ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

ServiceNow and Splunk are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. ServiceNow is ranked #38 with an average rating of 8.0, while Splunk is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.3. ServiceNow holds a 0.7% mindshare in APM, compared to Splunk’s 2.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ServiceNow users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Read 4 ServiceNow Cloud Observability reviews

1,208 Views
1,160 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Splunk Observability Cloud

Read 78 Splunk Observability Cloud reviews

8,968 Views
4,753 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Splunk Observability Cloud

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

Splunk Observability Cloud and ServiceNow Cloud Observability compete in the cloud observability market, with ServiceNow having a slight edge in comprehensive feature offerings, suggesting greater perceived value despite pricing concerns.

Features: Splunk's notable features include real-time analytics, AI-driven insights, and customizable dashboards. ServiceNow prioritizes integrated workflows, robust incident management, and automated remediation, emphasizing business continuity and efficiency.

Room for Improvement: Splunk could enhance its incident response automation, expand integration capabilities, and provide more competitive pricing. ServiceNow may benefit from simplifying its learning curve, offering more cost-effective solutions, and refining dashboard customization options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk offers straightforward deployment with extensive support, aiding organizations seeking rapid implementation. ServiceNow involves deeper integration within IT structures but compensates with strong customer service, fitting enterprises desiring comprehensive integration and attentive support.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk's pricing structure is perceived as more accessible upfront, focusing on scalability for varied business needs. ServiceNow's initial setup cost is higher but balanced by strong ROI via enhanced feature utility and operational improvements, attracting those investing in long-term gains.

To learn more, read our detailed ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. Splunk Observability Cloud Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

February 2026

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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

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

38th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Splunk Observability Cloud

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

7th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (7th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th), Container Management (6th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is 0.7%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 2.3%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Splunk Observability Cloud	2.3%
ServiceNow Cloud Observability	0.7%
Other	97.0%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

VinayKumar16

Senior DeliveryManager at ITC Infotech

Provides ease of use in areas like analytics and reporting

The feature of the tool that is more impactful for cloud performance stems from the area revolving around analytics and reporting. It is an easy-to-use tool. There is something known as performance analytics within ServiceNow that offers complete analytics, which offers end-to-end analytics along with the KPI metrics with what we have in place and so on. With the aforementioned aspects of the tool, I think we should be able to create a dashboard according to the operations view called the operation dashboard view, specifically for C-level executives.

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Taiwo Ige

IT Operations Engineer at ABC Supply Co. Inc.

Alerting improves incident response across teams and enables faster awareness before customer impact

Splunk Observability Cloud could be improved in terms of integrations with more technical add-ons, such as Zoom. Although they have one with Zoom, it's not available in the cloud, so having that feature would be beneficial. Essentially, Splunk should continue expanding to create easier ways to ingest logs from different products. The out-of-the-box customizable dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are very effective in showcasing IT performance to business leaders. However, there are aspects that could be improved, such as linking dashboards to one another. While IT leaders may not drill down, it's crucial to create levels of dashboards for technical users to find root causes, making it effective for stakeholders.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"To a certain extent, it is possible to save on the costs of the product."

"The ability to create a stream based on different parameters, operation name, service name, URL, tags, and URI part, is one valuable feature."

"The solution Lightstep/ServiceNow has a couple of pretty advanced functionalities to help us investigate a deviation and help the development teams have better observability in the environment using distributed and complex services."

"The UI is very intuitive."

"The Add data feature lets you gather any type of log and easily analyze it."

"It is a good tool. It allows you to set alerts for application and infrastructure monitoring, and it allows you to create dashboards."

"Splunk Observability Cloud scales with the growing needs of my organization effectively."

"It can monitor, get the data, and then report on the data."

"With the metrics collection, I can proactively find incidents and work on the major issues when they happen and predict these issues."

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

"It has been beneficial for our IT infrastructure."

"The dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are amazing, and if you configure them correctly, they are amazing, and it is quite fast as well."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pros

Cons

"The support team could be better. Because of the different versions of different tactics of integrating reactive code base, the documentation is not very clear if someone has to be onboard. I would rate the documentation of Lightstep a five out of ten. It could need improvement."

"In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs."

"The design of this solution is not very intuitive and probably could come with more friendly tips for beginners."

"The dashboard and graphics must be improved."

