Last reviewed . Product packaging and pricing can change; verify the linked vendor sources before buying.
Try New Relic alongside Telemetry
Choose one New Relic workflow and test both systems with the same fixed dataset. Check which capabilities you still need before changing production monitoring.
- 1
Inventory New Relic
NRDB custom events and attributes
- 2
Map one workflow
Named application-event tables with stable fields, units, identities, and schema versions.
- 3
Dual-run the fixture
Dual-send synthetic success, failure, retry, null, and duplicate cases and compare stored rows.
- 4
Record the decision
Inventory agents, APM transactions, NRQL, logs-in-context, dashboards, alerts, browser, infrastructure, and tracing workflows before removing any capability.
How Telemetry is different
- Telemetry exposes named event tables and DataFusion SQL; New Relic stores telemetry in NRDB and uses NRQL across a broad observability platform.
- Telemetry starts with application-owned outcome events; New Relic also offers agents and guided collection for APM, infrastructure, browser, mobile, logs, synthetics, and more.
- Telemetry does not replace New Relic distributed tracing, code-level APM, infrastructure monitoring, browser agents, errors inbox, synthetics, or vulnerability workflows.
When Telemetry is a good fit
- You need to choose and query your own events, rather than automatically collect APM and infrastructure data.
- SQL is the preferred shared language for product, operational, billing, and AI workflow questions.
- The team can retain New Relic or another specialist for signals that structured events should not replace.
Where each product is strongest
New Relic
- Broad application and infrastructure observability with agents, logs in context, distributed tracing, browser, mobile, synthetics, errors, dashboards, and alerts.
- NRQL analysis across many telemetry types and a large library of integrations and guided installs.
- A stronger fit when teams want one established platform for automatic collection and cross-signal troubleshooting.
Telemetry
- Custom application and business events in typed tables you can query with SQL.
- SQL event analysis for teams that already maintain their instrumentation.
- Event tracking templates and deterministic SQL recipes designed for review in code and operational runbooks.
Evaluation checklist
Test the decision with a real workflow
- 1Inventory agents, APM transactions, NRQL, logs-in-context, dashboards, alerts, browser, infrastructure, and tracing workflows before removing any capability.
- 2Send the same approved test events to both systems. Compare field types, what each row represents, query behavior, time windows, dashboards, and access controls.
- 3Use current documentation to model data ingest, retention, users, compute, and the exact product capabilities the team will keep.
Migration path
Plan the query and event migration before changing tools
List the queries, alerts, exports, and retention you use today. Define the event fields they need and translate one query. Run both systems with the same test data. Check null handling, timestamps, and aggregates before moving more queries.
New Relic workflow
NRDB custom events and attributes
Telemetry mapping
Named application-event tables with stable fields, units, identities, and schema versions.
Dual-run validation
Dual-send synthetic success, failure, retry, null, and duplicate cases and compare stored rows.
New Relic workflow
NRQL queries, dashboards, and alert conditions
Telemetry mapping
DataFusion SQL, dashboards, and threshold alerts with explicit denominators and time windows.
Dual-run validation
Compare result sets and alert transitions while documenting dialect, bucketing, and aggregation differences.
New Relic workflow
APM agents, distributed tracing, infrastructure, browser, mobile, and synthetics
Telemetry mapping
Telemetry has no direct equivalent. Keep New Relic or another tool for automatic collection and debugging across logs, metrics, and traces.
Dual-run validation
Run an end-to-end incident exercise before removing an agent, integration, or diagnostic workflow.
Try one workflow
Start with one backend workflow
Pick an API route, AI workflow, webhook, or job queue. Send structured events and query them before expanding coverage.
Category buying guide
Compare structured logging and event analytics tools
Compare log platforms, wide-event systems, error monitoring, data infrastructure, and SQL event analytics using one production workflow.
Read the comparison guideMore comparisons
PostHog for backend events
PostHog combines product analytics, funnels, retention, SQL, and a data warehouse. Telemetry focuses on backend event tables and SQL dashboards. A coding agent can add the instrumentation from your codebase.
Read comparisonDatadog alternative for startups
Datadog covers observability and security across your infrastructure. Telemetry hosts structured application events, SQL dashboards, and threshold alerts for teams that need to query their own workflows.
Read comparisonClickHouse logging API without running ClickHouse
ClickHouse is a columnar analytics database, and ClickStack adds observability tools. Telemetry hosts event ingestion, SQL queries, dashboards, and alerts so you do not have to assemble or operate that stack.
