User type: basic, core, and full platform users

In this doc you'll learn how we define user type, what features each user type has access to, and how to decide on a user type.

Want to learn about how users are calculated for billing purposes? See New Relic pricing. If you haven't already, be sure to sign up for a New Relic account. It's free, forever.

What is the user type?

A New Relic user's user type determines the maximum set of New Relic permissions they can access. The user type is meant to be a fairly long-term setting based on a user's expected responsibilities over the next several months or longer.

Choosing a user's user type is mainly a billing-related decision. Core users and full platform users are billable, while basic users are not. It is a matter of how much value an organization expects to get out of a team member's use of New Relic. (For details on billing, see User billing.)

User type should not be used as a way to control a user's permissions. This is because New Relic will occasionally adjust the permissions available for each user type. To restrict access to permissions, you should use roles.

There are three user types:

• Basic user: access to several basic but powerful New Relic platform features.
• Core user: access to several more features than a basic user.
• Full platform user: access to all features.

If you're tasked with adding New Relic users, one of the key decisions to make is what user type to make them. If you're not sure at first, you can add them as basic users and later decide which users you want to upgrade. For how to adjust user type, see Manage user type.

Overview of user type access

Here's a brief summary of what each user type gets access to:

For a more detailed comparison, see the User type access comparison table.

How to pick a user type

Before deciding on user types, you'll want to understand the billing impacts and downgrade rules. For an in-depth access comparison, see the User type access comparison table.

Here are some tips for deciding on a user type:

Reasons to make someone a full platform user:

• They need full access to the New Relic platform (our curated dashboards and other experiences), not only the ability to query and create custom charts.
• They play a key role in the development, testing, deployment, and maintenance phases of the application development lifecycle.
• They break/fix code regularly; they are responsible for triaging workflows, troubleshooting, or managing users and roles for their team.
• They have DevOps practices (for example, version control systems, and implementation of CI/CD).

Reasons to make someone a core user:

• They're developers who aren't tasked with reliability and uptime as their main responsibility.
• They don't require full platform access, but would benefit from some of the specific functionalities offered to core users, like:
  • Debugging code issues directly from their IDE, using New Relic CodeStream.
  • Viewing errors in one place from across your stack with Errors inbox.
  • Using our logs UI to spot problems and patterns in logs.
  • The ability to use apps from our New Relic app catalog.
• They need to be able to manage users and/or billing (both core and full platform users can do that).

Reasons to make someone a basic user:

• They don't need full platform access to use our curated experiences and dashboards, but would benefit from creating custom queries and charts of data.
• They play a key role in the planning phase of the application development lifecycle.
• They use and configure New Relic tools to get data into New Relic, and access, configure, and use alerts on such data, but are not necessarily responsible for triaging workflows, troubleshooting, or managing users and roles for their team.
• They want to see high-level analytics and business metrics for future planning (as is often true of C-suite executives).
• While the basic users are free, you may want to give them access to a specific billable feature that is offered under the Advanced Compute add-on. They would pay only for the CCU usage of a specific feature, such as CodeStream.
• They don't manage users or billing.

User type access comparison table

Below is a detailed comparison of the features each user type has access to. Important points about this table:

• The table comes from our pricing page. To find the table, visit the User costs heading and click View permissions.
• Many of the features require access to our UI experiences, not to the underlying data. All users can query all data in the accounts they can access and can create and view custom charts. For instance, basic users can access APM data, browser monitoring data, and more, but can't access curated UI experiences.
• The user type is meant to be a long-term setting. Both user type and roles govern access to New Relic features. Learn more about user access factors.

For tips on why you'd choose one user type versus another, see Decide on user type.

* Subject to additional terms and conditions.

** New Relic Vulnerability Management is included for up to 100 GB of data ingest and requires Data Plus or additional cost beyond that.

Here are additional details about permissions for some features:

User type and roles

Here's an explanation of how user type and role-based access differ:

• A user's user type: What user type to make a user is a question of what an organization expects their team members to do with New Relic, and how much value they expect to get out of that work. It's mainly a billing-related decision. It sets the maximum allowed permissions a user can access. User type is not meant to be used for controlling a user's access and permissions: for that, you should use roles.
• A user's roles: Roles are what control a user's access. Roles are made up of permissions, which grant access to do specific things in New Relic (for example, the ability to modify APM settings). Roles are assigned by applying them to a user group, and can be present on one or more accounts in an organization.

A New Relic user is given permission to use a New Relic feature by the combination of their a) user type, and their b) role permissions. For a New Relic user to access something, their user type and the role(s) assigned to them must allow that access.

For example, let's say a basic user has a role with wide New Relic access, like All product admin (which both the default groups User and Admin have). Their user type (basic user) would prevent them from using many of the features that a core user or full platform user with that role can access. In order to get more access, the basic user would have to become a core or full platform user.

As another example: let's say a full platform user has a restrictive role assigned for a specific account (like Read only). A full platform user can theoretically access all of New Relic, but in this case their assigned role for that account greatly restricts their access. To get more access, their assigned roles would need to be changed (for example, by assigning them to a different group, or adjusting the roles assigned to their group).

For more about roles and groups, see User management concepts.

Manage user type and upgrade requests

See these docs:

• Tips on common user management tasks
• Billing and downgrade rules

Lacking access to something?

For questions related to lack of access to New Relic accounts or features, see Factors affecting access.