Same signals. Without the per-seat tax.
New Relic introduced per-GB ingestion pricing and then layered per-user seat costs on top. Two independent cost axes means your bill can grow from engineering headcount, from data volume, or from both at once. Randoli has one axis: host count.
Where it actually differs
Per-seat pricing
No seats. Every engineer on the team has full access. Headcount growth doesn't add a line to the bill. Only the infrastructure you monitor does.
Full Platform users priced substantially higher than Basic users. As engineering teams grow, the seat cost compounds on top of data ingestion. Two billing axes instead of one.
Data ingestion model
$0 ingestion. Telemetry is processed locally in your cluster. No GB meter. Add verbosity during an incident without budget approval or bill anxiety.
Data priced per GB ingested beyond the free tier. Data Plus adds 90-day retention but increases the per-GB rate. More instrumentation coverage means a higher baseline cost.
Data ownership
Raw logs and traces never leave your cluster. Sensitive telemetry stays in your environment under your access controls and retention policies.
All telemetry sent to New Relic's cloud (NRDB). Powerful query capabilities, but raw data lives in their infrastructure under their retention defaults.
Pricing predictability
Flat per-host rate. Know your bill from host count alone. No surprises from data spikes or team growth.
Total cost depends on GB ingested × user tier × user count. Any axis growing independently changes the bill. Forecasting requires modeling all three dimensions.
The numbers
Volume assumption: ~300 GB logs/day and ~50 M trace spans/day per 100 hosts. New Relic estimates based on published ingestion and Full Platform seat rates at standard pricing. Randoli at $0.04/host/hour.
| Scenario | New Relic (est.) | Randoli |
|---|---|---|
| ~$2,800/mo | ~$1,440/mo | |
Randoli: $0.04/host/hr × 50 hosts × ~730 hrs/mo ≈ ~$1,440/mo New Relic (est.): illustrative, based on that vendor's published rate card at the volume in this scenario — see the assumption note above. | ||
| ~$13,500/mo | ~$5,760/mo | |
Randoli: $0.04/host/hr × 200 hosts × ~730 hrs/mo ≈ ~$5,760/mo New Relic (est.): illustrative, based on that vendor's published rate card at the volume in this scenario — see the assumption note above. | ||
| ~$22,000+/mo | ~$5,760/mo | |
Randoli: $0.04/host/hr × 200 hosts × ~730 hrs/mo ≈ ~$5,760/mo New Relic (est.): illustrative, based on that vendor's published rate card at the volume in this scenario — see the assumption note above. | ||
| Quote-based | ~$14,400/mo (volume discounts available) | |
Randoli: $0.04/host/hr × 500 hosts × ~730 hrs/mo ≈ ~$14,400/mo New Relic (est.): illustrative, based on that vendor's published rate card at the volume in this scenario — see the assumption note above. | ||
Illustrative estimates based on published rate cards and typical usage patterns, not a quote. Confirm current numbers before publishing.
Why teams switch
New Relic's unified telemetry platform is genuinely well-designed. The shift to consumption-based pricing made it more accessible for smaller teams, and NRDB is a powerful query engine. The friction emerges when you model growth: every new engineer who needs full access adds to the seat cost, and every new data source or higher retention period adds to the ingestion cost. The two meters compound independently.
Teams that consolidate onto Randoli most often cite the same thing: a pricing model where growing the engineering team or adding log verbosity during a critical incident isn't a cost decision. When observability tooling requires budget negotiation to use fully, it gets used partially.