AWS X-Ray vs Amazon CloudWatch comparison

Amazon CloudWatch and AWS X-Ray are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Amazon CloudWatch is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.2, while AWS X-Ray is ranked #19 with an average rating of 7.3. Amazon CloudWatch holds a 1.6% mindshare in APM, compared to AWS X-Ray’s 3.3% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of Amazon CloudWatch users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of AWS X-Ray users who would recommend it.

Amazon CloudWatch

Read 46 Amazon CloudWatch reviews

2,394 Views
2,054 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

AWS X-Ray

Read 10 AWS X-Ray reviews

5,836 Views
5,272 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Amazon CloudWatch

AWS X-Ray

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon CloudWatch and AWS X-Ray based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS X-Ray vs. Amazon CloudWatch Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS X-Ray vs. Amazon CloudWatch

April 2025

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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

13th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (14th), Cloud Monitoring Software (10th)

AWS X-Ray

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

19th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 1.6%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS X-Ray is 3.3%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Rasanpreet Singh

Senior Consultant at Infosys

Reliable AWS monitoring and logging

The choice of logging solution should always be determined by the specific business requirements. It is crucial to align the logging strategy with what type of logs are needed and how they should be used. There are instances where we require custom solutions to retrieve logs, especially application logs that may not be easily accessible through CloudWatch or similar services. When we heavily rely on AWS native services, CloudWatch is indeed a robust choice. However, in certain scenarios, we might need integration capabilities with other tools, and if they can incorporate such features, it would enhance overall logging capabilities. I would rate it eight out of ten.

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Muhmad Tabrez A Deewanji

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

Improving performance through efficient trace metrics and data insights

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is collecting the logs from Lambda."

"The alarms are one thing I love about AWS CloudWatch. It has alerts that notify us when resource use is approaching the limit."

"Our team finds it overall quite useful."

"It is a stable solution...I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."

"The monitoring features are valuable."

"It's useful to analyze past data and compare it with recent activities."

"I have found the memory metrics and the CPU metrics valuable."

"What I found most valuable in Amazon CloudWatch is that it gives you detailed information, which I found helpful because it can even provide you with data for the past one minute, which is quite granular. That was what helped me most in terms of finding the root causes. Task automation is another valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch."

More Amazon CloudWatch pros

"AWS X-RAY identifies bottlenecks in terms of stability and performance and how long certain data lives in terms of response time and duration."

"It is a very scalable solution."

"AWS X-Ray shows us exactly when there are delays, helping us understand the depth of issues and what is happening point-to-point."

"The solution has made it easier for us to trace the problems that we have with our requests and to monitor the timing of each step in each request we do in our endpoints."

"The most beneficial feature is that it shows a dashboard for performance intervals, which reveals latencies."

"AWS X-Ray is a strong solution and has a smooth integration process."

"The most important one is compliance. We're able to achieve our regulatory levels. We're able to achieve the security level that we need for the federal government."

More AWS X-Ray pros

Cons

"The solution should provide human-readable metrics."

"There's a learning curve with Amazon CloudWatch since we have to learn to write the queries to extract the keys and logs."

"Right now, in relation to monitoring services, there are too many services and too many metrics per service."

"Amazon CloudWatch charges extra for custom metrics, which is a significant disadvantage."

"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."

"For monitoring applications or for APM, CloudWatch has some limitations. You cannot monitor application performance from CloudWatch, and you have to go for a third-party tool."

"I found several areas for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch. First is that it's tough to track issues and find out where it's going wrong. The process takes longer. For example, if I get an exception error, I read the logs, search, go to AWS Cloud, then to the groups to find the keyword to determine what's wrong. Another area for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch is that it's slow in terms of log streaming. It requires an entire twenty-four hours for scanning, rather than just one hour. This issue can be solved with Elasticsearch streaming with Kibana, but it requires a lot of development effort and integration with Kibana or Splunk, and this also means I need a separate developer and software technical stack to do the indexing and streaming to Kibana. It's a manual effort that you need to do properly, so log streaming should be improved in Amazon CloudWatch. The AWS support person should also have a better understanding of the logs in Amazon CloudWatch. What I'd like added to the solution is a more advanced search function, particularly one that can tell you more information or special information. Right now, the search function is difficult to use because it only gives you limited data. For example, I got an error message saying that the policy wasn't created. I only know the amount the customer paid for the policy, the mobile number, and the customer name, but if I use those details, the information won't show up on the logs. I need to enter more details, so that's the type of fuzzy matching Amazon CloudWatch won't provide. If this type of search functionality is provided, it will be very helpful for businesses and companies that provide professional services to customers, like ours."

"The graphical interface has room for improvement. CloudWatch only gives you a breakdown of what's wrong. However, it would be nice if it could automatically remedy the problems it identifies. You should be able to configure it so that when a specific condition arises, it will take a predefined action."

More Amazon CloudWatch cons

"It should have X-Ray SDKs for different languages like Node.js, Python, or Java."

