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Amazon CloudWatch vs Elastic Observability comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
Amazon CloudWatch reduces monitoring costs, boosts operational efficiency, is vital for oversight, but not direct revenue, especially for small projects.
Sentiment score
6.5
Elastic Observability enhances cost-effectiveness by reducing incidents, automating fixes, and visualizing cloud operations, saving time and resources.
Amazon CloudWatch offers cost-saving advantages by being an inbuilt solution that requires no separate setup or maintenance for monitoring tasks.
Elastic Observability has saved us time as it's much easier to find relevant pieces across the system in one screen compared to our own software, and it has saved resources too since the same resources can use less time.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.4
Amazon CloudWatch support is reliable, with varying response times and expertise based on support level, premium ensures faster help.
Sentiment score
7.6
Elastic Observability customers appreciate their helpful support, quick responses, and valuable documentation, despite some challenges in complex issue resolution.
In recent years, due to business expansion, knowledge levels among support engineers seem to vary.
While using their cloud and cloud resources, if you have an issue with CloudWatch, you must pay additional monthly fees to get time from dedicated tech support.
Elastic support really struggles in complex situations to resolve issues.
Their excellent documentation typically helps me solve any issues I encounter.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Amazon CloudWatch excels in scalability and performance, efficiently managing data and adapts quickly to diverse organizational needs.
Sentiment score
7.2
Elastic Observability is praised for scalability and ease of deployment, despite potential complexities and internal process limitations.
It is already there as a managed service from AWS.
Amazon CloudWatch's scalability is managed by AWS.
I rate the scalability of Elastic Observability as a ten, as we have never seen issues even with a lot of data coming in from more customers, provided we have the appropriate configuration.
Elastic Observability seems to have a good scale-out capability.
Elastic Observability is easy in deployment in general for small scale, but when you deploy it at a really large scale, the complexity comes with the customizations.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Amazon CloudWatch is praised for its reliability and performance, though some note occasional data delays and slowness in low-capacity environments.
Sentiment score
8.2
Elastic Observability is stable and reliable, with high user ratings, efficiently handling large data volumes with proper configuration.
I sometimes notice slowness when Amazon CloudWatch agents are installed on machines with less capacity, causing me to use other monitoring tools.
There are some bugs that come with each release, but they are keen always to build major versions and minor versions on time, including the CVE vulnerabilities to fix it.
It is very stable, and I would rate it ten out of ten based on my interaction with it.
I would rate the stability of Elastic Observability as a ten, as we don't experience any issues.
 

Room For Improvement

Users seek better customization, visualization, and integration in CloudWatch, citing high costs, steep learning curve, and scalability challenges.
Elastic Observability needs automation, AI, and customization improvements, addressing complex deployment, market presence, metrics, licensing, and usability issues.
When using third-party dashboards such as Kibana or Grafana and other visualization tools, there should be a way to feed CloudWatch's data and logging capabilities into these visualization tools.
We are in a process of integrating Grafana, Loki, and Prometheus to have better visualization on Amazon CloudWatch.
Maybe Amazon Web Services can improve by providing a library for CloudWatch with some useful features.
For instance, if you have many error logs and want to create a rule with a custom query, such as triggering an alert for five errors in the last hour, all you need to do is open the AI bot, type this question, and it generates an Elastic query for you to use in your alert rules.
It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like network observability, package flow analysis, and device performance data on the infrastructure side.
Some areas such as AI Ops still require data scientists to understand machine learning and AI, and it doesn't have a quick win with no-brainer use cases.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon CloudWatch pricing is variable, with costs ranging from $25 to $350, depending on usage and AWS service integration.
Elastic Observability provides competitive pricing, benefiting large enterprises with comprehensive licensing, but may be costly for smaller users.
Overall, the pricing of Amazon CloudWatch is very expensive.
Amazon CloudWatch charges more for custom metrics as well as for changes in the timeline.
The license is reasonably priced, however, the VMs where we host the solution are extremely expensive, making the overall cost in the public cloud high.
Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing.
Observability is actually cheaper compared to logs because you're not indexing huge blobs of text and trying to parse those.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon CloudWatch offers real-time data, AWS integration, efficient monitoring, user-friendly interface, and versatile dashboards for enhanced system performance.
Elastic Observability excels with flexible integration, powerful search, scalability, real-time insights, affordability, and robust support, enhancing efficiency.
Amazon CloudWatch allows me to set up and view even historical logs, which is one of the features I find valuable.
If there is a CPU spike or system issues, we set alarms to notify us if the system is going down or not reachable.
I like its filtering capability and its ability to give the cyber engine insights.
The most valuable feature is the integrated platform that allows customers to start from observability and expand into other areas like security, EDR solutions, etc.
the most valued feature of Elastic is its log analytics capabilities.
All the features that we use, such as monitoring, dashboarding, reporting, the possibility of alerting, and the way we index the data, are important.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon CloudWatch
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
13th
Ranking in Log Management
16th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Elastic Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
7th
Ranking in Log Management
14th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (10th), Container Monitoring (4th)
 

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 Elastic Observability is 3.9%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Elastic Observability3.9%
Amazon CloudWatch1.7%
Other94.4%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Azam S M - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Stefan Decuypere - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time dashboards and visual insights have streamlined issue analysis and monitoring
After careful consideration about areas for improvement in Elastic Observability, aspects such as pricing, customization, implementation, and scalability could be improved. As a user of the system, I know what it costs but am not directly involved in cost-benefit evaluations or maintenance, which is handled by another team. I develop the visual representation of the data and frankly, I don't see major gaps in my application or anything I would really miss; I appreciate the fast pace of the developments that have occurred in the last couple of years. Regarding room for improvement in Elastic Observability, I would have preferred built-in tools to manage the indexes on deployment for better visual representation, as the initial feedback regarding system performance and data storage was fairly primitive and lacking.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
5%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon CloudWatch?
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 visual...
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?
The problem is their licensing model, which is a bit confusing. Many customers struggle to understand their total cost of ownership because Elastic licensing is not dependent on easy, quantifiable ...
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
Out-of-the-box use cases have room for improvement in Elastic Observability. They don't invest a lot in building out-of-the-box observable use cases, and they are more focusing on giving a very fle...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus
PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudWatch vs. Elastic Observability and other solutions. Updated: October 2025.
872,778 professionals have used our research since 2012.