No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Amazon CloudWatch vs Amazon OpenSearch Service comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 22, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon CloudWatch
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
23rd
Ranking in Log Management
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (14th)
Amazon OpenSearch Service
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
24th
Ranking in Log Management
15th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Search as a Service (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 1.0%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon OpenSearch Service is 0.9%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon CloudWatch1.0%
Amazon OpenSearch Service0.9%
Other98.1%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Azam S M - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
Has provided reliable monitoring and alerting through extensive metric tracking and dashboard configuration
Amazon CloudWatch itself provides a lot of data. However, for visualization, we need to use third-party tools. We are in a process of integrating Grafana, Loki, and Prometheus to have better visualization on Amazon CloudWatch. We are also integrating Grafana with the application itself to get the application data and logs. Alternatively, there is AWS Kinesis and Glue where you can scrape the logs and have visualization, but a more easy option is Grafana. If you want to get a proper visual representation to see what is happening, then you need to integrate a third-party tool. Amazon CloudWatch has all the data, but to see what is happening, you need some third-party tool.
Md. Shahariar Hossen - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at Cefalo
Event tracking has become smoother and data analytics provide clear insights for user actions
Amazon OpenSearch Service is not providing the processing feature directly. From Amazon OpenSearch Service, we are actually maintaining the AWS SQS, the queue service, which is responsible for providing information about what data has to be modified. So using that SQS, we're actually providing it, but we're not directly using Amazon OpenSearch Service for keeping data to other data pipeline thing. So far we didn't use it for any machine learning purposes, but in future, we have plans to extend or implement this feature. Since AWS itself is secure and Amazon OpenSearch Service is a part of this entire ecosystem, it becomes much easier for security purposes. From the validation point of view, Amazon OpenSearch Service itself provides easy to communicate APIs and up-to-date documents, which is much beneficial. For example, if I'm missing anything, I can directly go and check the documentation. That is actually much easier. I would rate it as really good so far. It's much faster. For our local machine, we can also use a kind of replica of Amazon OpenSearch Service just for development purposes. That is another good feature. I would say for the encryption thing and also the user access control management, it's much faster. For some of these hashing algorithms, it also worked really well so far. To be honest, I didn't find any places where it can be improved. However, I think they could provide more abstraction. For example, still for searching, we have to write down the queries in a specific manner, such as for a specific JSON structure or in a specific way. Otherwise, they don't provide us the actual results. For at least this purpose, I think abstraction could be a bit easier or a bit improved. Other than that, right now there is the age of AI, so some kind of prompting could also work, but I'm not sure how it could be integrated. As a user, lower prices or reasonable pricing is always better. Those can be improved as well. However, it is good that most of the services including Amazon OpenSearch Service actually provide pay as you go pricing. So if there were a bit lower version or a bit less payment methodology, it might be much better.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Amazon CloudWatch has positively impacted my organization by improving our ability to monitor production issues and easily find the root cause in the application."
"The detection is the most valuable feature."
"Our project involved processing billions of records and performance expectancy was 99% which is pretty impressive."
"Our team finds it overall quite useful."
"The technical support is fantastic; it's the best ever."
"The product helps us collect and store various metrics to set test alarms."
"It is a robust analytical tool and it goes beyond mere functionality and extends into the realm of providing comprehensive insights."
"Amazon CloudWatch has a user-friendly interface."
"We retrieve historical data with just a click of a button to move it from cold to hot or warm because it's already stored in the backend storage"
"The stability of the product is good."
"In case there is a failure, Elastic manages everything well, and there no major downtime."
"It enables us to efficiently search and retrieve our event data, offering us a versatile approach to locate specific information within these logs."
"The most valuable features of Amazon Elasticsearch are ease of use, native JSON, and efficiency. Additionally, handles many use cases and search grammar was useful."
"The customer service is excellent, rated nine out of ten."
"This service already sorts data like vectors. They have classified the storage pre-defined."
"It's actually easier to collaborate since it is already deployed in the AWS cloud itself."
 

Cons

"CloudWatch's scalability could be improved."
"It's not an advanced way of monitoring."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing, because they have a premium version, but it's not really a premium version. It's just an enhanced monitoring version, and it can be a bit expensive depending on your usage."
"The dashboard of Amazon CloudWatch is not very customizable right now."
"Better reporting is always something needed. That could be an answer to just about anything. But you always want better reporting, better dashboards, things that are just more dynamic and more accessible."
"The configuration capabilities could be better."
"We'd like the interface to be as easy as Datadog."
"The solution's pricing is a bit higher."
"It would be beneficial to have some level of customization available in the managed service, tailored to the specific use cases of the end users."
"The configuration should be more straightforward because we had to select a lot of things."
"As a user, lower prices or reasonable pricing is always better."
"One improvement I would like to see is support for auto-scaling."
"I would say that, basically, the configuration part is an area with a shortcoming...Some upgradation is required on the configuration side so that we can get to use it."
"I want to see a new feature in Amazon Elasticsearch Service that allows users to create default filters for filtered levels."
"The price is fair yet leans towards the expensive side. I'd rate it five out of ten with respect to capabilities vs. cost."
"One glaring issue was with our mapping configuration as the system accepted the data we posted, but after a few months, when we attempted complex queries, we realized the date formatting had become problematic."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"What's were using is the free service of Amazon CloudWatch, so they're not charging us. As for hidden fees, we're not aware of them because we're using what our clients provided us."
"Amazon CloudWatch has very cheap pricing, and it hardly costs my company $25-$30 a month for fifty systems, so it's pretty affordable."
"The tool is not expensive."
"The product's cost is relatively inexpensive."
"The pricing model is pay-as-you-go so you have to be mindful of usage to manage costs."
"The price of Amazon CloudWatch is reasonable. When the rate of data collection is done the price will increase. The price is less than other solutions."
"The pricing can be considered reasonable, especially when already operating on a cloud platform."
"The solution is expensive."
"You only pay for what you use."
"There is a community edition available and the price of the commercial offering is reasonable."
"The solution is not expensive, but priced averagely, I will say."
"Compared to other cloud platforms, it is manageable and not very expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
919,586 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon CloudWatch?
The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Amazon CloudWatch has been positive. It was very easy to set up because it is built into AWS and does not require separate licensing, bein...
What needs improvement with Amazon CloudWatch?
For improvements, I think Amazon CloudWatch could enhance certain areas, particularly regarding pricing structure. I wish to see simpler pricing, more intuitive dashboards, easier log queries for b...
What is your primary use case for Amazon CloudWatch?
My main use case for Amazon CloudWatch is the monitoring and analytics of the application servers. I basically use Amazon CloudWatch to monitor the microservices and AWS infrastructure, helping me ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon OpenSearch Service?
I would consider the pricing as a six based on how much data we are handling; if we handle minimal data, it's cheap, but for large data, it becomes costly. Our clients usually pay between $1,000 to...
What needs improvement with Amazon OpenSearch Service?
Amazon OpenSearch Service is not providing the processing feature directly. From Amazon OpenSearch Service, we are actually maintaining the AWS SQS, the queue service, which is responsible for prov...
What is your primary use case for Amazon OpenSearch Service?
Amazon OpenSearch Service is a user-friendly version of Elasticsearch, as per my understanding. I have been using it for our volunteer management system where around 5,000 to 6,000 users are using ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Amazon Elasticsearch Service
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus
VIDCOIN, Wyng, Yellow New Zealand, zipMoney, Cimri, Siemens, Unbabel
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudWatch vs. Amazon OpenSearch Service and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
919,586 professionals have used our research since 2012.