"Compared to other open-source tools, AWS X-Ray needs improvement in providing discounts."

"What needs to be better in AWS X-Ray is the log filtering. Predefined filters could be helpful because the power of analytics comes from how you can filter the data. I also want to see more KPIs from AWS X-Ray."

"I do not have any notes in terms of improvements."

"Sometimes, the collector agents are confusing to configure initially."

"A significant downside is that it is very expensive."

"If you have a small team, it's probably overkill."

"They can improve how traces are sent to other providers."

More AWS X-Ray cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It’s an open-source solution."

"We have monthly licensing costs. The licenses are probably in the vicinity of about $300 - $350/month."

"The price is okay for me."

"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."

"The tool is not expensive."

"The pricing model is pay-as-you-go so you have to be mindful of usage to manage costs."

"The pricing is average."

"The pricing can be considered reasonable, especially when already operating on a cloud platform."

More Amazon CloudWatch pricing and cost advice

"The pricing for AWS X-Ray is a six out of ten."

"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."

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847,646 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

University

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon CloudWatch?

The monitoring features are valuable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon CloudWatch?

Amazon CloudWatch charges more for custom metrics as well as for changes in the timeline, which I see as a disadvantage given the price.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon CloudWatch?

Amazon CloudWatch charges extra for custom metrics, which is a significant disadvantage. Another aspect that needs improvement is the look and feel of custom dashboards, which currently do not matc...

See all answers

What do you like most about AWS X-Ray?

AWS X-Ray is a strong solution and has a smooth integration process.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS X-Ray?

Compared to other open-source tools, AWS X-Ray needs improvement in providing discounts. Customers often seek cheaper solutions. When using many AWS resources, pricing can be a mid-range cost, give...

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS X-Ray?

Sometimes, the collector agents are confusing to configure initially. It requires research to understand the correct configurations, especially when deploying on-premises or on an EC2 instance. Usi...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 14% of the time

Dynatrace vs Amazon CloudWatch

Compared 7% of the time

New Relic vs Amazon CloudWatch

Compared 5% of the time

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Datadog vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 20% of the time

Sentry vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 17% of the time

Azure Monitor vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 11% of the time

Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 11% of the time

New Relic vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 10% of the time

More AWS X-Ray Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon CloudWatch

April 2025

Download Amazon CloudWatch product report

Buyer's Guide

AWS X-Ray

April 2025

Download AWS X-Ray product report

Overview

Amazon CloudWatch is used for monitoring, tracking logs, and organizing metrics across AWS services. It detects anomalies, sets dynamic alarms, and automates actions to optimize cloud utilization, troubleshoot, and ensure service availability.

Organizations leverage Amazon CloudWatch for collecting and analyzing logs, triggering alerts, and profiling application performance. It's also employed for monitoring bandwidth, virtual machines, Lambda functions, and Kubernetes clusters. Valuable features include seamless integration with AWS, real-time data and alerts, detailed metrics, and a user-friendly interface. It provides robust monitoring capabilities for infrastructure and application performance, log aggregation, and analytics. Users appreciate its scalability, ease of setup, and affordability. Additional key aspects are the ability to create alarms, dashboards, and automated responses, along with detailed insights into system and application health. Room for improvement includes dashboards and UI enhancements for better visualization and customizability, log streaming speed, advanced machine learning and reporting capabilities, pricing, and integration with non-AWS services and databases. Users also seek more real-time monitoring and comprehensive application performance features, and simpler alerts and configuration processes.

What are the most important features?

Seamless integration with AWS: Ensures smooth operation with AWS services.
Real-time data and alerts: Provides immediate insights and notifications.
Detailed metrics: Offers in-depth data on infrastructure and application performance.
Scalability: Supports growing needs with ease.
Ease of setup: Quick and straightforward installation.
Affordability: Cost-effective monitoring solution.
Alarms and dashboards: Customizable alerts and visual insights.
Automated responses: Facilitates automatic actions based on set criteria.
System and application health insights: Delivers comprehensive health reports.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Optimized cloud utilization: Ensures efficient use of resources.
Improved troubleshooting: Identifies and resolves issues quickly.
Enhanced service availability: Keeps services running smoothly.
Effective log analysis: Provides valuable insights from collected logs.
Performance profiling: Assesses and optimizes application performance.
Scalable monitoring: Adapts to growing business needs.

Amazon CloudWatch is implemented across a range of industries, including technology, finance, healthcare, and retail. Technology firms use it to monitor application performance and traffic, while financial organizations leverage it for ensuring compliance and system reliability. Healthcare entities rely on it for maintaining service availability and monitoring data flow, and retail companies utilize it for tracking customer interactions and optimizing server usage.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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.

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.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus

COMCAST, ConnectWise, skyscanner, AirAsia, cookpad, cimpress, VTEX, zowdow

Buyer's Guide

AWS X-Ray vs. Amazon CloudWatch

April 2025

Free Report: AWS X-Ray vs. Amazon CloudWatch

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