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Datadog vs New Relic

New Relic scores higher on the AgentReady, 51/100 against 48/100. They differ on 9 of the 41 signals. Which ones decides whether an agent can adopt them without a person watching.

What each one is

Datadog. Datadog is an observability platform company named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Observability Platforms

New Relic. Intelligent Observability platform that resolves issues at scale before they impact bottom line

Where Datadog is ahead

Datadog passes mcp discoverable, and New Relic does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

It also holds adopt: mcp integration available. New Relic misses it.

And on operate, rate-limit behavior predictable. New Relic misses it.

Where New Relic is ahead

New Relic passes pricing understandable, and Datadog does not. That is understand, whether an agent can read the docs and work out how the API behaves before calling it.

It also holds adopt: self-service signup, free trial or free allowance, fast time to first request, official typescript sdk and official python sdk. Datadog misses those.

What neither does

Both fail llms-full.txt / full agent docs, structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented, no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, agent compatibility verified. If your agent needs any of those, you will be building it yourself either way.

Score, pillar by pillar

The AgentReady splits into four pillars, scored separately, because a product can be easy to find and still impossible to adopt.

Discover. Datadog leads 93 to 80. Datadog misses llms-full.txt / full agent docs; New Relic misses llms-full.txt / full agent docs, mcp discoverable.

Understand. New Relic leads 23 to 15. Datadog misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented; New Relic misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented.

Adopt is whether an agent can get a key and make its first successful call without a human in the loop. New Relic leads 65 to 35. Datadog misses self-service signup, no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance, fast time to first request, official typescript sdk, official python sdk; New Relic misses no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, mcp integration available.

Operate. Datadog leads 47 to 35. Datadog misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, agent compatibility verified; New Relic misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified.

Pricing

Datadog does not publish a machine-readable starting price. New Relic does not publish one and has a free tier.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

New Relic clears more of the signals an agent needs, so it is the safer default for unattended use. Full profiles: Datadog and New Relic. Alternatives to each: Datadog, New Relic.

An agent can fetch this as data: POST /v1/compare {"slugs": ["datadoghq", "newrelic"]}