Read comparisonAxiom alternative for structured event analytics
Axiom offers event ingestion, search, APL queries, dashboards, and monitors. Telemetry uses typed application event tables and SQL. Its coding-agent prompts help you add instrumentation and build queries from your codebase.
Read comparisonBetter Stack Logs alternative for SQL event analytics
Better Stack combines logs, dashboards, alerting, incident management, and uptime monitoring. Telemetry focuses on application event tables and SQL queries, with prompts that help a coding agent add instrumentation to your codebase.
Read comparisonHoneycomb alternative for lightweight wide events
Honeycomb supports high-cardinality debugging with wide events and distributed traces. Telemetry stores application and business events in SQL tables, with dashboards and threshold alerts.
Read comparisonGrafana Loki alternative for structured log SQL
Grafana Cloud and Loki combine logs, metrics, traces, dashboards, and alerts. Telemetry hosts JSON event tables and SQL for teams that need to analyze application workflows.
Read comparisonSentry alternative for structured events and SQL
Sentry combines error monitoring, tracing, profiling, session replay, and logs around application health. Telemetry is the narrower alternative when a team's first requirement is custom structured workflow events and SQL analysis rather than exception-centric debugging.
Read comparisonSplunk alternative for structured events
Splunk offers search, security analytics, logs, infrastructure monitoring, APM, real-user monitoring, and OpenTelemetry collection. Telemetry focuses on application events that you choose to send and query with SQL.
Read comparisonElastic alternative for structured event SQL
Elastic Observability combines Elasticsearch, Kibana, logs, metrics, APM, profiling, and OpenTelemetry collection. Telemetry is the focused alternative when the main job is managed application-event ingestion and SQL analysis without operating or modeling a broader Elastic deployment.
Read comparisonTelemetry vs Langfuse for AI observability
Langfuse provides LLM traces, prompt management, evaluations, datasets, and experiments. Telemetry stores events for agent runs and product activity so you can query their cost, reliability, and results with SQL.
Read comparisonTelemetry vs LangSmith for AI observability
LangSmith provides tracing, evaluations, datasets, experiments, and deployment options for LLM applications. Telemetry stores the final results of AI and application tasks in event tables you can query with SQL.
Read comparisonTelemetry vs Arize Phoenix
Arize Phoenix is an open-source AI observability and evaluation platform built around traces, prompts, datasets, and experiments. Telemetry focuses on compact structured outcomes and SQL.
Read comparisonTelemetry vs Pydantic Logfire
Pydantic Logfire combines OpenTelemetry-based application monitoring with AI tracing and conversation views. Telemetry stores selected application outcomes in tables you can query with SQL.
Read comparisonTelemetry vs Mixpanel
Mixpanel is a product and digital analytics platform built around behavioral reports such as insights, funnels, flows, retention, and cohorts. Telemetry is the narrower choice for SQL over application-owned product and operational events.
Read comparisonTelemetry vs Amplitude
Amplitude is a digital analytics platform with product-analysis workflows for events, funnels, retention, journeys, cohorts, and experimentation. Telemetry focuses on compact structured events and explicit SQL.
Read comparisonTelemetry vs Braintrust
Braintrust is an AI evaluation and observability platform built around experiments, datasets, scorers, prompts, and production traces. Telemetry focuses on SQL over selected AI and product outcomes.
Read comparisonTelemetry vs Helicone
Helicone combines an AI gateway with LLM request observability, sessions, cost analytics, caching, and alerts. Telemetry is a provider-neutral SQL layer for selected AI and application outcomes.
Read comparisonTelemetry vs Opik
Opik is an open-source LLM evaluation and observability platform with traces, datasets, metrics, experiments, and test suites. Telemetry uses SQL to analyze selected AI and application results.
Read comparisonTelemetry vs W&B Weave
W&B Weave is an AI observability and evaluation platform with traces, datasets, scorers, versioning, feedback, and production monitoring. Telemetry focuses on SQL over selected AI and product outcomes.
Read comparisonTelemetry vs MLflow for GenAI
MLflow provides OpenTelemetry-compatible GenAI tracing, evaluations, prompt versioning, experiments, and production monitoring. Telemetry stores selected task results in event tables that you can join with other application data using SQL.
Read comparisonTelemetry vs OpenLIT
OpenLIT is an open-source, OpenTelemetry-native AI engineering platform with auto-instrumentation, traces, evaluations, prompts, experiments, dashboards, and collectors. Telemetry focuses on SQL outcome events.
Read comparison