AWS X-Ray vs Amazon CloudWatch comparison

Amazon CloudWatch and AWS X-Ray are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Amazon CloudWatch is ranked #13 with an average rating of 7.9, while AWS X-Ray is ranked #15 with an average rating of 7.4. Amazon CloudWatch holds a 1.7% mindshare in APM, compared to AWS X-Ray’s 2.7% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Amazon CloudWatch users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of AWS X-Ray users who would recommend it.

Amazon CloudWatch

Read 48 Amazon CloudWatch reviews

4,127 Views
2,311 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

AWS X-Ray

Read 11 AWS X-Ray reviews

4,843 Views
4,552 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Amazon CloudWatch

AWS X-Ray

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon CloudWatch and AWS X-Ray based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS X-Ray vs. Amazon CloudWatch Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS X-Ray vs. Amazon CloudWatch

September 2025

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Helped 872,778 peers since 2012

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

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (16th), Cloud Monitoring Software (11th)

AWS X-Ray

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

15th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 1.7%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS X-Ray is 2.7%, down from 3.4% 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 (%)
Amazon CloudWatch	1.7%
AWS X-Ray	2.7%
Other	95.6%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Azam S M

Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC

Has provided reliable monitoring and alerting through extensive metric tracking and dashboard configuration

Amazon CloudWatch itself provides a lot of data. However, for visualization, we need to use third-party tools. We are in a process of integrating Grafana, Loki, and Prometheus to have better visualization on Amazon CloudWatch. We are also integrating Grafana with the application itself to get the application data and logs. Alternatively, there is AWS Kinesis and Glue where you can scrape the logs and have visualization, but a more easy option is Grafana. If you want to get a proper visual representation to see what is happening, then you need to integrate a third-party tool. Amazon CloudWatch has all the data, but to see what is happening, you need some third-party tool.

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Muhmad Tabrez A Deewanji

Lead Software Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Improving performance through efficient trace metrics and data insights

As an application developer and architect, I appreciate AWS X-Ray for checking latency and identifying bottlenecks. I use it for performance tuning, conducting performance testing on applications, getting real-time traces, and gaining data insights. It helps in improving throughput and tuning infrastructure. The trace metrics and data collected provide valuable insights.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution offers very detailed metrics for their services."

"The monitoring features are valuable."

"It is very easy to use; as a monitoring tool, whenever your system experiences issues, it will notify you and is directly linked to your service."

"Every time we get an alarm or have an incident, CloudWatch is always there. We use it not only for resources we've spun up in the cloud, but also for some of our on-premises resources."

"We can create events and alerts. We use the information to dive down into the infrastructure performance."

"Amazon CloudWatch's best feature stems from its ability to monitor app performance."

"Most of it's around optimizing utilization, their cloud utilization. They're making sure that they're getting the most out of their in-cloud environments and their instances. Making sure that there's no strange behavior in the environment."

"I have found the memory metrics and the CPU metrics valuable."

More Amazon CloudWatch pros

"AWS X-Ray is a strong solution and has a smooth integration process."

"AWS X-Ray's endpoints and user monitoring are considered the most valuable features."

"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."

"AWS X-Ray shows us exactly when there are delays, helping us understand the depth of issues and what is happening point-to-point."

"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."

More AWS X-Ray pros

Cons

"Amazon CloudWatch charges extra for custom metrics, which is a significant disadvantage."

"When connecting to Google Cloud, there is no visibility or traceability from Google Cloud into CloudWatch."

"Adding conditional expressions would enhance its functionality."

"What would make Amazon CloudWatch better is if it includes more on-site checks, particularly status checks on the CPU, network input/output, etc. It would also be helpful if there's built-in swap space, disk, and memory monitoring in Amazon CloudWatch because, at the moment, my team has to configure it manually through a shell script."

"I would like to monitor inbound and outbound transfer. I would also like to control the traffic for load balancing."

"This product lacks some features: real-time data stream monitoring, application performance monitoring, mobile app monitoring, and live dashboards. Its workflows also need improvement."

"The product's configuration has some challenges. The solution needs to be more user-friendly."

"Amazon CloudWatch needs improvement. The main thing is we have noticed missing logs."

More Amazon CloudWatch 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."

"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."

"Compared to other open-source tools, AWS X-Ray needs improvement in providing discounts."

"They can improve how traces are sent to other providers."

"A significant downside is that it is very expensive."

"I do not have any notes in terms of improvements."

"AWS X-Ray should improve its implementation process to make it easier for developers."

"The user interface is sometimes kind of confusing to understand. It's not very user-friendly."

More AWS X-Ray cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its pricing is reasonable. It is sometimes tricky, but it is reasonable as compared to others."

"The pricing model is pay-as-you-go so you have to be mindful of usage to manage costs."

"It is a free-of-charge service."

