrations, and contribute improvements back to the community.

Standards Adoption: Many open source tools embrace OpenTelemetry standards, reducing vendor lock-in and improving long-term portability.

Community Support: Access to active communities for troubleshooting, feature discussions, and collaborative problem-solving.

Top Open Source New Relic Alternatives

SigNoz - OpenTelemetry-Native Unified Platform

Best for: Teams seeking comprehensive observability with minimal operational overhead

SigNoz delivers a complete alternative to New Relic with native OpenTelemetry support and unified metrics, traces, and logs in a single interface.

Core Capabilities

• Unified Observability: Single dashboard correlating metrics, distributed traces, and logs
• OpenTelemetry Native: Superior OTel integration compared to proprietary agent approaches
• APM Charts: Out-of-the-box service maps, Apdex scores, and RED metrics (Rate, Errors, Duration)
• Advanced Trace Analysis: Flamegraphs, Gantt charts, and tag-based filtering for root cause analysis
• Messaging Queue Monitoring: Native support for Kafka, RabbitMQ, and other event-driven systems
• ClickHouse Backend: High-performance columnar database optimized for observability workloads

Deployment and Pricing

• Self-hosted: Completely free with single binary deployment
• SigNoz Cloud: Transparent usage-based pricing
  • Base: $49/month
  • Logs: $0.3/GB ingested
  • Traces: $0.3/GB ingested
  • Metrics: $0.1/million samples

Technical Advantages

• OpenTelemetry-first architecture eliminates data compatibility issues
• Single binary deployment reduces operational complexity
• Real-time correlation between telemetry signals
• High-cardinality trace filtering without performance degradation

Grafana Stack - Modular Observability Ecosystem

Best for: Teams requiring maximum flexibility and component-level control

The Grafana ecosystem combines Prometheus (metrics), Loki (logs), Tempo (traces), and Grafana (visualization) for comprehensive observability.

Architecture Components

• Prometheus: Time-series metrics with PromQL for complex queries
• Loki: Log aggregation designed for cloud-native environments
• Tempo: High-volume distributed tracing backend
• Grafana: Unified visualization with extensive plugin ecosystem

Technical Strengths

• Massive community with 50k+ GitHub stars
• Extensive plugin marketplace and pre-built dashboards
• Kubernetes-native deployment with operators
• Multi-tenancy support for large organizations
• Advanced alerting with correlation across data sources

Considerations

• Higher deployment complexity with multiple components
• Requires expertise in configuring and maintaining separate systems
• Resource-intensive for high-volume environments

Jaeger - CNCF Distributed Tracing Platform

Best for: Organizations prioritizing distributed tracing in microservices architectures

Jaeger provides production-ready distributed tracing with excellent scalability and OpenTelemetry integration as a CNCF graduated project.

Key Features

• Scalable Architecture: Separate agents, collectors, and query services
• Multiple Storage Options: Cassandra, Elasticsearch, ScyllaDB backends
• High Throughput: Handles billions of spans per day in production
• Jaeger v2: OpenTelemetry Collector-based architecture
• Sampling Strategies: Probabilistic, rate-limiting, and adaptive sampling

Performance Benefits

• ScyllaDB integration reduces query latency by 40% vs Cassandra
• Kubernetes Operator for automated scaling
• Proven performance in large-scale production deployments

Zipkin - Lightweight Tracing Solution

Best for: Small to medium teams needing simple distributed tracing

Zipkin offers minimal operational overhead with straightforward distributed tracing capabilities.

Features

• Simple Architecture: Three-component design (reporters, collectors, UI)
• B3 Context Propagation: Industry-standard trace context headers
• Service Dependencies: Visual mapping of service interactions
• Storage Flexibility: MySQL, Cassandra, and Elasticsearch support

Use Cases

• Deployments with fewer than 100 services
• Teams preferring minimal operational complexity
• Organizations beginning their observability journey

Uptrace - High-Cardinality Trace Analytics

Best for: Teams requiring sophisticated trace analysis and filtering

Uptrace combines OpenTelemetry ingestion with ClickHouse storage for advanced trace analytics capabilities.

