Compare
Three vendors. One honest table.
Datadog, New Relic and Polartrace all give you APM, logs and infrastructure monitoring. The difference is how the bill is built: per product and per host, per full-platform user, or one plan with two meters. Every number below is a published list rate, verified October 2026.
vsDatadogvsNew RelicThree reference workloads, list price to list price
Monthly, at each vendor's published list rates. Hosts, data and team size as stated per row.
| Workload |  | Datadog | New Relic |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter5 hosts · 30 GB/mo · 3 engineers | $89Starter $29 + 3 × $20 flat | ~$259Polartrace ≈ 66% less | ~$208Standard · Polartrace ≈ 57% less |
| Growth20 hosts · 100 GB/mo · 8 engineers | $399Growth $99 + 15 × $20 flat | ~$1,015Polartrace ≈ 61% less | ~$2,792Pro, annual · Polartrace ≈ 86% less |
| Pro50 hosts · 500 GB/mo · 15 engineers | $1,099Pro $299 + 40 × $20 flat | ~$2,775Polartrace ≈ 60% less | ~$5,395Pro, annual · Polartrace ≈ 80% less |
Datadog: annual list, verified October 2026 - Infrastructure Pro $15/host, APM $31/host attached to it, log ingest $0.1/GB plus 15-day indexing at $1.7 per million events (about 2 KB per event assumed). New Relic: verified October 2026 - every engineer as a full-platform user on the cheapest edition that admits the team (Standard: $10 first user, $99 each additional, max 5; Pro: $349/user annual), data over the free 100 GB at $0.4/GB, hosts free. Polartrace: current published plan prices and the flat $20 extra-host rate.
Mechanics
Mechanic by mechanic
A check marks a rule that favours the buyer, a warning one that makes the bill larger or harder to predict. Polartrace gets its share of warnings.
| Mechanic | | Datadog | New Relic |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | |||
| How you are billed | Favourable: One plan, two meters: data (GB) and hosts | Watch out: Per product: Infra, APM, Logs each metered separately | Watch out: Per full-platform user, plus data over 100 GB |
| Per-seat charge | Favourable: None - unlimited team members on every plan | Favourable: None for observability products | Watch out: $10-$99 (Standard, max 5) or $349/user (Pro, annual) |
| Per-host charge | $20 flat per host past your allowance | Watch out: $15 Infra + $31 APM = $46 per host, before logs | Favourable: None - unlimited hosts |
| Host counting | Favourable: 95th percentile of daily distinct hosts | Watch out: High-water mark of hourly counts (top 1% excluded) | Favourable: Not metered |
| Logs | Favourable: Inside the data meter, one per-GB rate | Watch out: Billed twice: $0.10/GB ingest + $1.70/M events to index | Inside the data meter; $0.40/GB over 100 GB |
| Overage protection | Favourable: Spend cap pauses ingest; alerts at 80/100/150%; first overage invoice waived | Watch out: On-demand rates above commitment ($18 vs $15/host, $2.55 vs $1.70/M events) | Budget alerts; no hard cap on the usage plan |
| Free tier | 5 GB/mo, 1 service, 3 monitors, unlimited members - never expires | Infrastructure only, up to 5 hosts, 1-day metric retention | Favourable: 100 GB/mo + 1 full-platform user - never expires |
| Platform | |||
| APM, tracing, logs & infrastructure | Favourable: All included on every plan, Free included | Favourable: Yes - as separate products | Favourable: Yes - 50+ capabilities on every edition |
| Kubernetes monitoring | Favourable: Included, read-only cluster agent | Included with Infrastructure; container allowances per host | Favourable: Included |
| Agent languages | Watch out: Node.js and Python today (Go, Java, Ruby, .NET on the roadmap) | Favourable: 10+ languages | Favourable: 10+ languages |
| RUM, synthetics, browser & mobile | Watch out: Not offered | Favourable: Yes, as separate products | Favourable: Yes, included in the data meter |
| Alert channels | Slack and email, with recovery notifications | Favourable: Large integrations marketplace incl. PagerDuty | Favourable: Many channels incl. PagerDuty |
| Data retention | 3 / 7 / 15 / 30 days by plan; custom on Enterprise | 15-day log indexing standard; 15-month metrics | 8 days default; up to +90 days with Data Plus at $0.60/GB |
| Open-source agents | Favourable: MIT-licensed Node.js and Python agents on GitHub | Favourable: Open-source agent | Favourable: Open-source agents |
| Built on OpenTelemetry | Favourable: Yes - OTel SDKs and semantic conventions | Supported alongside the proprietary agent | Favourable: Supported natively |
Vendor facts from datadoghq.com/pricing and newrelic.com/pricing, verified October 2026. Polartrace facts from the published plan limits. Datadog and New Relic are trademarks of their respective owners; Polartrace is affiliated with neither.
Scope
Where each vendor is ahead
Real gaps, not strawmen. If your team depends on something in the first two columns, that vendor is the honest answer.
is ahead on
- RUM, session replay, synthetics and browser testingPolartrace has no front-end or uptime monitoring at all
- Continuous profiler, database monitoring, CI visibilityNo code-level profiling or pipeline visibility
- Java, Go, Ruby, .NET, PHP and more agent languagesPolartrace ships Node.js and Python agents only
- PagerDuty and a large incident-tooling marketplacePolartrace alerts to Slack and email, nothing else
- Enterprise compliance programs (e.g. SOC 2, FedRAMP)Polartrace publishes no compliance certifications
is ahead on
- 100 GB of free ingest every month, on every editionPolartrace's free plan is 5 GB; paid plans start at 30 GB
- No per-host charge - unlimited hosts, agents and containersPolartrace meters hosts past an included allowance ($20 flat)
- Browser, mobile, synthetics, serverless and AIOps in one meterPolartrace has no front-end or uptime monitoring
- Java, Go, Ruby, .NET, PHP and more agent languagesPolartrace ships Node.js and Python agents only
- FedRAMP Moderate and HIPAA eligibility on EnterprisePolartrace publishes no compliance certifications
does, completely
- Distributed tracing, request logs, host metrics and Kubernetes monitoringEvery plan, Free included
- Node.js and Python agents, built on OpenTelemetryTrace-to-log correlation on the Node.js agent
- Monitors with recovery notifications - email on every plan, Slack from GrowthUp to 50 monitors on Growth
- Unlimited team members on every planNo per-seat charge, including on Free
- Teams, environments and audit logs, with custom-role RBAC on Pro5 environments on Growth
- A bill of at most three lines: your plan, data over the included GB, hosts over the included countGrowth: 150 GB and 5 hosts included
Frequently asked
Datadog is a trademark of Datadog, Inc. New Relic is a trademark of New Relic, Inc. Polartrace is affiliated with neither. Comparison based on each vendor's published pricing (verified October 2026) and Polartrace's current published pricing; verify current rates with each vendor.
Run the numbers on your own fleet.
Start on the free plan - every rate is printed on the pricing page.
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