Amazon CloudWatch vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Splunk are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.2, while Splunk is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.5. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 1.5% mindshare in APM, compared to Splunk’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

Amazon CloudWatch

Read 46 Amazon CloudWatch reviews

2,420 Views
2,084 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Splunk Observability Cloud

Read 50 Splunk Observability Cloud reviews

1,910 Views
1,148 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Amazon CloudWatch

Splunk Observability Cloud

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 6, 2025

Splunk Observability Cloud and Amazon CloudWatch are competitors in the field of monitoring solutions. Splunk seems to have the upper hand for users who need detailed insights and advanced troubleshooting capabilities, while CloudWatch is preferred for AWS resource monitoring due to its seamless AWS integration.

Features: Splunk Observability Cloud excels in data integration, dashboard creation, and log analytics. It provides comprehensive visibility and ease of data manipulation and offers advanced features for troubleshooting and in-depth log analysis. Amazon CloudWatch is integrated tightly with AWS, offering streamlined monitoring for AWS resources, excellent scalability, and capability to trigger events based on metrics like CPU utilization.

Room for Improvement: Splunk users report a need for better integration with other tools, lower costs, and improved UI navigation. It faces criticism for pricing complexity and high expansion costs. CloudWatch users highlight a need for more robust reporting, improved third-party tool integration, and more granular monitoring across platforms. Its pricing and scalability models can also become expensive if not managed well.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk Observability Cloud can be deployed across on-premises, hybrid, and public cloud environments, requiring technical expertise. Users experience varied technical support, generally responsive but sometimes lacking in speed. Amazon CloudWatch, mainly on the public cloud, benefits from seamless AWS integration, simplifying AWS setup but lacks flexibility outside of AWS. Customer service experience is seen as adequate but not exceptional.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk Observability Cloud is considered expensive but seen as worthwhile due to its advanced features and troubleshooting ease. In contrast, CloudWatch is more affordable and offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model that can be cost-effective if managed well. Splunk users report ROI through increased visibility and productivity, while CloudWatch users appreciate its cost alignment with cloud-native deployments.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon CloudWatch vs. Splunk Observability Cloud Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon CloudWatch vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

February 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

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

10th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (14th)

Splunk Observability Cloud

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

11th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

9th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (10th), Container Management (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 1.5%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 1.0%, up from 0.5% 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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Lakshmi Padaga

Java Developer at U.S. Bank

Collaborates performance metrics with log data to pinpoint the exact cause of issues and offers error detection

Splunk APM is a robust tool with many capabilities. There are always areas for potential improvement to enhance its functionality and user experience. For Splunk APM, there could be simplified navigation, like streamlining the user interface to make navigation more intuitive for our users, especially those new to APM, which can enhance usability. We can provide more customization options for dashboards and visualizations to help users tailor the platform to their specific needs. There could be more integration capabilities with a wider range of third-party tools and platforms would also be beneficial. By focusing on these areas, Splunk APM can enhance its value proposition, improve user satisfaction, and better meet the evolving needs of organizations monitoring their application performance.

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

"It offers direct integrations with various storage providers, making it convenient to push logs from CloudWatch to these external platforms."

"Setting up this product was easy. I found data analytics as its most valuable feature."

"The product can be integrated with AWS very easily."

"You can enable alarms and metrics, and it has robust integration with AWS services. You can also trigger events. For example, if the CPU utilization is above 80%, it can launch a new instance for you."

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

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

"The tool's UI is good. One can scroll through the logs very easily."

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

More Amazon CloudWatch pros

"Splunk APM has helped us to standardize logging and monitoring procedures."

"The volume it handles is very good, including the number of metrics, the volume number of traces, and more."

"The solution monitors attacks or unauthorized access to the information we want to protect."

"The company has many systems that the customer is paying to access. Splunk APM issued via AppDynamics helps find problems in the feed. It reduces the risk of supervising all the devices. I can supervise the flow and simulate the conditions of the repository across several dashboards to show what's happening at the moment."

"It has been beneficial for our IT infrastructure."

"The most beneficial aspect of Slunk APM is the ATM, which is the map displaying the inbound and outbound relationships of the microservices, as well as the traffic between these dependencies. This feature provides us with valuable insights and helps us understand the interactions between different microservices."

"The data collection from our VMs, containers, databases, and backend components is valuable."

"The tool is efficient in collecting, monitoring and evaluating logs."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pros

Cons

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

"There is room for improvement in terms of stability."

"The product’s documentation must be improved."

"I think something that can be improved are the alerts and alerting mechanism based on no rejects. We want to have it more flexible and that is one of the key things that is required."

"What would make Amazon CloudWatch better is if it includes more on-site checks, particularly status checks on the CPU, network input/output, etc. It would also be helpful if there's built-in swap space, disk, and memory monitoring in Amazon CloudWatch because, at the moment, my team has to configure it manually through a shell script."

"I would like to monitor inbound and outbound transfer. I would also like to control the traffic for load balancing."

"I do not know whether or not CloudWatch can be integrated with on-prem services."

