Glances vs New Relic
Side-by-side comparison of features, pricing, ratings, and alternatives.
Glances is an open‑source, cross‑platform monitoring tool that provides a concise, real‑time view of system resources such as CPU, memory, disk I/O, network, and processes. It runs on Linux, Windows, macOS and can be accessed via a web interface, making it ideal for both local and remote monitoring. Designed for system administrators and DevOps teams, Glances aggregates metrics into a single dashboard, supports customizable alerts, and integrates with scripts or APIs for automated workflows. Its lightweight design ensures minimal overhead while delivering comprehensive performance insights.
New Relic provides a unified view of application performance, infrastructure health, logs, and user experience. It helps teams detect issues fast, understand root causes, and improve reliability across distributed systems. The platform integrates with major cloud providers, container orchestrators, and development tools, offering real‑time metrics, distributed tracing, and AI‑driven anomaly detection to support proactive monitoring and rapid incident response.
- Fully open‑source and free
- Runs on all major operating systems
- Lightweight with low resource overhead
- Extensible via plugins and API
- Unified view of metrics, logs, and traces
- Strong integrations with major cloud platforms
- AI‑powered anomaly detection reduces noise
- Generous free tier for small teams
- No native mobile app
- Limited built‑in visualization compared to commercial tools
- Alerting requires manual configuration or external scripts
- Advanced features can become costly at scale
- Steeper learning curve for complex configurations
- Custom query language may require training
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Full-stack observability with an AI SRE agent that detects, diagnoses, and fixes production issues automatically.
The Verdict
AI-generated from listing dataGlances offers a free, lightweight, cross‑platform monitor with basic alerts, while New Relic provides a richer, cloud‑based observability suite with AI features but can become costly.
Key differences
- •Cost model: Glances is completely free; New Relic uses a freemium SaaS model that can incur fees at scale.
- •Deployment: Glances runs locally on any OS; New Relic is a cloud/SaaS service.
- •Feature depth: New Relic includes logs, traces, AI‑driven anomaly detection and custom dashboards; Glances focuses on core system metrics.
- •Alerting: New Relic has built‑in automated alert policies; Glances requires manual configuration or external scripts.
- •Support channels: Glances offers email and GitHub issues only; New Relic adds live chat and community forum.
Pricing & value
Glances is fully free open‑source; New Relic’s free tier is limited and advanced usage incurs charges.
Ease of use / learning curve
Glances runs instantly via CLI or web UI with minimal setup; New Relic requires SaaS onboarding and learning its UI.
Features & depth
New Relic provides APM, distributed tracing, AI anomaly detection, and custom dashboards; Glances shows core OS metrics only.
Integrations & ecosystem
New Relic lists major cloud, Kubernetes, Slack, GitHub integrations; Glances lists plugins for Docker, MySQL, and data sinks like InfluxDB.
Collaboration
New Relic’s SaaS platform enables shared dashboards and team alerts; Glances is a single‑node tool with no built‑in sharing.
Scalability
New Relic is designed for enterprise‑scale, multi‑service environments; Glances monitors individual hosts.
Support
New Relic offers email, live chat, and community forum; Glances only provides email and GitHub issue tracking.
Choose Glances if…
Small teams or individuals needing free, on‑prem OS monitoring with low overhead.
Choose New Relic if…
Enterprises requiring full‑stack observability, centralized dashboards, and automated alerts across cloud services.
Common questions
Is there any cost to use Glances versus New Relic?
Glances is free open‑source; New Relic has a freemium tier but charges for advanced features and higher data volumes.
Can I monitor multiple hosts from a single interface?
New Relic aggregates data from many hosts in its SaaS UI; Glances monitors one host per instance, though you can script aggregation.
What alerting capabilities are built in?
New Relic includes automated alert policies with Slack/PagerDuty integration; Glances requires manual configuration or external scripts for alerts.