Datadog vs New Relic — APM Platform Comparison for DevOps Teams

# Install Datadog Agent (Ubuntu/Debian)
DD_AGENT_MAJOR_VERSION=7 \
DD_API_KEY=your-api-key \
DD_SITE="datadoghq.com" \
bash -c "$(curl -L https://install.datadoghq.com/scripts/install_agent.sh)"
 
# Verify agent status
sudo datadog-agent status
 
# Configure agent
cat > /etc/datadog-agent/datadog.yaml << 'EOF'
api_key: your-api-key
site: datadoghq.com
hostname: my-server
tags:
  - env:production
  - service:my-api
  - team:backend
logs_enabled: true
apm_config:
  enabled: true
EOF
 
sudo systemctl restart datadog-agent

// Datadog APM — Node.js
const tracer = require('dd-trace').init({
  service: 'my-api',
  env: process.env.NODE_ENV,
  version: process.env.APP_VERSION,
  logInjection: true,       // Inject trace ID into logs
  runtimeMetrics: true,     // Collect Node.js runtime metrics
  profiling: true,          // Continuous profiling
  analytics: {
    enabled: true,
    sampleRate: 1.0
  }
});
 
// Custom spans
const span = tracer.startSpan('custom-operation', {
  tags: { 'user.id': userId, 'operation.type': 'db-query' }
});
 
try {
  await doWork();
  span.finish();
} catch (err) {
  span.setTag('error', err);
  span.finish();
}

# Datadog APM — Python (Django/Flask)
import ddtrace
ddtrace.patch_all()  # Auto-instrument all libraries
 
from ddtrace import tracer
 
@tracer.wrap(service='my-service', resource='process-order')
def process_order(order_id):
    with tracer.trace('db.query', service='postgres') as span:
        span.set_tag('order.id', order_id)
        return db.query(f"SELECT * FROM orders WHERE id = {order_id}")

# Install New Relic Infrastructure agent (Ubuntu)
curl -Ls https://download.newrelic.com/install/newrelic-cli/scripts/install.sh | bash
sudo NEW_RELIC_API_KEY=your-api-key \
     NEW_RELIC_ACCOUNT_ID=your-account-id \
     /usr/local/bin/newrelic install
 
# Or manual installation
echo "license_key: your-license-key" | sudo tee -a /etc/newrelic-infra.yml
sudo apt-get install newrelic-infra

// New Relic APM — Node.js
// newrelic.js (must be first require in app)
'use strict';
 
exports.config = {
  app_name: ['my-api'],
  license_key: process.env.NEW_RELIC_LICENSE_KEY,
  logging: {
    level: 'info',
    filepath: 'stdout'
  },
  distributed_tracing: {
    enabled: true
  },
  transaction_tracer: {
    enabled: true,
    transaction_threshold: 'apdex_f',
    record_sql: 'obfuscated'
  },
  error_collector: {
    enabled: true,
    ignore_status_codes: [404, 401]
  }
};

// server.js
require('newrelic'); // Must be first
 
const newrelic = require('newrelic');
 
// Custom instrumentation
async function processPayment(orderId) {
  return newrelic.startSegment('ProcessPayment', true, async () => {
    newrelic.addCustomAttribute('order.id', orderId);
    return await paymentService.charge(orderId);
  });
}
 
// Custom events
newrelic.recordCustomEvent('OrderCompleted', {
  orderId: order.id,
  amount: order.total,
  currency: order.currency
});

Datadog Pricing (approximate 2024):
- Infrastructure: $15-23/host/month
- APM: $31/host/month
- Logs: $0.10/GB ingested + $0.05/GB scanned
- Custom metrics: $0.05/metric/month after 100 free
 
New Relic Pricing:
- Free: 100GB/month data ingest + 1 full user
- Standard: $0.30/GB after 100GB (all-in: traces, metrics, logs)
- Users: $99/full user/month for Pro tier
 
At 10 hosts with APM and logs (500GB/month):
- Datadog: ~$460/month + log costs
- New Relic: ~$120-150/month (mostly user seats)
 
New Relic tends to be significantly cheaper at scale for data-heavy workloads.
Datadog can become expensive quickly with custom metrics and many hosts.