"We still use Splunk Enterprise licensing. A lot of the newer features go into Splunk Cloud before Enterprise. We're not looking to switch our licensing over, so we're falling behind on the newer features."

"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."

"We were facing some challenges with the stability of Splunk Observability Cloud regarding the login page. It was not working several times and was not accepting SSO authentication."

"The user interface of Splunk Observability Cloud needs a lot of work."

"The pricing would be one area for improvement."

"Primarily, the logs in Splunk APM can be challenging to navigate and comprehend, making it difficult to understand the details within each log. Compared to other tools like LogDNA, which are more intuitive in this aspect, the logs in Splunk APM can require more effort to understand."

"Integrating some third-party add-ons can be challenging, involving many implementation and configuration steps."

"Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and process terms. These categories of dashboards would be very helpful for customers."

More Splunk Observability Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive. I rate the tool's pricing model an eight out of ten."

"Splunk Observability Cloud is expensive."

"Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring is an expensive solution."

"Splunk's infrastructure monitoring costs can be high because our billing is based on data volume measured in terabytes, rather than the number of devices being monitored."

"It is expensive."

"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 expensive."

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

"The pricing is reasonable."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	50

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with LightStep?

There are a lot of workflows and connectors. In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for LightStep?

I use the solution in my company since it has multiple tenants available. Basically, what happens in business is that you have a hybrid setup model, and for that, you extensively use a cloud platfo...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering LightStep?

I recommend the product to others. I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

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?

Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and pr...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SignalFx?

The solution involves observability in general, such as Application Performance Monitoring, and generally addresses digital applications, web applications, sites, and mobile applications. I worked ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 3% of the time

Kentik vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

Datadog vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

Observe vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

Cribl vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

More Splunk Observability Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

January 2026

Download ServiceNow Cloud Observability product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Observability Cloud

January 2026

Download Splunk Observability Cloud product report

Also Known As

LightStep

Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Synthetic Monitoring

Overview

ServiceNow Cloud Observability is a comprehensive platform designed to enhance visibility, control, and performance monitoring of your IT infrastructure and applications. It seamlessly integrates log management, trace management, metrics monitoring, and infrastructure monitoring in real-time, leveraging AI and machine learning for automated tasks and actionable insights. With benefits including improved visibility, faster incident resolution, enhanced application performance, simplified IT operations, and reduced costs, this cloud-native solution is ideal for businesses of all sizes with complex IT infrastructures. It integrates seamlessly with ServiceNow IT Operations Management (ITOM), supports OpenTelemetry standards, and provides AI-powered insights along with pre-built dashboards and reports.

ServiceNow

Splunk Observability Cloud offers sophisticated log searching, data integration, and customizable dashboards. With rapid deployment and ease of use, this cloud service enhances monitoring capabilities across IT infrastructures for comprehensive end-to-end visibility.

Focused on enhancing performance management and security, Splunk Observability Cloud supports environments through its data visualization and analysis tools. Users appreciate its robust application performance monitoring and troubleshooting insights. However, improvements in integrations, interface customization, scalability, and automation are needed. Users find value in its capabilities for infrastructure and network monitoring, as well as log analytics, albeit cost considerations and better documentation are desired. Enhancements in real-time monitoring and network protection are also noted as areas for development.

What are the key features?

Log Searching: Efficiently search and analyze logs from various sources.
Data Integration: Seamlessly integrate with multiple environments.
Dashboard Customization: Tailor dashboards to specific monitoring needs.
Monitoring Capabilities: Provides comprehensive insights into application performance.
Security Features: Analyze and address security threats across systems.
Visualization Tools: Enhance data analysis and system performance optimization.

Why consider this for ROI?

Comprehensive Visibility: Gain complete insights into IT infrastructure.
Performance Optimization: Improve overall system performance and efficiency.
Rapid Deployment: Quick setup to meet organization demands swiftly.
Enhanced Security: Strengthen security measures through detailed analytics.

In industries, Splunk Observability Cloud is implemented for security management by analyzing logs from detection systems, offering real-time alerts and troubleshooting for cloud-native applications. It is leveraged for machine data analysis, improving infrastructure visibility and supporting network and application performance management efforts.

Splunk

Sample Customers

InVision, Twilio, Lyft, Yext, DigitalOcean,

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

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

February 2026

Free Report: ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

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