Falco vs New Relic: What are the differences?

Introduction

This Markdown code provides a comparison between Falco and New Relic, highlighting the key differences between the two. Falco and New Relic are both monitoring tools, but they have distinct features and capabilities that set them apart.

1. Deployment Model: Falco is designed as an open-source container runtime security project that runs as a kernel module or eBPF probe. It focuses on monitoring and alerting on unexpected application behavior in containers, providing deep visibility into container activities. In contrast, New Relic is a comprehensive application performance monitoring and management platform that requires an agent deployment on the application infrastructure. It offers a wider range of features, including real-time performance metrics, traces, and logs analysis.

2. Alerting and Security Emphasis: Falco places a stronger emphasis on security and proactive threat detection. It leverages a set of pre-defined rules to identify abnormal container activities, such as file system changes, process execution, and network connections, which can indicate potential security threats. New Relic, on the other hand, is primarily focused on application performance monitoring and optimization, providing insights into performance bottlenecks, latency issues, and code-level visibility.

3. Community and Support: Falco benefits from an active open-source community, allowing for community-driven rule updates and improvements. It has a growing ecosystem of contributors who continuously enhance its capabilities. New Relic, as a commercial enterprise platform, offers dedicated support, maintenance, and professional services. Being a widely recognized and established solution, New Relic provides a comprehensive customer support network.

4. Pricing Model: Falco is open source and free to use, making it an attractive option for organizations with budget constraints or those seeking a cost-effective solution for container monitoring and security. New Relic, on the other hand, follows a subscription-based pricing model, offering various tiers and pricing plans based on the scale and level of features required. This pricing structure allows organizations to choose the most suitable plan based on their specific needs.

5. Integration Capabilities: Falco integrates seamlessly with popular container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes, allowing it to monitor containers and pods effectively. It can provide detailed insights into container activity within Kubernetes clusters. New Relic, on the other hand, offers integration with a wide range of technologies, including multiple programming languages, frameworks, and cloud providers. This broad integration capability enables comprehensive monitoring of entire application stacks, both on-premises and in the cloud.

6. Dashboarding and Visualization: Falco provides a set of default dashboards that display real-time container activity, potential security events, and relevant metadata. These dashboards offer a basic level of visibility into container behavior. New Relic, on the other hand, provides advanced dashboarding and visualization capabilities, allowing users to create custom dashboards, aggregate data from multiple sources, and gain holistic visibility into application performance, infrastructure, and user experience.

In summary, Falco is an open-source container monitoring and security solution with a focus on real-time threat detection, while New Relic is a comprehensive application performance monitoring platform that provides broader visibility across entire application stacks.