Unique Capabilities

• High-Cardinality Queries: Filter spans by any attribute without performance penalties
• Uptrace Query Language: SQL-like interface for complex trace analysis
• Anomaly Detection: Built-in alerting for performance regressions
• Single Binary: Simplified deployment and operations

Performance Characteristics

• Ingests 1+ million spans per minute
• ClickHouse optimization for analytical workloads
• Fast query response for complex aggregations

Feature Comparison Matrix

Selection Framework by Use Case

Early-Stage Teams (< 20 services)

Primary: SigNoz for unified simplicity and low operational overhead Alternative: Zipkin for basic tracing needs Key Factors: Minimal setup complexity, built-in dashboards, transparent pricing

Growing Organizations (20-100 services)

Primary: Grafana Stack for flexibility and ecosystem maturity Alternative: SigNoz for integrated experience with less complexity Key Factors: Team expertise, scalability requirements, budget constraints

Enterprise Environments (100+ services)

Primary: Grafana Stack with enterprise support contracts Alternative: SigNoz with enterprise consulting for complex deployments Key Factors: Compliance requirements, multi-tenancy, commercial support

OpenTelemetry-First Organizations

Primary: SigNoz for native OTel support and unified interface Alternative: OpenTelemetry Collector with purpose-built backends Key Factors: Standards adoption, vendor neutrality, future-proofing

Migration Strategy and Implementation

Assessment Phase

1. Current Usage Analysis: Identify actively used New Relic features vs. purchased capabilities
2. Data Volume Estimates: Calculate current metrics, traces, and logs ingestion rates
3. Integration Mapping: Document existing dashboards, alerts, and downstream dependencies
4. Team Readiness: Assess expertise with open source tooling and operational capacity

Gradual Migration Approach

1. Parallel Instrumentation: Deploy OpenTelemetry alongside existing New Relic agents
2. Service-by-Service Transition: Migrate applications incrementally to validate functionality
3. Dashboard Migration: Rebuild critical visualizations in the new platform
4. Alert Reconstruction: Transfer essential alerts with appropriate thresholds
5. Team Training: Invest in query language training (PromQL, etc.) and operational knowledge

Common Migration Challenges

• Query Language Transition: Moving from NRQL to PromQL or other query languages
• Data Format Differences: Adapting to OpenTelemetry vs. proprietary data structures
• Dashboard Complexity: Recreating sophisticated visualizations and correlations
• Operational Procedures: Updating runbooks and incident response workflows

Total Cost of Ownership Analysis

Self-Hosted Infrastructure Costs

Managed Service Economics

• SigNoz Cloud: Predictable usage-based pricing without user seat charges
• Grafana Cloud: Free tier available, scales with usage
• Commercial Support: Available for most open source options through vendors or consulting

Future-Proofing Your Observability Stack

OpenTelemetry Adoption

OpenTelemetry is becoming the industry standard for observability instrumentation. Prioritizing tools with native OTel support ensures:

• Vendor Portability: Easy migration between backends without re-instrumentation
• Standardized Data Formats: Consistent telemetry across different tools and environments
• Community Innovation: Access to collective improvements and new capabilities

Hybrid Architecture Considerations

Many successful deployments combine multiple tools:

• OpenTelemetry Collector: Centralized data pipeline with routing flexibility
• Specialized Backends: Purpose-built storage for different telemetry types
• Unified Visualization: Common dashboard layer (typically Grafana) across backends

Skills Investment

Successful open source adoption requires:

• Query Language Proficiency: PromQL, LogQL, and other domain-specific languages
• Deployment Expertise: Kubernetes operators, Helm charts, and infrastructure as code
• Community Engagement: Active participation in project communities for support and influence

Get Started with SigNoz

SigNoz provides the most comprehensive open source alternative to New Relic with unified observability, transparent pricing, and OpenTelemetry-native architecture. Key advantages for teams migrating from New Relic include:

Unified Observability Platform: Metrics, traces, and logs correlation in a single interface eliminates the need for multiple tools and reduces context switching during incident response.

OpenTelemetry Integration: Native OTel support provides superior data compatibility and eliminates vendor lock-in concerns associated with proprietary agents.

Distributed Tracing: Advanced trace analysis with flamegraphs, service maps, and high-cardinality filtering for efficient root cause analysis.

Messaging Queue Monitoring: Built-in support for Kafka, RabbitMQ, and other event-driven systems provides deep insights into asynchronous processing.

You can choose between various deployment options in SigNoz. The easiest way to get started with SigNoz is SigNoz cloud. We offer a 30-day free trial account with access to all features.

Those who have data privacy concerns and can't send their data outside their infrastructure can sign up for either enterprise self-hosted or BYOC offering.

Those who have the expertise to manage SigNoz themselves or just want to start with a free self-hosted option can use our community edition.

Hope we answered all your questions regarding open source New Relic alternatives. If you have more questions, feel free to join and ask on our slack community.

You can also subscribe to our newsletter for insights from observability nerds at SigNoz — get open source, OpenTelemetry, and devtool-building stories straight to your inbox.