"The price of Amazon CloudWatch is reasonable for detailed basic monitoring."

"I consider it as a medium-priced solution."

"Amazon CloudWatch has very cheap pricing, and it hardly costs my company $25-$30 a month for fifty systems, so it's pretty affordable."

"The price of Amazon CloudWatch is reasonable. When the rate of data collection is done the price will increase. The price is less than other solutions."

"The pricing can be considered reasonable, especially when already operating on a cloud platform."

More Amazon CloudWatch 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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	24

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Large Enterprise	3

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon CloudWatch?

The monitoring features are valuable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon CloudWatch?

No specific setup costs were mentioned.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon CloudWatch?

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS X-Ray?

While I have not compared it with GCP or Azure ( /products/microsoft-azure-reviews ), AWS generally offers cost-effective services. Some services, like Athena ( /products/odyssey-software-athena-eo...

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS X-Ray?

The challenges we faced with AWS X-Ray were that some of the AWS services we were using did not support it, which we discovered at a later stage. This was potentially a design consideration we shou...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for AWS X-Ray?

I have been using AWS X-Ray for creating insights to our applications we have developed. It is used to correlate different services in AWS when a transaction happens, allowing us to see the flow of...

See all answers

Comparisons

Grafana Loki vs Amazon CloudWatch

Compared 21% of the time

Amazon OpenSearch Service vs Amazon CloudWatch

Compared 12% of the time

Zabbix vs Amazon CloudWatch

Compared 9% of the time

Dynatrace vs Amazon CloudWatch

Compared 6% of the time

Datadog vs Amazon CloudWatch

Compared 5% of the time

More Amazon CloudWatch Competitors

Datadog vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 19% of the time

Sentry vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 18% of the time

Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 9% of the time

New Relic vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 8% of the time

Azure Monitor vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 7% of the time

More AWS X-Ray Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon CloudWatch

October 2025

Download Amazon CloudWatch product report

Buyer's Guide

AWS X-Ray

October 2025

Download AWS X-Ray product report

Overview

Amazon CloudWatch integrates seamlessly with AWS, providing real-time monitoring and alerting features. Its interface supports task automation, enhancing troubleshooting and analytics capabilities, while offering strong security and scalability at a cost-effective rate.

Amazon CloudWatch is an impactful platform for monitoring AWS resources and managing application performance. It simplifies infrastructure performance monitoring by providing comprehensive analytics capabilities, including application insights and event scheduling. Users appreciate CloudWatch for its detailed metrics, dashboards, and support in issuing alerts to detect anomalies. It efficiently tracks performance, optimizes resource utilization, and ensures service availability. CloudWatch is recognized for its robust alerting features and integration with other AWS services, further supporting its resource monitoring capabilities. However, there is room for improvement in dashboard customization, log streaming speed, and integration with non-AWS services. Enhancements in API integration, machine learning features, and support for third-party tools are also desired.

What features does Amazon CloudWatch offer?

Seamless Integration: Works effortlessly with AWS for cohesive service management.
Advanced Metrics: Provides detailed monitoring of CPU, memory, and more.
Real-time Monitoring: Offers up-to-the-minute alerts on infrastructure status.
Dashboards: User-friendly and informative for quick insights.
Automation: Supports task automation for efficient troubleshooting.

What benefits does Amazon CloudWatch provide?

Cost-effectiveness: Efficient resource monitoring without high costs.
Scalability: Easily adapts to growing infrastructure needs.
Security: Strong protocols for safe monitoring activities.
Improved Performance: Enhances application insights and operational efficiency.
Operational Insights: Provides comprehensive logging and performance analysis.

Industries implementing Amazon CloudWatch often focus on optimizing IT infrastructure. Companies in sectors like finance and e-commerce rely on its monitoring and alerting capabilities to ensure service uptime and performance. The platform's automation and analytics features empower teams to proactively manage performance and detect potential issues promptly.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

AWS X-Ray is a powerful debugging and performance analysis tool offered by Amazon Web Services. It allows developers to trace requests made to their applications and identify bottlenecks and issues.

With X-Ray, developers can visualize the entire request flow and pinpoint the exact location where errors occur. It provides detailed insights into the performance of individual components and helps optimize the overall application performance.

X-Ray integrates seamlessly with other AWS services, making it easy to trace requests across different services and identify dependencies. It also offers a comprehensive set of APIs and SDKs, enabling developers to instrument their applications and capture valuable data for analysis. With its user-friendly interface and powerful features, AWS X-Ray is a valuable tool for developers looking to improve the performance and reliability of their applications.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus

COMCAST, ConnectWise, skyscanner, AirAsia, cookpad, cimpress, VTEX, zowdow

Buyer's Guide

AWS X-Ray vs. Amazon CloudWatch

September 2025

Free Report: AWS X-Ray vs. Amazon CloudWatch

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