AWS X-Ray Reviews

Name: AWS X-Ray
Brand: Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Rating: 3.9 (10 reviews)

3.9 out of 5

10 reviews
90% willing to recommend

What is AWS X-Ray?

AWS X-Ray is a powerful debugging and performance analysis tool offered by Amazon Web Services. It allows developers to trace requests made to their applications and identify bottlenecks and issues.

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AWS X-Ray is the #19 ranked solution in APM tools. PeerSpot users give AWS X-Ray an average rating of 7.8 out of 10. AWS X-Ray is most commonly compared to Dynatrace: AWS X-Ray vs Dynatrace. AWS X-Ray is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 66% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a financial services firm, accounting for 19% of all views.

Helped 849,475 peers since 2012

Featured AWS X-Ray reviews

Muhmad Tabrez A Deewanji

Lead Software Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

As an application developer and architect, I appreciate AWS X-Ray ( /products/aws-x-ray-reviews ) for checking latency and identifying bottlenecks. I use it for performance tuning, conducting performance testing on applications, getting real-time traces, and gaining data insights. It helps in improving throughput and tuning infrastructure. The trace metrics and data collected provide valuable insights.

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Willy Moura

Solutions Architect/ Analyst at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

I have two use cases with my customers. One involves using AWS Fargate, and the other involves an application running on WordPress. The WordPress application was very slow, and we used AWS X-Ray to understand the main problem. X-Ray helped us identify issues with our EFS, allowing us to adjust…

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Parth Solanki

Founder & CEO at Quicklead.io

If we get any error, we can go to X-Ray and get all the requests for a certain error in one place. It makes it easy to find the issue in your own product. You can look at logs and error logs and find loopholes. You can do direct queries to get specific requests over the course of a day. It's very good at error reporting and quite fast. You also get a lot of information, including IP addresses, user locations, et cetera.

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AWS X-Ray mindshare

As of April 2025, the mindshare of AWS X-Ray in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category stands at 3.3%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

PeerResearch reports based on AWS X-Ray reviews

Type	Title	Date
Category	Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability	Apr 28, 2025	Download
Product	Reviews, tips, and advice from real users	Apr 28, 2025	Download
Comparison	AWS X-Ray vs Datadog	Apr 28, 2025	Download
Comparison	AWS X-Ray vs Dynatrace	Apr 28, 2025	Download
Comparison	AWS X-Ray vs Splunk AppDynamics	Apr 28, 2025	Download

Title	Rating	Mindshare	Recommending
Dynatrace	4.4	10.8%	95%	346 interviews Add to research
Datadog	4.3	8.8%	97%	188 interviews Add to research

Valuable Features

AWS X-Ray offers valuable features like error reporting, compliance achievement, and security level maintenance. It excels in real-time tracing, performance tuning, and latency identification. The dashboard reveals latencies and allows monitoring of performance issues. Its integration process is smooth, and initial setup straightforward. Endpoints monitoring, user insights, and service maps aid troubleshooting. Configuration flexibility, direct queries, and IP data collection are beneficial.

"AWS X-Ray's endpoints and user monitoring are considered the most valuable features."
"I would give AWS X-Ray a nine out of ten overall."
"AWS X-Ray shows us exactly when there are delays, helping us understand the depth of issues and what is happening point-to-point."

Room for Improvement

AWS X-Ray's user interface is often difficult to navigate and not user-friendly. Configuration challenges arise, especially with interceptor points and collector agents, making setup complex. Improvements are needed in log filtering, predefined filters, and integration with various SDKs. The need for custom annotations, anomaly detection, and custom metadata is felt along with a desire for more insights with CloudPort. It's costly and lacks the ease of automatic instrumentation found in competitors.

"AWS X-Ray should improve its implementation process to make it easier for developers."
"Compared to other open-source tools, AWS X-Ray needs improvement in providing discounts."
"Sometimes, the collector agents are confusing to configure initially."

ROI

AWS X-Ray has provided some users with significant returns on investment.

