Start with New Relic (full-stack, consumption-based pricing)
New Relic covers the same surface as Datadog but charges per-GB instead of per-host. This fits teams running many small containers or microservices where per-host pricing would be expensive. The 100GB/month free tier lets you evaluate before committing. Watch ingestion volume carefully — costs scale linearly with data.
- Recommendation: New Relic
Recommended starting points
Based on your constraints, these products typically fit best. Read each decision brief to confirm pricing behavior and limits match your reality.
New Relic
Full-stack observability with consumption-based pricing ($0.30/GB after 100GB free/month). Covers APM, infrastructure, logs, and browser monitoring. The most generous free tier in the category.
Why this recommendation
New Relic covers the same surface as Datadog but charges per-GB instead of per-host. This fits teams running many small containers or microservices where per-host pricing would be expensive. The 100GB/month free tier lets you evaluate before committing. Watch ingestion volume carefully — costs scale linearly with data.