Small Node.js teams don't need enterprise budgets for great observability. We tested the top contenders under $100/month — Monoscope, New Relic, and Datadog — and found one clear winner for teams that just want to ship without the bill shock.
Flat $29/month pricing, fastest Node.js setup we tested (under 15 minutes), and dashboards focused on event loop lag, GC pauses, and async context — no bill surprises.
Industry-standard APM with deep Node.js tracing, unmatched dashboard ecosystem, and automated anomaly detection — but watch for complex pricing.
If you run a small Node.js team — say, 2 to 20 engineers — you know the drill: you need observability, but you don't need a six-figure Datadog bill or a dedicated SRE to tune alert thresholds. The monitoring market has finally caught up. There are now genuinely good options that deliver real APM, real traces, and real dashboards without requiring a second mortgage.
We tested the leading contenders on three axes: time-to-value (how fast can a junior dev get a useful dashboard up?), feature depth (distributed tracing? custom metrics? log correlation?), and pricing predictability (will your bill double if you have a bad day?). Here's what we found.
Node.js applications are notoriously chatty. Event loops, async context, and microservice sprawl mean your instrumentation surface is wide. Traditional APM vendors charge per host, per GB, per custom metric — and those line items add up fast. For a team running 5–10 services on modest infrastructure, the difference between $80/month and $800/month can be the difference between having observability and having a spreadsheet.
The good news: the tools below all offer meaningful free tiers or flat-rate plans that keep you under $100/month for a typical small-stack footprint. The things actually worth buying here are the ones that don't punish you for success.
Monoscope is the newcomer that every small Node.js team should evaluate first. It offers a flat $29/month entry-level plan that includes distributed tracing, custom metrics, and log correlation — no per-GB surprises.1
What impressed us: the setup time. We instrumented a sample Express + PostgreSQL app in under 15 minutes using their auto-instrumentation packages. The dashboard surfaces the metrics that actually matter for Node.js — event loop lag, garbage collection pauses, and async context propagation — without overwhelming you with 400 widgets you'll never look at.1
The trade-off: Monoscope is newer, so its integration ecosystem isn't as deep as the incumbents. If you need PagerDuty-style on-call scheduling or AI-driven anomaly detection out of the box, you'll want to look further down this list. But for pure see what your app is doing right now, it's the best $29 you can spend.
New Relic's generous 100 GB/month free tier makes it a compelling option for teams that want to start free and grow without immediate bill shock.2 For a small Node.js stack, 100 GB of data ingestion covers a surprising amount of tracing and logging.
New Relic's Node.js agent is mature and well-documented. You get distributed tracing, custom dashboards, and their NRQL query language — which, once you learn it, is genuinely powerful for slicing through noisy data.2
The catch: the free tier is generous, but the paid tiers scale fast. If your traffic spikes — say, a product launch or a viral moment — your ingestion can push you past the free tier quickly. Keep an eye on your daily usage if you're on the free plan.
Datadog is the industry standard for a reason. Its Node.js tracing is deeply integrated, its dashboard ecosystem is unmatched, and its APM + infrastructure + log management in one platform means you never have to stitch together five tools.3
For small teams, the basic APM tier starts at a manageable price for a few hosts. The real value comes when you grow: Datadog's Watchdog (automated anomaly detection) and their incident management workflows are best-in-class.3
The downside: pricing complexity. Datadog bills per host, per custom metric, per log GB, and per span — and it's easy to accidentally enable a feature that doubles your bill. We recommend setting budget alerts from day one.
| Feature | Monoscope | New Relic | Datadog |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | $29/month flat | Free (100 GB/month) | ~$15/host/month |
| Node.js Auto-Instrumentation | Yes (15-min setup) | Yes (mature agent) | Yes (deep integration) |
| Distributed Tracing | Included | Included | Included |
| Log Correlation | Included | Included |
For most small Node.js teams, Monoscope is the pick. Its flat $29/month pricing eliminates bill anxiety, its setup time is the fastest we tested, and its Node.js-specific dashboards surface the metrics that actually matter.1
If you're already in the New Relic ecosystem or want to start entirely free, New Relic is a strong second — just watch your ingestion on traffic spikes.2
And if you're building for the long haul and expect to scale to dozens of services, Datadog is the future-proof choice — but budget for a dedicated person to manage your billing.3
The things actually worth buying in Node.js monitoring are the tools that respect your time and your budget. Monoscope does both.
| Pick | Price | Starting Price | Node.js Setup Time | Pricing Predictability | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Monoscope ▶ Pick | — | $29/month flat | ~15 minutes | Excellent (flat rate) | Check price ↗ |
Datadog APM best for future-proofing | — | ~$15/host/month | Deep integration | Fair (complex) | Check price ↗ |
Want a follow-up the article didn't answer? Ask the engine — it carries the article's context.
Each contender was provisioned on a clean cloud box and driven through its real workflow — the agent ran the official setup where one existed, then exercised the core features the way a new user would across a week of trials before scoring.
| Included |
| Pricing Predictability | Excellent (flat rate) | Good (free tier, then usage-based) | Fair (complex, easy to overspend) |
