--- title: New Relic Synthetics Alternative description: WatchFor compared with New Relic Synthetics: platform consolidation against a focused external monitor with flat pricing and 25 check types. canonical: https://watchfor.io/new-relic-alternative --- [← All comparisons](/comparisons) # The New Relic Synthetics alternative without the platform attached New Relic's synthetics sit inside a large observability platform priced around data ingest and full-platform users. If you are already there, adding synthetic monitors is the sensible move. The reason people look elsewhere is rarely the checks themselves — it is that the pricing model is built for an observability estate, and a team that wants twenty uptime checks and a status page ends up reasoning about ingest volumes. ## Where New Relic Synthetics is better than us - APM, infrastructure, logs and browser monitoring in one platform. - A free tier that is unusually generous by observability standards. - Scripted browser monitors and a mature alerting engine. Feature WatchFor New Relic Synthetics Free plan 15 monitors, 8 check types, commercial use allowed Platform free tier — 100 GB/mo ingest, 1 full user, 500 synthetic checks Free plan check interval 3 minutes Varies Entry paid plan €7/mo — 50 monitors, 1-minute checks Usage-based — data ingest plus per-user pricing Fastest check interval 30 seconds 1 minute Status pages 3 on Free, 25 from €7/mo Not a status page product Team seats Included on every plan, no per-seat fee Priced per full-platform user Monitor types 25 incl. CDN, MCP, MTR, NTP, blacklist, email policy; 8 on the free plan Ping, simple browser, scripted browser, API tests Probe locations 20 locations across 7 regions; 1 region per monitor on Free, 2 from €7/mo, 7 on Business Large network, plus private locations APM and distributed tracing Core platform capability Scripted browser monitors Yes Public status pages 3 on Free, 25 from €7/mo Not part of the product Unit of pricing Monitors Data ingest and platform users Free diagnostic tools [60 tools, no signup](/free-tools) None found Agent-readiness score (ora.ai) [100/100 · A+](https://ora.ai/score/watchfor.io) watchfor.io · 21 Sept 2026 [53/100 · C](https://ora.ai/score/newrelic.com) newrelic.com · 7 Sept 2026 Agent-readiness score (is-agentic.com) [100/100](https://is-agentic.com/scan/watchfor.io) watchfor.io · 21 Sept 2026 [58/100](https://is-agentic.com/scan/newrelic.com) newrelic.com · 21 Aug 2026 New Relic Synthetics details checked on 11 September 2026 against [their published pricing](https://newrelic.com/pricing). Plans change — see the note at the end of this page. ## Choose New Relic Synthetics if - You already run New Relic for APM and want everything in one place. - You need scripted browser journeys tied to application traces. - Your organisation has standardised on their platform. ## Choose WatchFor if - You want external monitoring priced by monitor count, not by data ingest. - You want status pages, on-call and escalation in the same product. - You need delivery-layer checks: CDN, DNS propagation, mail policy, blacklists, MCP. - You want an MCP server and SDKs that let an agent set monitoring up. ## Moving over Ping and API monitors map onto our HTTP and API types. Scripted browser monitors do not, and alert policies have to be rebuilt as alert rules here. ## Questions people ask Is New Relic expensive for uptime monitoring? It depends on whether you use the rest of the platform. As an add-on to an existing New Relic estate the marginal cost is small. As the only thing you use it for, a plan priced by monitor count is usually simpler and cheaper — but run the numbers for your ingest volume rather than taking our word. Do you do APM? No. We watch from outside and say nothing about what happens inside your application. What do you have that they do not? Public status pages, on-call scheduling in the same product, and delivery-layer checks — CDN cache behaviour, DNS propagation, SPF/DKIM/DMARC, blacklists, MCP servers — that an observability platform does not aim at. ## Try it on the thing you are actually worried about 15 monitors free, commercial use allowed, no card. If it does not beat what you have, keep what you have. [Start free](/auth/signup)[See pricing](/pricing) ## About these figures Everything stated here about New Relic Synthetics was read from [their published pricing](https://newrelic.com/pricing) on 11 September 2026 . Pricing, limits and features in this market change often and without notice, so treat this as a starting point and confirm the current terms with both vendors before you buy. We are not affiliated with New Relic Synthetics , and product names belong to their owners. Agent-readiness scores are published by [ora.ai](https://ora.ai) and [is-agentic.com](https://is-agentic.com) for the domain named under each score, as of the date shown. They grade a domain, not a product: a vendor whose developer surface lives on a subdomain can score lower than its product deserves. We show each service's own cached result and never request a scan of another company's site, so a domain neither service has scanned reads as not scanned. Scoring rules change over time; compare the dates as well as the numbers. If something here is wrong or out of date — including if you work at New Relic Synthetics — email [hello@watchfor.io](mailto:hello@watchfor.io) and we will correct the page and update the date on it. This page is provided for information only and is not advice. See our [Terms of Service](/legal/terms) for the full position on published information. --- Canonical page: https://watchfor.io/new-relic-alternative · Site guide: https://watchfor.io/llms.txt