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New Relic vs Better Stack
Trust Score comparison · March 2026
VS
Trust Score Δ
2
🏆 New Relic wins
Signal Comparison
500k / wknpm downloads80k / wk
200 commitsCommits (90d)N/A
800 ★GitHub starsN/A
12k q'sStack Overflow100 q's
HighCommunityGrowing
New RelicBetter Stack
Key Differences
| Factor | New Relic | Better Stack |
|---|---|---|
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Language | TypeScript / Python | TypeScript |
| Hosted | Self-hosted | Self-hosted |
| Free tier | — | — |
| Open Source | — | — |
| TypeScript | ✓ | ✓ |
Pick New Relic if…
- Full APM with transaction traces, error tracking, and DB query analysis in one tool
- Large applications needing infrastructure + application observability together
- Teams that want a free tier with 100GB/mo ingest — more generous than Datadog
Pick Better Stack if…
- You want logging + uptime monitoring in a single product without Datadog's price
- Node.js or Next.js apps that need structured log ingestion via Pino or Winston
- Small teams needing on-call schedules and status pages out of the box
Side-by-side Quick Start
New Relic
// newrelic.js (require FIRST before all other requires)
require('newrelic');
// newrelic.js config file
exports.config = {
app_name: ['My App'],
license_key: process.env.NEW_RELIC_LICENSE_KEY,
logging: { level: 'info' },
};
// Package: npm install newrelicBetter Stack
import { createPinoTransport } from '@logtail/pino';
import pino from 'pino';
const transport = createPinoTransport(process.env.BETTER_STACK_TOKEN);
const logger = pino(transport);
logger.info({ user: 'alice' }, 'User logged in');
logger.error({ err }, 'Something went wrong');Community Verdict
Based on upvoted notes🏆
New Relic wins this comparison
Trust Score 80 vs 78 · 2-point difference
New Relic leads on Trust Score with stronger signal data across downloads and community health. That said, the other tool is worth considering if your use case matches its specific strengths above.