Pricing

AWS X-Ray pricing varies, charging based on usage and becoming more economical with scale. Many enterprises find costs higher when moving from medium to large scale, though small businesses often benefit from the free tier. Users report the service as beneficial but seek better discounts compared to open-source tools. Pricing is seen as mid-range, influenced by currency rates, and while some AWS services are cost-effective, X-Ray requires careful evaluation for potential savings.

"The solution is a bit expensive."
"As you develop a relationship with Amazon, your pricing gets lower. You get credits for the amount of the system you use, and then if you're the government, you can get government pricing. For commercial users, there's a hump when you go from small to medium to big enterprise. Small businesses can live pretty easily off the free tier in a lot of cases, but when you go from a medium to a big enterprise, it becomes more expensive on a per-user basis. I'd like to see that curve going in a different way where pricing can be driven down while people are trying to adopt the technology."
"The pricing for AWS X-Ray is a six out of ten."

Popular Use Cases

Companies primarily utilize AWS X-Ray for microservices tracing, monitoring HTTP requests, diagnosing performance bottlenecks, and analyzing latency issues. They leverage X-Ray to map system behavior, observe interconnections between microservices, and identify stability challenges. It's employed for code performance monitoring within diverse AWS environments, including EC2, Lambda, and Fargate. Additionally, they trace dashboard databases, integrate with customer-specific solutions, and prefer X-Ray when already using other AWS offerings.

Service and Support

Users generally find AWS X-Ray documentation comprehensive and clear, often addressing issues without needing direct technical assistance. Some have never contacted support due to a lack of necessity, while others find AWS support in general effective for other services. Feedback indicates satisfaction with support's understanding and issue resolution capabilities, though specific experiences with AWS X-Ray support are limited. Overall ratings for support generally indicate positive experiences.

Deployment

AWS X-Ray's initial setup is generally straightforward. It can be deployed quickly, taking a few minutes to two days. Some users find it manageable with documentation, while challenges arise with complex configurations like inserting code, setting sampling rules, or migrating from SDK versions. Setup becomes easier after initial configuration, but managing permissions and integrating with third-party APIs might add complexity. Deployment typically requires one person's involvement.

Scalability

AWS X-Ray demonstrates strong scalability, successfully supporting applications and user bases of significant size. Organizations report ease in scaling their applications with it, appreciating its expansive feature set. They highlight a seamless experience when integrating X-Ray across their apps, rating its scalability highly. Teams of varying sizes have managed scalable applications efficiently, indicating its suitability for diverse use cases and large-scale implementations. X-Ray's capacity to handle extensive user monitoring is noted positively.

Stability

AWS X-Ray is found to be stable, with no crashes or freezing. Users consistently point out its reliability, assigning high scores for stability. Occasionally, data loss issues arise, but these are attributed to external factors rather than the tool itself. Users report high availability and a 99.99% SLA from AWS services. There is agreement on the absence of bugs, making AWS X-Ray a dependable choice for many users.

These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.

Download our AWS X-Ray Buyer's Guide for additional reliable information.

Review data by company size

By reviewers

By visitors reading reviews

Top industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Insurance Company

University

Retailer

Government

Real Estate/Law Firm

Media Company

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

Transportation Company

Outsourcing Company

Wholesaler/Distributor

Hospitality Company

Energy/Utilities Company

Non Profit

Construction Company

Performing Arts

Legal Firm

Recreational Facilities/Services Company

Consumer Goods Company

Marketing Services Firm

Recruiting/Hr Firm

Compare AWS X-Ray with alternative products

Learn more about AWS X-Ray

With X-Ray, developers can visualize the entire request flow and pinpoint the exact location where errors occur. It provides detailed insights into the performance of individual components and helps optimize the overall application performance.

X-Ray integrates seamlessly with other AWS services, making it easy to trace requests across different services and identify dependencies. It also offers a comprehensive set of APIs and SDKs, enabling developers to instrument their applications and capture valuable data for analysis. With its user-friendly interface and powerful features, AWS X-Ray is a valuable tool for developers looking to improve the performance and reliability of their applications.