Decision comparison
New Relic vs Uptrace
New Relic and Uptrace both let a team see traces, metrics and logs without assembling a stack, and they are aimed at different sizes of problem. New Relic is a managed platform with mobile and browser monitoring, prebuilt cloud integrations and a 100 GB free tier. Uptrace is a small OpenTelemetry backend you can run yourself, which is the right answer when you already emit OTLP and want somewhere to put it without operating a platform.
Architecture choice. These take different approaches to the same problem. Read the table as a fit question rather than a feature race.
All 2 are observability platforms.
Quick Comparison
| Decision factor | New Relic | Uptrace |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A commercial SaaS observability platform with a 100 GB per month free tier | A compact open-source OpenTelemetry backend, deliberately narrow in scope |
| Scope | Tracing, metrics, logs, real user and mobile monitoring, plus prebuilt cloud integrations | Traces, metrics and logs from OpenTelemetry, with alerting; not much beyond that by design |
| Instrumentation | New Relic agents and libraries, with OpenTelemetry accepted | OpenTelemetry only; OTLP in, nothing proprietary |
| Deployment | SaaS only, in the region you select, with agents on hosts across AWS, GCP and Azure | Self-hosted on Docker or Kubernetes on any cloud or on-premise, or the vendor's managed cloud |
| Cost model | Per ingested GB plus per full platform user | Free to self-host; Uptrace Cloud is priced on ingested volume |
| Operational burden | None beyond agent rollout | One service plus a datastore — the lightest self-hosted option in this category |
| Best fit | Teams wanting managed APM with mobile and browser monitoring included | Teams already emitting OTLP that want a backend rather than a platform |
New Relic
- What it is:
- A commercial SaaS observability platform with a 100 GB per month free tier
- Scope:
- Tracing, metrics, logs, real user and mobile monitoring, plus prebuilt cloud integrations
- Instrumentation:
- New Relic agents and libraries, with OpenTelemetry accepted
- Deployment:
- SaaS only, in the region you select, with agents on hosts across AWS, GCP and Azure
- Cost model:
- Per ingested GB plus per full platform user
- Operational burden:
- None beyond agent rollout
- Best fit:
- Teams wanting managed APM with mobile and browser monitoring included
Uptrace
- What it is:
- A compact open-source OpenTelemetry backend, deliberately narrow in scope
- Scope:
- Traces, metrics and logs from OpenTelemetry, with alerting; not much beyond that by design
- Instrumentation:
- OpenTelemetry only; OTLP in, nothing proprietary
- Deployment:
- Self-hosted on Docker or Kubernetes on any cloud or on-premise, or the vendor's managed cloud
- Cost model:
- Free to self-host; Uptrace Cloud is priced on ingested volume
- Operational burden:
- One service plus a datastore — the lightest self-hosted option in this category
- Best fit:
- Teams already emitting OTLP that want a backend rather than a platform
Public signals
Verified factual signals only. Bars appear only for like-for-like metrics with five weekly assessments for every tool; missing evidence stays explicit. These signals do not establish enterprise adoption, product quality, or total cost.
| Metric | New Relic | Uptrace |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub commits, 90d(Developer adoption) | 303 | Not available |
| GitHub stars(Developer adoption) | 9 | Not available |
| Search interest(Market interest) | 4 | 0 |
| Hacker News mentions, 90d(Community interest) | 1 | 0 |
| npm weekly downloads(Developer adoption) | 894.3k | 2.6k |
| Product Hunt comments(Community interest) | 1 | Not available |
| Product Hunt reviews(Community interest) | 0 | Not available |
| Product Hunt votes(Community interest) | 16 | Not available |
| PyPI weekly downloads(Developer adoption) | 817.2k | 17.6k |
| Stack Overflow questions(Community interest) | 1.5k | Not available |
| Docker Hub pulls(Product adoption) | Not available | 430.5k |
| GitHub commits, 90d(Product adoption) | Not available | 0 |
| GitHub stars(Product adoption) | Not available | 4,000+ |
As of September 14, 2026 — updated weekly.
Health & risk evidence
Observed public-source checks for mapped package versions and repositories.
