Highlight.io vs New Relic
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Highlight.io and New Relic.
Quick Verdict
3.2/5
Highlight.io
0 reviews
4.0/5
New Relic
0 reviews
New Relic is rated higher (4.0 vs 3.2). Open-source full-stack monitoring (session replay, error monitoring, logging, tracing), self-hostable via Docker. Acquired by LaunchDarkly in April 2025; cloud accounts are being migrated to LaunchDarkly Observability. New Relic is a full-stack observability platform with a unique pricing model: 100GB free data ingest/month. APM, infrastructure, browser monitoring, synthetics, and logs in one platform.
Highlight.io Session replay and error tracking for full-stack debugging | New Relic Full-stack observability — 100GB free per month | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.2 (0 reviews) | 4.0 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | freemium | freemium |
| Starting price | Free tier available | Free tier available |
| Best for | Teams that want open-source, self-hosted session replay plus error, log, and trace monitoring on their own infrastructure — and existing Highlight cloud customers deciding whether to complete the LaunchDarkly migration. | Engineering teams that want APM, infrastructure, and logs in one platform with usage-based pricing and a genuinely free starting point |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ||
| Free tier | ||
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tieropen sourceself hostableapi access | free tierapi accessteam features |
| Visit Highlight.io → | Visit New Relic → | |
Highlight.io
Pros
- + One stack for session replay, errors, logs, and traces with OpenTelemetry-based instrumentation and cross-signal correlation
- + Genuinely usable free tier: 500 monthly sessions and up to 15 seats at $0/month
- + Fully self-hostable from the public repository (Docker hobby stack), keeping session data on your own infrastructure
- + Strong docs for a vendor: architecture notes, self-hosting guides, changelogs, telemetry disclosure
- + Acquired into LaunchDarkly with the founders leading observability there, so the hosted product has a defined continuation path
Cons
- - Standalone product is being absorbed: highlight.io serves LaunchDarkly's site and cloud accounts are being migrated
- - Open-source repository's final community support date is still unannounced, so self-hosters face an uncertain maintenance horizon
- - Thin pricing ladder: nothing between the free tier and $800/month Business, with per-type usage overages and conflicting published quotas
- - No published infrastructure SLA, region map, or uptime record for the hosted product
- - Self-hosting means operating a multi-service stack (database, queue, collectors) with no managed middle tier
New Relic
Pros
- + Best free tier in observability: 100 GB ingest/month, one full platform user, unlimited basic users, no credit card
- + No per-host, per-agent, per-container, or per-function charges — cost tracks telemetry, not fleet size
- + Published unit pricing: $0.40/GB original data, $0.60/GB Data Plus, $49 core users, $10/$99 Standard full users
- + One platform for APM, infrastructure, logs, browser/mobile, synthetics, and alerting with NRQL across all of it
- + Published support response SLAs per edition (2 business days Standard, 2-hour critical Pro, 1-hour Enterprise)
Cons
- - Pro full platform users at $349/user (annual) or $418.80 monthly make seat costs the dominant expense
- - Free tier hard-stops ingest and platform access past 100 GB until the next month or an upgrade
- - Uptime commitments are contract-defined and vacated on Standard — no availability SLA below Pro
- - Cost forecasting across ingest tiers, user types, and Advanced Compute metering takes real effort
- - SaaS-only with US/EU data residency; NRQL dashboards and alerts carry switching costs
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