Jenkins vs New Relic: Complete Comparison (2026)
Choosing between Jenkins and New Relic is a common decision for developer tools buyers in 2026. Both Jenkins and New Relic are established players, founded in 2011 and 2008 respectively. Jenkins serves 300K+ installations users while New Relic has 16K+ orgs users globally. Jenkins differentiates with ci/cd pipelines and plugin ecosystem, while New Relic leads with apm and infrastructure monitoring. In this head-to-head comparison, Jenkins earns a higher hiltonsoftware.co score of 86/100 — but the right choice depends on your specific needs, budget, and team size.
Quick Comparison
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
Pros & Cons at a Glance
After comparing Jenkins and New Relic across features, pricing, and user satisfaction, Jenkins takes the lead with a score of 86/100 versus New Relic's 86/100. Jenkins's key advantages include "massive plugin ecosystem" and "highly flexible and customizable". That said, New Relic has its own strengths — particularly "generous free tier" — making it a viable alternative for specific use cases.
Both Jenkins and New Relic offer free plans, lowering the barrier to entry. Jenkins's paid plans start at Free while New Relic begins at $0.35/GB ingest. Evaluate which paid features — Distributed builds, Pipeline as code (Jenkins) vs Browser monitoring, Logs (New Relic) — justify upgrading for your team.
Bottom line: Choose Jenkins if you need teams wanting highly customizable, self-hosted ci/cd with vast plugin support. Go with New Relic if your priority is ops teams wanting unified observability across full application stack. Both are strong developer tools tools — we recommend trying the free plan of each before committing.
Teams wanting highly customizable, self-hosted CI/CD with vast plugin support.
Ops teams wanting unified observability across full application stack.