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AWS Auto Scaling vs Amazon CloudWatch 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

Amazon CloudWatch
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (13th), Cloud Monitoring Software (10th)
AWS Auto Scaling
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
15th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 1.7%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Auto Scaling is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Rahul Kundu - PeerSpot reviewer
Proactively address issues with seamless monitoring while enhancing custom metrics functionality
We use CloudWatch for monitoring and logging. It helps us monitor our applications' performance, particularly in ensuring that every API hit returns a response within four seconds, which is our SLA. We also monitor invocation errors in Lambda and use CloudWatch alerts to notify us of any issues…
Mbula Mboma - PeerSpot reviewer
Boosts deployment efficiency with seamless automatic scaling capabilities
My primary use case for Auto Scaling is mainly to deploy applications at scale Auto Scaling has made the deployment of applications more efficient, allowing us to manage traffic and maintain performance as user counts increase. Auto Scaling is a cool feature that works well and its automatic…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is the monitoring and UI."
"It is a stable solution...I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"The tool enables live monitoring."
"Amazon CloudWatch's best feature stems from its ability to monitor app performance."
"It is a robust analytical tool and it goes beyond mere functionality and extends into the realm of providing comprehensive insights."
"The scalability of Amazon CloudWatch rates as high scalability, scoring a perfect ten."
"It offers direct integrations with various storage providers, making it convenient to push logs from CloudWatch to these external platforms."
"We can create events and alerts. We use the information to dive down into the infrastructure performance."
"Our internal business applications are hosted in AWS Auto Scaling."
"AWS Auto Scaling is cost-effective and very useful for businesses."
"The health check integration feature ensures that the instances are healthy and capable of absorbing traffic, thus serving their purpose effectively."
"It helps us to reduce the cost."
"AWS Auto Scaling is very good for managing traffic and creating new instances when necessary."
"It is a stable platform."
"It can scale."
"The various scaling options available, such as step scaling, are particularly useful."
 

Cons

"CloudWatch doesn’t monitor disk throughput by default."
"Amazon CloudWatch's pricing needs improvement."
"Adding conditional expressions would enhance its functionality."
"The product’s documentation must be improved."
"The product should provide more features."
"The drill-down aspect on the dashboard of the solution needs improvement. We get a very good high-level overview, but when we drill down, it becomes a little less clear. We have given this feedback to AWS as well and hope they will improve this in the future."
"When connecting to Google Cloud, there is no visibility or traceability from Google Cloud into CloudWatch."
"The solution's pricing is a bit higher."
"The setup can be a bit complex in some situations."
"The speed of the solution must be improved."
"The product’s pricing needs improvement."
"It requires a downtime before deploying the Auto Scaling group."
"The product could add more features for managing instances."
"The billing and cost optimization of the solution could be improved."
"The solution is not out-of-the-box and you have to study to use it. It should be more easier to use."
"The only area of improvement is the speed at which servers are launched. When cleaning up to six servers at a time, it can take up to 15 to 20 minutes to launch new servers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing can be considered reasonable, especially when already operating on a cloud platform."
"Its pricing is reasonable. It is sometimes tricky, but it is reasonable as compared to others."
"It is a free-of-charge service."
"The pricing is average."
"The price of Amazon CloudWatch is reasonable for detailed basic monitoring."
"What's were using is the free service of Amazon CloudWatch, so they're not charging us. As for hidden fees, we're not aware of them because we're using what our clients provided us."
"It’s an open-source solution."
"The solution is expensive."
"AWS Auto Scaling's price is high."
"The pricing is good. I have not had any customers that have complained about the price."
"The product has moderate pricing."
"AWS Auto Scaling is a pay-per-use and pay-as-you-use service."
"The product is expensive."
"AWS Auto Scaling is an expensive solution."
"AWS Auto Scaling is a cheap solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Real Estate/Law Firm
5%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon CloudWatch?
Overall, the pricing of Amazon CloudWatch is very expensive.
What needs improvement with Amazon CloudWatch?
Apart from traceability of network resources, Amazon CloudWatch needs to be more interoperable with other tools because many companies are starting to use AI-based dashboards. When using third-part...
What do you like most about AWS Auto Scaling?
The tool's most valuable feature is vertical auto-scaling, which is easy to use. However, most companies now prefer horizontal scaling. I set up the health check integration to monitor CPU usage. W...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Auto Scaling?
The pricing of Auto Scaling is medium range, neither high nor low.
What needs improvement with AWS Auto Scaling?
It is sometimes very critical to deploy on AWS since some servers are already running in the background. There are challenges for employees on how to deploy at a given time. It requires a downtime ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
AWS Auto-Scaling
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus
Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Auto Scaling vs. Amazon CloudWatch and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.