New Relic vs Zipkin
Which one do AI engines recommend, and how do they differ on price, fit and features?
The short answer
New Relic is the stronger AI pick in Observability: it has a visibility score of 47.1 versus 0.3 for Zipkin.
Choose New Relic if…
- You want the brand AI engines rank higher (47.1 vs 0.3)
- AI answers describe it more positively (42% vs 0% positive)
- You need SOC 2 Type II or FedRAMP Moderate (eligible accounts) or HIPAA eligibility or ISO 27001 or ISO 42001 AI certification coverage
- Generous permanent free tier with 100 GB monthly ingest
Choose Zipkin if…
No clear advantage in the published data.
AI visibility side by side
Latest weekly run · Nov 3
| Metric | New Relic | Zipkin |
|---|---|---|
| Visibility score | 47.1% | 0.3% |
| Change vs last week | New | New |
| Rank in Observability | #3 | #36 |
| Share of voice | 10.7% | 0.1% |
| Mentions this run | 63 | 1 |
| Positive in AI answers | 42% | 0% |
The stronger value in each row is marked with a ✓.
Visibility score trend
Weekly runs over the last 60 days
New Relic 0pp · Zipkin 0pp over 0 weekly runs.
Engine by engine
New Relic leads on 3 of 3 engines
Head to head in AI answers
0 engine answers name both brands
Features, pricing & fit
| Dimension | New Relic | Zipkin |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Usage-based | — |
| Entry price | Free; paid from $10 / mo | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Deployment | Cloud-based SaaS | Self-hosted: run the self-contained executable jar or the openzipkin/zipkin Docker image. The server requires JRE 17 or newer and serves the UI on port 9411 by default. |
| Integrations | 800+ | — |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type II, FedRAMP Moderate (eligible accounts), HIPAA eligibility, ISO 27001, ISO 42001 AI certification | — |
| Support | Ticketed support, 2-hour critical initial response SLA on Pro, 1-hour critical initial response SLA and priority ticket routing on Enterprise | Zipkin Gitter chat channel, GitHub issues |
| Founded | 2008 | 2012 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, CA, United States | — |
| Employees | 1,001–5,000 | — |
| Funding | Post-IPO raise (not corroborated by other sources) | — |
| Best for | Engineers responsible for application and system uptime and reliability, and teams that want full-stack observability starting from a free tier. | Teams troubleshooting latency problems in service architectures |
Plans side by side
New Relic
Zipkin
Pricing not available.
Pros and cons
Themes from the AI answers that mention each brand
New Relic
- Generous permanent free tier with 100 GB monthly ingest
- Easy setup and quick APM start with minimal upfront cost
- Unified, consumption-based pricing model
- Strong full-stack observability platform and APM pioneer
- Value and accessibility with AI-assisted querying and diagnostics
- Costs can surprise as log and trace volume scales
- Pricing requires careful cost governance and depends on usage
Zipkin
Profile in progress.
Data collected ·ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode·coverage 100%·next run
Cite as: SlateIndex, “New Relic vs Zipkin”, https://slateindex.ai/compare/new-relic-vs-zipkin, data of Nov 3, 2026. Licence: CC BY 4.0.