Free tier infrastructure monitoring tools

(Best free allowance)

Hosted · Minimal infrastructure to maintain

New Relic’s free plan includes 100 GB of data ingest per month, one full-platform user, unlimited basic users, alerts, and at least 8 days of default data retention. It requires no credit card to start.newrelic.com+2

Best for: Server metrics, application performance, logs, and alerts in one platform.

New Relic free tier

2. Grafana Cloud

Hosted · Flexible dashboards and alerting

Its permanent free tier includes metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, and alerting, with usage limits and 14-day retention for several telemetry types. It’s a strong fit if you want Prometheus-compatible monitoring without running the entire backend yourself.grafana.com+1

Best for: Linux servers, cloud infrastructure, containers, and customizable alerts.

Grafana Cloud pricing

3. Prometheus + Grafana + Alertmanager

Self-hosted · Open source

No hosted monitoring subscription is required. Prometheus collects and evaluates metrics, Grafana visualizes them, and Alertmanager groups and routes notifications. You supply the servers, storage, maintenance, and operational expertise.prometheus.io+1

Best for: Teams that want maximum control and can operate their own monitoring stack.

Prometheus alerting

Quick comparison

Free-plan limits and pricing can change; check the linked official pricing pages before deploying.newrelic.com+1

My recommendation

I’d choose New Relic if you want the most monitoring capability with minimal setup and a generous free allowance. The 100 GB monthly ingest limit and included infrastructure alerting make it a strong starting point. Be aware that ingest beyond the free limit can stop until the next month unless you upgrade.newrelic.com+1

Choose Grafana Cloud instead if you prefer the Prometheus ecosystem, flexible dashboards, and a hosted platform with usage-based limits.

One question that would help me narrow this down: what are you monitoring?

1. Infrastructure

Linux servers / VMs

Windows servers

Docker / Kubernetes

AWS / Azure / GCP

A mix of these

2. Number of servers

1

2–10

11–50

50+

3. What matters most?

CPU, RAM, disk, and server health

Uptime and service-down alerts

Logs and application errors

Everything in one dashboard

[Find the best fit]