"When customers want to see the CPU or memory utilization there is a cost. This should be free to see the utilization."

More Amazon CloudWatch cons

"This solution is difficult to configure and the instructions are complex."

"In the next release, I would like to see more integration with other solutions."

"Splunk APM's performance could be improved - at the moment, it's very slow and takes forever to give me what I want."

"The solution's machine learning deployment is hard and should be made user-friendly."

"The product collects a lot of data but it does not assure that it collects all of it."

"A lot of customers had a hard time effectively searching within the data in Splunk. There is a learning curve from searches to indexes and using all the macros that we have created. It is a little difficult for somebody who has not used it quite a bit and does not have a lot of practice with it, but the AI features that we have been hearing about through Splunk will make it a lot easier for us to use human language to search this data. That is big. That is pretty powerful, and that will help a lot with our customers."

"Splunk APM should include a better correlation between resources and infrastructure monitoring."

"The solution should have more sensors regarding fiber intelligence for security measures."

More Splunk Observability Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its pricing is reasonable. It is sometimes tricky, but it is reasonable as compared to others."

"The tool is not expensive."

"The pricing is average."

"It’s an open-source solution."

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

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

"The solution is expensive."

"I consider it as a medium-priced solution."

More Amazon CloudWatch pricing and cost advice

"The product is a bit expensive considering the competition but the company may negotiate the price."

"Splunk has been fairly expensive, but it has been predictable."

"Licensing cost is the biggest argument I get from those divesting from Splunk. There are those within our organization who say we are going to go to other tools since Splunk is too expensive."

"Splunk APM is a very cost-efficient solution."

"The pricing is based on several factors, including the scale of deployment."

"I would rate the price of Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring as an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."

"It appears to be expensive compared to competitors."

"The pricing is reasonable."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

University

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

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?

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon CloudWatch?

CloudWatch itself is fine. That said, maybe Amazon Web Services can improve by providing a library for CloudWatch with some useful features.

See all answers

What do you like most about SignalFx?

The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SignalFx?

There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available. We sometimes encountered issues in setting up alerts. The custom detector could be m...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SignalFx?

The main purpose of using Splunk APM is to optimize our application. We use Splunk APM primarily to understand how the application works, how it uses resources, and its response time in connection ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Grafana Loki vs Amazon CloudWatch

Compared 20% of the time

Amazon OpenSearch Service vs Amazon CloudWatch

Compared 17% of the time

Zabbix vs Amazon CloudWatch

Compared 15% of the time

Dynatrace vs Amazon CloudWatch

Compared 8% of the time

Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs Amazon CloudWatch

Compared 2% of the time

More Amazon CloudWatch Competitors

Observe vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 22% of the time

Splunk ITSI (IT Service Intelligence) vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 8% of the time

Dynatrace vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 6% of the time

Rancher Labs vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 5% of the time

ServiceNow IT Operations Management vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

More Splunk Observability Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon CloudWatch

March 2025

Download Amazon CloudWatch product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Observability Cloud

February 2025

Download Splunk Observability Cloud product report

Also Known As

No data available

Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring

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)

Splunk Observability Cloud combines log search, data integration, and dashboards for seamless monitoring, enhancing infrastructure visibility and security. Its cloud integration and scalability support diverse environments, improving operational efficiency.

Splunk Observability Cloud offers comprehensive monitoring tools with user-friendly interfaces, enabling end-to-end infrastructure visibility. Its real-time alerting and predictive capabilities enhance security monitoring, while centralized dashboards provide cross-platform visibility. Users benefit from fast data integration and extensive insights into application performance. Despite its advantages, improvements could be made in integration with other tools, data reliability, scalability, and cost management. Users face challenges in configuration complexity and require better automation and endpoint protection features. Enhancing AI integration, alerts, and adaptation for high-throughput services could further improve usability.

What are the key features of Splunk Observability Cloud?

Log Search: Efficiently search and analyze log data for enhanced insights.
Data Integration: Fast integration across platforms for comprehensive visibility.
Custom Dashboards: Powerful and adaptable dashboards for real-time monitoring.
Cloud Integration: Seamless integration with cloud services for scalable solutions.
Application Performance Monitoring: Advanced tools for improving application performance.

What benefits and ROI should be expected?

Infrastructure Monitoring: Improved visibility and monitoring across infrastructure components.
Operational Efficiency: Enhancements in data analysis lead to efficient operations.
Business Resilience: Supports adaptability and swift responses to changing needs.
Security Management: Enhances threat identification and response through real-time alerts.
Compliance Support: Aids in meeting compliance and auditing requirements effectively.

In industries like finance and healthcare, Splunk Observability Cloud is implemented for application performance monitoring and infrastructure metrics. Its ability to track incidents and analyze machine data benefits network infrastructure, while distributed tracing and log analysis aid in tackling security threats. Organizations often integrate it for compliance and auditing purposes, enhancing visibility into network traffic and optimizing performance.

Splunk

Sample Customers

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

Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara

Buyer's Guide

Amazon CloudWatch vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

February 2025

Free Report: Amazon CloudWatch vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

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