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Amazon CloudWatch vs Grafana Loki comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.6
Amazon CloudWatch customer service is praised for expertise and availability, though navigating support can be tedious; premium support offers faster resolution.
Sentiment score
7.9
Grafana Loki's support combines community aid and resources with varying user satisfaction, requiring effort for integration and documentation navigation.
We have not had to open any tickets yet, as we solve issues through forums and wikis.
 

Room For Improvement

Sentiment score
7.0
Amazon CloudWatch users are dissatisfied with pricing, UI complexity, inadequate log functionalities, and seek better integration, reporting, and monitoring features.
Sentiment score
8.0
Grafana Loki needs better flow visibility, request correlation, stability, Docker integration, and enhanced scalability, security, and reporting features.
It would be beneficial if Loki could directly access Windows Server logs or events directly from the servers.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Amazon CloudWatch is highly rated for its scalability, handling high volumes and diverse organizational needs consistently across multiple accounts.
Sentiment score
8.5
Grafana Loki is praised for its scalability, reliable operations, and ability to handle large systems and data efficiently.
Loki offers great scalability, allowing us to manage and compress logs extensively.
 

Setup Cost

No sentiment score available
Amazon CloudWatch pricing varies widely, from as low as $25 to over $300 monthly, depending on usage and integration.
No sentiment score available
Grafana Loki provides cost-effective pricing options with a popular free open-source version and a competitively priced cloud version.
The cloud version is competitively priced compared to other market solutions.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Amazon CloudWatch is highly stable and reliable, with minor UI lags on large data, rarely affecting overall performance.
Sentiment score
8.1
Grafana Loki is generally stable, but some users encounter issues with log retrieval and outdated methods affecting stability.
 

Valuable Features

Sentiment score
8.8
Amazon CloudWatch offers real-time monitoring, alerts, analytics, and customizable dashboards, integrated seamlessly with AWS for enhanced security and functionality.
No sentiment score available
Grafana Loki offers easy deployment, cost-effectiveness, and robust log monitoring with seamless Grafana integration and Kubernetes compatibility.
The most valuable part of Loki is the ability to filter logs by keywords and devices.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon CloudWatch
Ranking in Log Management
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (13th), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th)
Grafana Loki
Ranking in Log Management
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Rasanpreet Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Arjun Pandey - PeerSpot reviewer
Effective for Logging, recovery from node failures is fast and single UI supports metrics, logs, and even tracing
If it is HelloGuard setup or doing some setup on the dev cluster, it's pretty straightforward. But when we're dealing with a heavy cluster, like 15 to 20 terabytes of data per day, we need a production-grade cluster. For that kind of scenario, we must invest time and understand the process. We could have integrated these features within their health check, but they're using processes like Tanka and Jsonnet to implement a production service. I feel this could have been better. If I use a metric solution for metrics, I'd use Grafana for metrics monitoring. For logging, I'd use a different tool, like ELK. And for tracing another tool. So, to troubleshoot a specific issue, I have to switch between three different consoles. What I see in metrics isn't the same as in logs because the metadata and collection methods differ. That's where Loki comes in. Within Grafana, you can see metrics, logs, correlations, generate metrics from logs, and also set alerts. Alerting from logs is something many companies desire. With Loki, if there's a pattern in the log, we can filter it out without altering the entire pipeline. For instance, if I had to add fields in ELK, it would require a lot of configuration changes. Loki, however, is more flexible. It uses a grep-like pattern and the metadata model from Prometheus. It's highly efficient, with compressed data and block storage like GCS bucket or AWS S3, making log storage cost-effective. Compared to other solutions, it's more economical. Loki also has a Log CLI, which is very effective. It's all on-premises. Like, it's on the cloud, but it's self-managed, not a managed service.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
5%
Computer Software Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon CloudWatch?
In general, Amazon CloudWatch is cheaper compared to Dynatrace. However, there are potential costs to be mindful of, like running a log query that returns trillions of bytes of data.
What needs improvement with Amazon CloudWatch?
There is room for improvement in setting up custom metrics in CloudWatch. Adding conditional expressions would enhance its functionality.
What do you like most about Grafana Loki?
We are using Grafana Loki as a database for real-time metrics.
What needs improvement with Grafana Loki?
I do not see any areas for improvement at the moment. The solution is very stable, and further improvements might result in it becoming resource-intensive like other solutions.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus
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Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudWatch vs. Grafana Loki and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,192 professionals have used our research since 2012.