New Relic
September 14, 2026Package vulnerabilities
npm · newrelic@14.4.0 · PyPI · newrelic@13.5.0
0 vulnerabilities
across 2 packages
Repository security score
Not available
Uptrace
September 14, 2026Package vulnerabilities
npm · @uptrace/node@2.3.0 · PyPI · uptrace@1.41.0
0 vulnerabilities
across 2 packages
Repository security score
Not available
Feature Comparison
| Feature | New Relic | Uptrace |
|---|---|---|
| Telemetry | ||
| Distributed tracing | Full support | Full support |
| Metrics and dashboards | Full support | Full support |
| Log management | Full support | Full support |
| Mobile and browser monitoring | Full support | Not verified |
| Integration | ||
| OpenTelemetry ingestion | Full support | Full support |
| Vendor-neutral instrumentation | Partial support | Full support |
| Prebuilt cloud integrations | Full support | Partial support |
| Alerting | Full support | Full support |
| Operations | ||
| Fully managed option | Full support | Full support |
| Self-hosted deployment | Not verified | Full support |
| Lightweight to run | Full support | Full support |
| Data residency under your control | Partial support | Full support |
| Commercial | ||
| Open-source licence | Not verified | Full support |
| Free entry point | Full support | Full support |
| Per-user charging | Full support | Not verified |
| Long retention without indexing charges | Partial support | Full support |
Telemetry
Distributed tracing
Metrics and dashboards
Log management
Mobile and browser monitoring
Integration
OpenTelemetry ingestion
Vendor-neutral instrumentation
Prebuilt cloud integrations
Alerting
Operations
Fully managed option
Self-hosted deployment
Lightweight to run
Data residency under your control
Commercial
Open-source licence
Free entry point
Per-user charging
Long retention without indexing charges
Which approach fits
New Relic and Uptrace both let a team see traces, metrics and logs without assembling a stack, and they are aimed at different sizes of problem. New Relic is a managed platform with mobile and browser monitoring, prebuilt cloud integrations and a 100 GB free tier. Uptrace is a small OpenTelemetry backend you can run yourself, which is the right answer when you already emit OTLP and want somewhere to put it without operating a platform.
When each approach fits
Choose New Relic if:
Choose New Relic when you want observability managed and your needs extend past backend telemetry. Mobile and browser monitoring, prebuilt cloud integrations and a mature alerting workflow arrive without assembly, and the free tier covers 100 GB a month, which is enough for a small estate to run in production at no cost. Watch full platform user count as the team grows.
Choose Uptrace if:
Choose Uptrace when your instrumentation is already OpenTelemetry and you want the smallest backend that does the job well. One service plus a datastore is within reach of a team that runs Docker or Kubernetes without a platform group, there is no per-user charge, and data stays wherever you run it. The trade is scope: no mobile or browser monitoring and no integration catalogue.
These scenarios reflect the available product evidence. Your requirements, existing stack, and team expertise should guide the final decision.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Uptrace too small for production?
Not for the job it does. It handles traces, metrics and logs from OpenTelemetry with alerting, which is what most backend teams actually need from observability. The question is not capacity but scope: if you also need browser monitoring, mobile monitoring or a catalogue of prebuilt cloud integrations, those are absent and you would buy or build them separately.
What does New Relic's free tier cover?
100 GB of ingest a month and one full platform user. That covers a small production estate genuinely, not as a trial — several services with moderate log volume can sit inside it indefinitely. The constraints that bite are the single full user once more than one person configures alerts, and log volume as the number of services grows.
How much lighter is Uptrace to operate?
Materially. It is one service and a datastore rather than a multi-component platform, so self-hosting is realistic for a team that already runs containers but has no dedicated platform engineers. That is the practical difference from heavier open-source observability stacks: not what they can do, but whether you can keep them running alongside your actual work.
Does instrumenting with OpenTelemetry lock us in either way?
No, and that is the strongest reason to instrument with it regardless of which backend you pick. Applications emit OTLP, so the backend is a collector configuration. You can even fan out to both for a period and compare on real traffic. What you rebuild on a move is dashboards, alerts and routing, not application code.
Which suits a mobile or web product better?
New Relic, without much argument. Browser and mobile monitoring are built in, so real user data sits beside backend traces in one place, which is exactly what you want when diagnosing a slow page. Uptrace is a backend telemetry store; pairing it with a separate RUM tool is possible but it is two systems and two views.