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AWS X-Ray vs Prometheus 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
18th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Prometheus
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AWS X-Ray is 3.3%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prometheus is 3.4%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Willy Moura - PeerSpot reviewer
Identifying and resolving deployment issues while configuring can be challenging
I have two use cases with my customers. One involves using AWS Fargate, and the other involves an application running on WordPress. The WordPress application was very slow, and we used AWS X-Ray to understand the main problem. X-Ray helped us identify issues with our EFS, allowing us to adjust…
MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Free to use and provides valuable monitoring capabilities
Prometheus is a scalable and flexible tool that I can deploy on any cloud platform. It is free to use and provides valuable monitoring capabilities. It allows me to save money by avoiding costs associated with AWS native services like CloudWatch or Amazon Prometheus. The ability to deploy on any cloud platform or environment, including Kubernetes, is a major advantage.

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."
"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."
"AWS X-Ray shows us exactly when there are delays, helping us understand the depth of issues and what is happening point-to-point."
"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."
"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."
"The solution can be deployed in thirty minutes."
"The most valuable feature of Prometheus is its ability to collect metrics."
"Prometheus provides a flexible and adjustable querying and describing time, allowing for more responsive monitoring."
"The most valuable features of Prometheus for metrics collection and monitoring are its stability, robustness, and rich set of features."
"It is an efficient solution."
"Prometheus is a scalable and flexible tool that I can deploy on any cloud platform."
"The sky is the limit because the solution is a flexible open box that can be used vastly to do anything you need to monitor applications."
"The solution helps us to scale our products and services, and it helps me by gathering those metrics."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Compared to other open-source tools, AWS X-Ray needs improvement in providing discounts."
"The interface is not particularly user-friendly and that could be improved."
"The setup could be made easier for new users because it requires a bit of advance knowledge or experience."
"I would like to see improvement in the analysis tools and customization features."
"The DSL could be improved."
"They could provide efficient logs in terms of clarity and ease of access similar to Datadog’s paid version."
"There is a tool called Prometheus Exporter that doesn't work well."
"The UI and GUI are areas of concern in the product."
"The solution's error handling part could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The pricing for AWS X-Ray is a six out of ten."
"This is an open-source solution."
"Prometheus is an open-source solution."
"Prometheus is an open-source tool."
"My company uses the open-source version of the product."
"It is an open-source tool."
"Prometheus is available as an open-source product."
"The product is expensive compared to Datadog."
"The price of Prometheus is good, it is affordable because it is open source and there is no cost to it. You put it on your own server and the costs incurred completely depend on how you set it up."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS X-Ray?
AWS X-Ray is a strong solution and has a smooth integration process.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS X-Ray?
AWS X-Ray is very beneficial, however, it is expensive. It should be more cost-effective.
What needs improvement with AWS X-Ray?
It should have X-Ray SDKs for different languages like Node.js, Python, or Java. It should also have custom annotations and better instruments for external API services. In addition to these, X-Ray...
What do you like most about Prometheus?
The most valuable feature of Prometheus is its ability to collect metrics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Prometheus?
Prometheus is cost-effective for me as it is free. Using cloud-native alternatives like Amazon Prometheus would incur charges.
What is your primary use case for Prometheus?
I use Prometheus for monitoring purposes in IT infrastructure. It is particularly useful for environments using Kubernetes, as it monitors ports, containers, instances, and applications effectively.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

COMCAST, ConnectWise, skyscanner, AirAsia, cookpad, cimpress, VTEX, zowdow
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS X-Ray vs. Prometheus and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.