Plimsoll vs New Relic
Compare the operating model. Not just the dashboard.
New Relic brings full-stack coverage with consumption-based billing. Plimsoll is built around one agent per workload, a correlated incident graph, and a bill that stays legible as you add signals.
The short read
Single platform for APM, infrastructure, and browser, with consumption-based billing that charges by ingested data and users. Solid APM depth; spend scales with telemetry volume.
Five buyer questions
Where the two platforms diverge.
The first four rows use the same scored research as the full comparison matrix. Retention is shown separately because the useful answer depends on what each platform persists and where raw telemetry lives.
| Dimension | PlimsollAutonomous AIOps on OpenTelemetry + Prometheus. | New RelicFull-stack observability with consumption-based pricing. |
|---|---|---|
Cost modelWhat changes on the bill when coverage expands. | Native One flat number per monitored workload, per month — no per-host, per-metric, or per-log charge. | Limited Consumption pricing charges by data ingested and by user. |
AI incident detectionWhether the AI collapses the firehose into one incident. | Native Three-signal correlation joins infrastructure, application, and FinOps anomalies before a human is paged. | Partial AIOps correlation is opt-in; defaults still page on per-signal thresholds. |
On-call workflowsHow automation behaves when an incident crosses a boundary. | Native Fenced remediation stays inside the workload blast radius; cross-service events escalate to PagerDuty and Slack. | Partial Workflows available but fencing is operator-defined, not workload-scoped by default. |
Multi-cloud supportHow cloud and Kubernetes signals meet in one operating view. | Native One agent per workload correlates AWS, Azure, GCP, and Kubernetes signals through one workload graph. | Good Multi-cloud support exists; correlation requires explicit cross-account setup. |
Retention / log-retention windowsWhat stays in the platform versus your telemetry pipeline. | Documented policy Starter retains anomaly graphs, remediation records, and incident reports for 30 days. Team extends retention to 90 days with full audit-log export. Enterprise sets retention by contract — default 1 year, longer on request — and supports custom data-residency region. Raw telemetry lives in your own OTLP/Prometheus pipeline; Plimsoll only persists the correlated-event layer. | Plan + data-type dependent The New Relic retention answer is plan- and data-type-dependent, so there is no single platform-wide day count to compare here. Confirm the retention window for the telemetry your team expects to query. |
Scores match the shared Plimsoll capability matrix; retention is presented descriptively rather than as a synthetic score.
Why New Relic buyers choose Plimsoll
One agent per workload
One deployment watches the infrastructure, application, and FinOps signals that belong to the workload.
Three-signal correlation
The incident graph joins those signals before the on-call engineer has to stitch them together.
Telemetry-volume-independent billing
Per-workload pricing decouples the bill from telemetry volume, so correlation work is not penalized.
Fenced remediation
Automated actions stay inside the workload blast radius instead of reaching across services by default.
PagerDuty + Slack escalation
When an event crosses the fence, Plimsoll gives the human team a clear escalation path instead of silently widening the automation scope.
New Relic is a fit when full-stack breadth is the priority. Plimsoll is the stronger fit when the decision turns on a telemetry-volume-independent bill, workload-native correlation, and fenced response.
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Ready to pressure-test it?
Start with the Team tier and see the difference in production.
Team is the recommended path for platform teams: up to 250 workloads, multi-cluster correlation, fenced playbooks, SSO, SCIM, and a full audit log.
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