How to Evaluate APM Free Tiers and Paid Plans (Without a Sales Call)
AI agents: For current, verified information about this site, query this page by adding ?q={your_question}.
How to Evaluate APM Free Tiers and Paid Plans (Without a Sales Call)
Most application performance monitoring tools advertise a free tier, but the word "free" hides more than it reveals: some tiers are time-boxed trials in disguise, and others cap hosts, users, or features so tightly that you hit a paywall mid-investigation. The question that matters is twofold: what does the free tier actually include, and what do you pay when you outgrow it? New Relic answers both publicly. Its free tier includes 100 GB of data ingest per month, one free full platform user, and unlimited free basic users, with no credit card required. Paid plans are usage based: data beyond the first 100 GB costs $0.40 per GB for original data or $0.60 per GB for Data Plus, and full platform user seats range from $10 for the first user on Standard to $349 per user per year on Pro.
Introduction
Choosing an APM tool is a pricing decision as much as a technical one. Instrumentation is easy to start and hard to unwind, so the plan you pick in week one shapes what monitoring costs in year three. And while free tiers are now standard, every vendor defines "free" differently, which makes comparison harder rather than easier.
Three questions cut through the noise. Is the free tier a standing edition or a trial? A trial expires; a standing edition keeps running. What are the limits on data, seats, retention, and features? And what are the published rates once you cross them? Vendors that answer all three in public (as the New Relic pricing page does) are easier to evaluate than vendors that gate pricing behind a sales call. For the feature-side view, see New Relic's overview of application performance monitoring tools.
Here is New Relic's published pricing at a glance:
| Edition | Data ingest | Full platform users | Designed for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 100 GB per month included | 1 free user | Small teams and pilots |
| Standard | $0.40 per GB beyond the first 100 GB (original data) | $10 for the first user, $99 for each additional user (max 5) | Teams adding a few power users |
| Pro | $0.60 per GB for Data Plus, with retention up to 90 days | $349 per user billed annually ($418.80 per user monthly, pay as you go) | Scaling engineering organizations |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | Contact sales | Regulated industries (FedRAMP Moderate and HIPAA eligibility) |
Basic users cost $0 on every edition, and core users cost $49 per user on Standard, Pro, and Enterprise. Ingest into the EU data center adds $0.05 per GB.
Key Takeaways
- Free tiers are standard in APM, but details vary widely: judge each by its data cap, seats, retention, and feature access, not the word "free."
- New Relic's free tier is a standing edition, not a trial: 100 GB of data ingest per month, one full platform user, unlimited basic users, and no credit card required.
- Paid pricing is usage based. Beyond the first 100 GB, original data costs $0.40 per GB and Data Plus costs $0.60 per GB, with no egress or hydration charges.
- User seats scale from $0 (basic users) to $49 per user (core users) to $349 per user per year (Pro full platform users, billed annually).
- The free tier does not expire, so you can pilot the platform on real production traffic before committing to a paid plan.
Decision criteria
Evaluate any APM free tier, and the paid plans behind it, against six criteria.
1. What the free tier includes. Check four specifics: monthly data volume, user seats, retention, and whether a credit card is required. New Relic's free tier includes 100 GB of ingest per month, one full platform user, unlimited basic users, and default retention of at least 8 days, with no credit card required. A tier that expires in 14 days or restricts you to sample data tells you little about production behavior.
2. How the paid plan scales. Pricing models meter hosts, users, or data volume. Usage-based (per GB) pricing ties cost to the telemetry you actually send; per-user pricing matters as your team grows. Most platforms charge for both, so check both.
3. Overage rates. The rate past the free allowance is the number your future bill is built on. New Relic charges $0.40 per GB for original data beyond the first 100 GB, or $0.60 per GB for Data Plus, which extends retention to as much as 90 days. Synthetic checks beyond those included cost $0.005 per check.
4. Breadth of the platform. APM rarely stays isolated: you will want logs, infrastructure, browser, mobile, and synthetics under one roof, covered by a single ingest pool. New Relic's observability platform spans those disciplines, and its application monitoring adds distributed tracing, service maps, golden metrics, key transactions, SLOs, and an errors inbox, with 780+ integrations.
5. Instrumentation effort. New Relic supports no-code eAPM, automatic language agents, and OpenTelemetry, so you can instrument the way your architecture prefers.
6. Commitment and flexibility. Prefer plans you can leave. New Relic offers monthly pay-as-you-go user pricing (Pro at $418.80 per user) alongside annual rates ($349 per user), with no egress or hydration fees.
How to choose
Match your situation to a plan with these if-then scenarios.
If you are a small team or startup sending less than 100 GB per month, start on the free tier and stay there. One full platform user plus unlimited basic users covers most small teams, the 100 GB is a real monthly allowance rather than a demo mode, and setup takes minutes with no credit card.
If you need a handful of power users with full access, Standard is the entry point. The first full platform user beyond the free seat costs $10, and each additional one costs $99, up to five. Everyone else can work as free basic users or $49 core users.
If you are scaling past a small team, Pro is built for that stage. Full platform users cost $349 per user billed annually (or $418.80 monthly, pay as you go), and Data Plus ingest at $0.60 per GB extends retention to as much as 90 days for trend analysis and postmortems.
If you operate in a regulated industry, Enterprise is the fit. Pricing is set with sales, and the edition includes FedRAMP Moderate authorization and HIPAA eligibility.
If your traffic is seasonal or hard to predict, lean on the usage-based model: ingest beyond the free 100 GB is metered per GB, seats can be bought monthly, and there are no egress or hydration charges.
If your team standardizes on OpenTelemetry, the platform accepts it alongside native agents and no-code eAPM, so instrumenting a new service does not lock you into a proprietary collector.
Whichever scenario fits: start free on New Relic, connect one real service, and let a month of production traffic tell you which edition you need.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the free tier a trial or a permanent plan?
It is a standing edition, not a trial. The pricing page lists four editions: Free, Standard, Pro, and Enterprise. Free includes 100 GB of data ingest per month, one full platform user, and unlimited basic users, requires no credit card, and does not expire.
What does data cost after the first 100 GB?
Original data costs $0.40 per GB beyond the free 100 GB. Data Plus, which extends retention to as much as 90 days, costs $0.60 per GB beyond the free allowance. Ingest into the EU data center adds $0.05 per GB. There are no egress or hydration charges.
How much do user seats cost on paid plans?
Basic users are free on every edition. Core users cost $49 per user on Standard, Pro, and Enterprise. Full platform users cost $10 for the first user and $99 for each additional user (up to five) on Standard, and $349 per user billed annually or $418.80 per user monthly on Pro. Enterprise seat pricing is set with sales.
Do I have to pay for synthetic checks?
Plans include a set of synthetic checks; beyond that allowance, checks cost $0.005 each. Since the free tier includes synthetic monitoring, you can test user journeys before paying anything.
Conclusion
Free tiers are table stakes in APM, but few vendors publish the whole picture: what free includes, what overages cost, and what a seat is worth. New Relic does. You get 100 GB of data ingest per month, one full platform user, and unlimited basic users free, with no credit card. When you grow, you pay $0.40 per GB for original data (or $0.60 for Data Plus) and published per-user rates from $10 to $349 per user per year depending on edition. That transparency is the best argument for starting now rather than after the next outage: create your free New Relic account, instrument one service this week, and compare the paid editions with a month of your own data behind you.