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Elastic Observability vs Scout APM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Elastic Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Log Management (14th), Container Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)
Scout APM
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
61st
Average Rating
10.0
Number of Reviews
1
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 Elastic Observability is 5.8%, up from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Scout APM is 0.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Adelina Craciun - PeerSpot reviewer
Customization enables tailored monitoring and alerting across departments
The possibility to customize it has been quite useful. Whatever the other departments want to dream up, we implement. Whatever they want to monitor, the granularity of it, the changes in the threshold, and the anomalies that they want reported all require some development. So far, every single request has been fulfilled.
Antonio_Barros - PeerSpot reviewer
Great visibility and reliability with fair pricing
The solution is stable. It's pretty easy to set up, especially if you have the knowledge base and/or you have a partner assist you. The product can scale. The processes are great. It helps with services and microservices. The product is great for man different industries, including energy, government, finance, and more.

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 powerful tool that allows users to collect and transform logs as needed, enabling flexible visualization and analysis."
"I have built a mini business intelligence system based on Elastic Observability."
"It is scalable and supports multitenancy, which is beneficial for MSPs."
"We can view and connect different sources to the dashboard using it."
"The ability to ensure that the data is searchable and maintainable is highly valuable for our purposes."
"For full stack observability, Elastic is the best tool compared with any other tool ."
"The architecture and system's stability are simple."
"The Elastic User Interface framework lets us do custom development when needed. You need to have some Javascript knowledge. We need that knowledge to develop new custom tests."
"The product can scale."
 

Cons

"The tool's scalability involves a more complex implementation process. It requires careful calculations to determine the number of nodes needed, the specifications of each node, and the configuration of hot, warm, and cold zones for data storage. Additionally, managing log retention policies adds further complexity. The solution's pricing also needs to be cheaper."
"The interface could be improved."
"The solution needs to use more AI. Once the product onboards AI, users would more effectively be able to track endpoints for specific messages."
"Elastic Observability is an excellent product for monitoring and visibility, but it lacks predictive analytics. Most solutions are aligned with the AIOps requirements, but this piece is missing in Elastic and should be included."
"Elastic Observability is difficult to use. There are only three options for customization but this can be difficult for our use case. We do not have other options to choose the metrics shown, such as CPU or memory usage."
"If we had some pre-defined templates for observability that we could start using right away after deploying it – instead of having to build or to change some of the dashboards – that would be helpful."
"Elastic Observability needs to improve the retrieval of logs and metrics from all the instances."
"Elastic APM's visualization is not that great compared to other tools. It's number of metrics is very low."
"I can't recall coming across any missing features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."
"We will buy a premium license after POC."
"We have been using the open-source version."
"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."
"The price of Elastic Observability is expensive."
"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."
"Elastic Observability's pricing could be better for small-scale users."
"The product is not that cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Retailer
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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?
Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing. However, sizing and licensing information could be clearer.
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
Of course, maintenance is necessary, as with any software, requiring updates with the latest features and security enhancements. It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like netw...
Ask a question
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Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
Chargify, Synctree, Aptuitiv, Barnes and Noble, Journey, Geosnapshot, Kongregate, PaperTrail, Adobe, SendGrid, Sentry
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability. Updated: February 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.