If you write into support at New Relic (or email/call a sales rep that you have already worked with), we can get an account exec to chat with you about pricing more appropriate to your situation. We are aware that in a world of autoscaling and micropriced micronodes, a different pricing model is likely to be more appropriate.

You can see the first shot at a revision like this with the pricing restructure on heroku that we announced last december:

http://blog.newrelic.com/2013/12/04/new-relic-announces-new-...

Your complaint is totally reasonable and NR is hoping to address it soon!