Is New Relic free? What it actually costs in 2026
Yes, there is a free tier — with limits.
Free tier includes 100 GB/month of data ingest and one full-platform user; beyond that, data is billed per GB ingested and full-platform users are billed per seat, so costs climb with both data volume and team size.
When paying is still the right call
New Relic's mature all-in-one APM, its genuinely useful free tier (100 GB plus one full user), and turnkey setup are strong. If you want production-grade APM without operating your own stack, and your data volume stays modest, staying is a reasonable call.
What you are locked into
New Relic's proprietary agents and its NRQL query language mean dashboards, alerts, and saved queries don't port elsewhere; the practical lock-in is economic (ingest + seats) and query-language, more than raw data format if you instrument with OpenTelemetry.
If you would rather not pay: SigNoz
SigNoz
An OpenTelemetry-native, single-app APM and observability platform.
Free / self-host; optional managed cloud
See all 3 New Relic alternatives comparedCompare the free options head-to-head
Pricing is verified against the vendor's published figures and dated above. Vendors change prices — confirm current numbers with New Relic, Inc. before you commit. More observability & monitoring decisions on Macrostack.