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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
17th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
7
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 January 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AWS X-Ray is 3.9%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prometheus is 3.3%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Parth Solanki - PeerSpot reviewer
Saves time, is relatively cheap, and helps find errors
If we get any error, we can go to X-Ray and get all the requests for a certain error in one place. It makes it easy to find the issue in your own product. You can look at logs and error logs and find loopholes. You can do direct queries to get specific requests over the course of a day. It's very good at error reporting and quite fast. You also get a lot of information, including IP addresses, user locations, et cetera.
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

"It is a very scalable solution."
"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 error analysis capabilities of X-Ray are really good."
"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."
"The most beneficial feature is that it shows a dashboard for performance intervals, which reveals latencies."
"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 feature I found most valuable is the number of integrations. It is the industry standard for metrics."
"It has lots of APIs and libraries to integrate with any kind of language."
"Prometheus provides a flexible and adjustable querying and describing time, allowing for more responsive monitoring."
"The most valuable features of Prometheus are the many functions available. The functions are helpful for understanding the behavior of applications and infrastructure."
"Prometheus is a scalable and flexible tool that I can deploy on any cloud platform."
"The product’s scalability is valuable."
"The most valuable features of Prometheus for metrics collection and monitoring are its stability, robustness, and rich set of features."
"The most valuable feature of Prometheus is its ability to collect metrics."
 

Cons

"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."
"The user interface is sometimes kind of confusing to understand. It's not very user-friendly."
"It should have X-Ray SDKs for different languages like Node.js, Python, or Java."
"If you have a small team, it's probably overkill."
"They can improve how traces are sent to other providers."
"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."
"A significant downside is that it is very expensive."
"Setting up the rules in Prometheus can be confusing, making it an area where improvements are required."
"One potential area for improvement would be fixing the occasional glitches and bugs."
"The simplicity of the query language could be improved. The current query language is not easy to work with."
"The solution has shortcomings regarding security monitoring-oriented features to support custom use cases, like out-of-the-box test scenarios and threat-related use cases of its users."
"There is a tool called Prometheus Exporter that doesn't work well."
"A slight alteration to the user interface should be made to increase efficiency and streamline the process. Currently, we are utilizing Prometheus to gather and compile metrics and then utilizing Grafana to display them in the form of a graph. However, I believe that Prometheus has the capability to handle both of these tasks on its own, with perhaps the addition of a supplementary plugin. By doing so, the need for utilizing two separate applications will be eliminated."
"There isn’t much clarity regarding the issues that happen at the server end. It is a push model and from the client’s point of view, it needs to look better and solve remote issues."
"The solution's error handling part could be improved."
 

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."
"The solution is not expensive."
"This is an open-source solution."
"My company uses the open-source version of the product."
"Prometheus is an open-source solution."
"The product is expensive compared to Datadog."
"The solution is open source."
"It is an open-source tool."
"The tool is open-sourced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
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.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.