Langtrace vs New Relic AI Monitoring
Both are observability & tracing tools. Here is how they actually differ on price, billing model and deployment.
Langtrace
An OpenTelemetry-native open-source tracing tool from Scale3 Labs. The cloud is still free because it has never been monetised - which is either a bargain or a runway risk depending on how you read a seed round raised around 2022. The AGPL-3.0 server license is the other thing to check before you commit.
New Relic AI Monitoring
LLM monitoring layered onto New Relic's APM platform, billed on data ingested - which is close to the worst possible meter for verbose agent traces. One reported deployment went from $1,400 to $12,000 a month after turning it on.
| Langtrace | New Relic AI Monitoring | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Observability & Tracing | Observability & Tracing |
| Our rating | 3/5 | 2/5 |
| Starting price | Free (not yet monetised) | $0.40/GB ingested |
| Billing meter | No usage metering | gb-ingested |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free self-hosting | Yes, free | No or paid tier only |
| Best for | Teams that want OpenTelemetry-native tracing with strong vector database visibility, are comfortable with AGPL on the server, and can tolerate the possibility of a pricing model appearing later. | Organisations already standardised on New Relic for APM, logs, Kubernetes and SRE workflows, running relatively low-volume LLM features, who need correlation more than evaluation. |
Our verdict on Langtrace
Langtrace is a well-built OpenTelemetry-native tracing tool with unusually good vector database instrumentation, and right now it costs nothing. Two things stop us rating it higher, and neither is about the product quality. The first is the license - the application is AGPL-3.0 while the SDKs are Apache 2.0, and that split matters. Instrumenting your app is safe; modifying the server and offering it as a service brings copyleft obligations most commercial teams will want legal review on. The second is commercial. The vendor states it is not currently charging for the cloud and will announce when it decides to monetise, and public funding data shows a roughly $5.3M seed raised around 2022. A free cloud with no revenue model and a four-year-old seed round is not a stable planning assumption. Use it, and self-host if it becomes load-bearing.
Full Langtrace review →Our verdict on New Relic AI Monitoring
New Relic AI Monitoring makes sense for exactly one buyer - the organisation already committed to New Relic - and is a poor choice for anyone else. The correlation story is real, and the applied intelligence and SRE agent tooling is more mature than anything the AI-native vendors offer. But two structural problems dominate. First, the billing meter is data ingested, and LLM traces are among the most verbose telemetry in existence - prompts, completions, tool payloads and retrieved context routinely make a single trace 5 to 50 KB. Charging per gigabyte for that is close to the worst possible fit, and one reported deployment saw its bill go from $1,400 to between $9,500 and $12,000 a month after AI Monitoring volumes were counted. Second, it does not evaluate anything. There is no faithfulness, relevance or hallucination scoring, and no annotation or dataset curation. It tells you what your LLM did and what it cost, not whether the output was any good. If you need evaluation, you are buying a second tool regardless.
Full New Relic AI Monitoring review →Frequently Asked Questions
What is the main difference between Langtrace and New Relic AI Monitoring?
Langtrace: Teams that want OpenTelemetry-native tracing with strong vector database visibility, are comfortable with AGPL on the server, and can tolerate the possibility of a pricing model appearing later. New Relic AI Monitoring: Organisations already standardised on New Relic for APM, logs, Kubernetes and SRE workflows, running relatively low-volume LLM features, who need correlation more than evaluation. Both sit in Observability & Tracing, so the decision usually comes down to billing model and deployment rather than raw capability.
Which is cheaper, Langtrace or New Relic AI Monitoring?
It depends entirely on your workload shape, because they meter differently - Langtrace bills on no usage metering and New Relic AI Monitoring bills on gb-ingested. Published starting prices are Free (not yet monetised) and $0.40/GB ingested respectively, but those numbers are not comparable until you apply them to the same traffic. Use our cost calculator to model both against your own request volume and span count.
Can I self-host Langtrace or New Relic AI Monitoring?
Langtrace: Yes, free. New Relic AI Monitoring: No or paid tier only. Free self-hosting means no licence fee, not no cost - you still own the infrastructure, upgrades and on-call.