New Relic added AI monitoring to its existing APM platform. Similar tradeoffs to Datadog: strong if you already have it, weaker on agent-specific and outside-in concerns. If you're an existing New Relic shop, adding their AI monitoring module is the path of least resistance - but it won't answer the questions that outside-in validating does.
One-line summary
- Agent Status: Agent Status is purpose-built for AI agents. Outside-in validations and semantic assertions are the default primitives.
- New Relic: New Relic is a full-stack APM platform with an AI Monitoring module. Strongest when correlated with the rest of New Relic APM.
Feature matrix
| Capability | Agent Status | New Relic |
|---|---|---|
| APM + infra correlation | No | Strong |
| Agent-specific assertions on response body | Native | Limited |
| Outside-in validations (live, multi-region) | Native | Via Synthetics addon |
| Trace visualisation for multi-step agents | Limited | Native |
| Enterprise compliance + SSO | On Agency plan | Native |
| Alert correlation across stack | No | Native |
| Per-provider LLM cost tracking | No | Native |
When to use Agent Status
- You need to know your users' experience, not your servers'.
- Your agent depends on a third-party model provider and you need to catch their outages.
- Your users are distributed geographically and you need regional alerting.
- You want alerts in seconds, not minutes of aggregated latency data.
When to use New Relic
- You already pay for New Relic APM and want one platform.
- You need to correlate AI latency with infra and stack metrics.
- You require New Relic's enterprise compliance.
- You want a unified alerting workflow across AI and non-AI systems.
What New Relic does that we don't
Platform leverage. If New Relic is already the system of record for your infrastructure, adding AI Monitoring is cheap and correlates with everything else you already watch.
What we do that New Relic doesn't
Agent-shaped primitives: semantic assertions, gold-prompt coverage, regional outside-in validations. New Relic's AI Monitoring can show you aggregate latency and tokens; it doesn't natively assert that the content of the response was correct.
Pricing
- Agent Status: Free tier: 30 tests/month, 1 agent, 3 regions, 6-hour minimum interval. Paid tiers unlock unlimited agents and regions with usage-based pricing. No per-seat fees.
- New Relic: New Relic pricing is data-ingest-based. AI Monitoring included in Pro and Enterprise tiers.
Most teams use both
If you're deep in New Relic, use their AI Monitoring for context-in-stack and pair it with Agent Status for the outside-in layer they don't cover. The two together give you both 'what broke in my infra' and 'what did the user actually experience'.
Related
- /vs/datadog - Datadog comparison.
- /vs/langfuse - Langfuse comparison.
- /blog/what-is-outside-in-monitoring - Outside-in primer.
- /platform - The product overview.
Frequently asked questions
Is Agent Status a replacement for New Relic?
No. New Relic adds AI monitoring to enterprise APM (inside-out). Agent Status is agent-specific outside-in validation. They complement each other.
When should I choose Agent Status?
When you need to verify the agent's user-facing answer and regional performance, not just infrastructure health. New Relic is stronger for full-stack APM.
Can I use both?
Yes. Keep New Relic for infrastructure and add Agent Status for agent-specific validation and alerting.
How does setup compare?
Agent Status needs no agents or instrumentation and is live in about 10 minutes; New Relic requires its APM module.
Try Agent Status alongside New Relic
Free tier includes 30 tests/month on 1 agent from 3 regions - enough to validate the pattern against your real traffic with a 10-minute setup and no code changes to the agent itself. See pricing or jump straight to the platform overview.
