OpsTrails vs New Relic: Why You Need Both
New Relic shows you what your systems are doing. OpsTrails shows you what your team did. Together, you can correlate performance changes with the deployments that caused them.
Different Tools, Different Jobs
New Relic
Full-stack observability, APM, browser monitoring, logs, NRQL querying
OpsTrails
Deployment timeline, change tracking, AI-native querying via MCP, impact analysis
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Category | New Relic | OpsTrails |
|---|---|---|
| Primary purpose | Full-stack observability — metrics, logs, traces, and browser performance | Track deployments, rollbacks, releases, and operational changes on a timeline |
| Answers the question | "How are my systems performing right now?" | "What changed that could have caused this performance shift?" |
| AI querying | New Relic AI (NRQL-based) | MCP server works with Claude, Copilot, Cursor, and any MCP-compatible assistant |
| Deployment tracking | Deployment markers on APM charts | Purpose-built deployment timeline with full context, rollback history, and DORA metrics |
| Impact analysis | Manual comparison of metrics before/after deployment markers | Automatic before/after metric comparison for every event (can connect to New Relic as analytics source) |
| Query language | NRQL (proprietary query language) | Natural language via any MCP-compatible AI assistant |
| Starting price | Free tier (100GB/month data ingest), paid from $0.35/GB | Free tier with 1,000 events/month |
Better Together
OpsTrails can connect to New Relic as an analytics provider. When a deployment is recorded, OpsTrails automatically pulls before/after metrics to show the real impact — without you having to manually compare NRQL queries or eyeball chart markers.
How the integration works
- 1. Your CI/CD pipeline records a deployment event in OpsTrails
- 2. OpsTrails queries New Relic for metrics around the event timestamp
- 3. Before/after comparison is calculated automatically
- 4. Your AI assistant (via MCP) can access the full picture — what changed and what it affected
Add OpsTrails to Your Stack
Keep New Relic. Add OpsTrails for deployment tracking and AI-native querying. Free tier includes 1,000 events/month.