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AWS X-Ray vs Elastic Observability comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

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

AWS X-Ray
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
17th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Elastic Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (15th), Log Management (15th), Container Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AWS X-Ray is 1.7%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Observability is 2.2%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Observability2.2%
AWS X-Ray1.7%
Other96.1%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Muhmad Tabrez A Deewanji - PeerSpot reviewer
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 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.
Mohammed-Abdelalim - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Has provided powerful customization for unique monitoring needs but needs more out-of-the-box capabilities
In my opinion, the best features of Elastic Observability are their flexibility to integrate with other existing systems and the ability to build a unified monitoring tool that can integrate with existing ones and end-to-end user journeys which require a lot of customizations. The greatest feature in Elastic is the ability to customize. This is similar to my comments about customizable dashboards in Elastic because it's visible to the analyst. However, it's very great. Customizing these dashboards can meet the customer's specific use cases and specific stories that they have in their environment, their special environment that doesn't look like other environments. The dashboarding in Elastic is highly customizable to the level of logos. If the customer wants his company logo in the dashboard, it can be done.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"AWS X-Ray shows us exactly when there are delays, helping us understand the depth of issues and what is happening point-to-point."
"I would give AWS X-Ray a nine out of ten overall."
"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."
"AWS X-Ray is a strong solution and has a smooth integration process."
"AWS X-RAY identifies bottlenecks in terms of stability and performance and how long certain data lives in terms of response time and duration."
"The error analysis capabilities of X-Ray are really good."
"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."
"The most promising feature of AWS X-Ray is that you can debug the issues through the proper logs. You can also get an analysis out of the logs for some use cases, though I have yet to try all the features of AWS X-Ray."
"The most valued feature of Elastic is its log analytics capabilities."
"The price is very less expensive compared to the other solutions."
"We can view and connect different sources to the dashboard using it."
"Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning over a month from multiple data sources can be completed within seconds."
"For full stack observability, Elastic is the best tool compared with any other tool ."
"All the features that we use, such as monitoring, dashboarding, reporting, the possibility of alerting, and the way we index the data, are important."
"The solution is open-source and helps with back-end logging. It is also easy to handle."
"It's easy to deploy, and it's very flexible."
 

Cons

"I do not have any notes in terms of improvements."
"AWS X-Ray should improve its implementation process to make it easier for developers."
"Sometimes, the collector agents are confusing to configure initially."
"The user interface is sometimes kind of confusing to understand. It's not very user-friendly."
"If you have a small team, it's probably overkill."
"It should have X-Ray SDKs for different languages like Node.js, Python, or Java."
"Like most Amazon products, the user interface, configuration, and tuning aren't the easiest. That's the biggest reason why people tend to go to products like TerraForm and Terragrunt. We use TerraForm and Terragrunt. So, for setting things up and interacting with X-Ray, it's definitely the user interface that can be better."
"Compared to other open-source tools, AWS X-Ray needs improvement in providing discounts."
"Elastic Observability’s price could be improved."
"The solution would be better if it was capable of more automation, especially in a monitoring capacity or for the response to abnormalities."
"The solution needs to use more AI. Once the product onboards AI, users would more effectively be able to track endpoints for specific messages."
"When opening tickets, we cannot use our team mailbox."
"There is room for improvement regarding its APM capabilities."
"More web features could be added to the product."
"The cost must be made more transparent."
"One example is the inability to monitor very old databases with the newest version."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"We have been using the open-source version."
"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."
"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."
"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."
"Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."
"There are two types: cloud and SaaS. They charge based on data ingestion, ingest rate, hard retention, and warm retention. I believe it costs around $25,000 annually to ingest 30GB of data daily. That is the SaaS version. There is also a self-managed license where the customer manages their own infrastructure on-prem. In such cases, there are three license tiers that respectively cost $5,000 annually per node, $7,000 per node, and $12,500 per node."
"We will buy a premium license after POC."
"So far, there are just the standard licensing fees. Several of the components are embedded in the license or are even open source. They're even free depending on what you use, which makes it even more appealing to someone that is discussing pricing of the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS X-Ray?
While I have not compared it with GCP or Azure ( /products/microsoft-azure-reviews ), AWS generally offers cost-effective services. Some services, like Athena ( /products/odyssey-software-athena-eo...
What needs improvement with AWS X-Ray?
The challenges we faced with AWS X-Ray were that some of the AWS services we were using did not support it, which we discovered at a later stage. This was potentially a design consideration we shou...
What is your primary use case for AWS X-Ray?
I have been using AWS X-Ray for creating insights to our applications we have developed. It is used to correlate different services in AWS when a transaction happens, allowing us to see the flow of...
What do you like most about Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?
The problem is their licensing model, which is a bit confusing. Many customers struggle to understand their total cost of ownership because Elastic licensing is not dependent on easy, quantifiable ...
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
After careful consideration about areas for improvement in Elastic Observability, aspects such as pricing, customization, implementation, and scalability could be improved. As a user of the system,...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

COMCAST, ConnectWise, skyscanner, AirAsia, cookpad, cimpress, VTEX, zowdow
PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS X-Ray vs. Elastic Observability and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
883,692 professionals have used our research since 2012.