New Relic vs Prometheus vs Sentry: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Key differences between New Relic, Prometheus, and Sentry are essential to understand their capabilities and choose the right monitoring tools for your organization.

1. Data Collection and Monitoring: New Relic offers real-time monitoring and analytics to help organizations track the performance of their applications, servers, and network infrastructure. Prometheus, on the other hand, focuses on monitoring the metrics and collecting time-series data primarily in a containerized environment. Sentry specializes in error tracking and provides insights into code-level issues, helping developers pinpoint and resolve bugs quickly.

2. Alerting Capabilities: New Relic offers robust alerting features that allow users to set up customized alerts based on predetermined thresholds. Prometheus, being an open-source project, provides alerting capabilities through its Alertmanager component, which can be integrated with various notification channels. Sentry also supports alerting but primarily focuses on notifying developers about code errors.

3. Community Support and Customization: Prometheus has a vibrant open-source community that contributes to its development and provides extensive documentation. This allows users to customize and extend its functionalities according to their needs. New Relic, as a commercial product, offers professional support and a user-friendly interface but may have limitations in customization. Sentry offers a balance between community support and commercial features, allowing developers to tweak settings and integrate with their existing workflow.

4. Integration with Other Tools: Both New Relic and Prometheus support integration with various third-party tools and platforms to enhance monitoring capabilities. New Relic has a wide range of integrations with popular services like AWS, Azure, and more. Prometheus, being open-source, has an active ecosystem of exporters and integrations, making it versatile and adaptable to different environments. Sentry focuses on integrations with software development tools like GitHub, GitLab, and Jira, streamlining the error tracking process for developers.

5. Cost and Pricing Model: New Relic is a commercial product with subscription-based pricing that varies based on the number of monitored hosts or applications. Prometheus, being open-source, is free to use, but organizations may incur costs for maintenance and support. Sentry offers a flexible pricing model based on the number of events processed, allowing users to choose a plan that aligns with their monitoring needs.

In Summary, understanding the key differences between New Relic, Prometheus, and Sentry is crucial for making informed decisions about selecting the right monitoring tools for your organization's specific requirements.