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Amazon CloudWatch vs Elastic Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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
6.0
Elastic Security provides satisfactory ROI and cost savings, though users experience varied support levels and payback periods.
Amazon CloudWatch offers cost-saving advantages by being an inbuilt solution that requires no separate setup or maintenance for monitoring tasks.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
It does not require hefty security budgets and can be deployed for enterprise security effectively.
Assistant Director at PTA
 

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
6.4
Elastic Security support is inconsistent; users favor community and documentation, while premium users seek more responsive and personalized help.
In recent years, due to business expansion, knowledge levels among support engineers seem to vary.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
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.
founder, ceo at Techrev Solutions Pvt Ltd
Support is prompt and helpful.
Senior Cyber Security Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Most of the time when my team encounters issues, they receive responses within 24 hours.
Assistant Director at PTA
I have not faced any difficulties with Elastic Security, as we have a pretty good support service from them.
Chief Product Officer at ClusterPower
 

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
7.3
Elastic Security offers scalable solutions adaptable to various environments, praised for flexibility and requiring careful planning for integration.
It is already there as a managed service from AWS.
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
Amazon CloudWatch's scalability is managed by AWS.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
It allows us to think about specific use cases, such as gathering malicious IPs in a single view and analyzing threats based on geolocation.
Assistant Director at PTA
Elastic Security is quite scalable.
Chief Product Officer at ClusterPower
 

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
7.7
Elastic Security is generally stable and reliable but can face challenges with big data and requires careful configuration.
I sometimes notice slowness when Amazon CloudWatch agents are installed on machines with less capacity, causing me to use other monitoring tools.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
In terms of stability, I would rate Elastic a solid eight out of ten.
Senior Cyber Security Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Users seek better customization, visualization, and integration in CloudWatch, citing high costs, steep learning curve, and scalability challenges.
Elastic Security needs improvements in authentication, usability, automation, scalability, integration, and pricing, with user-friendly dashboards and documentation.
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.
founder, ceo at Techrev Solutions Pvt Ltd
We are in a process of integrating Grafana, Loki, and Prometheus to have better visualization on Amazon CloudWatch.
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
Maybe Amazon Web Services can improve by providing a library for CloudWatch with some useful features.
Senior Software Engineer at Carnera
CrowdStrike and Defender have more established threat intelligence integration due to having a larger client base.
Senior Cyber Security Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
My security testing team continuously reports vulnerabilities, and we have to fix and update the versions frequently.
Assistant Director at PTA
Machine learning algorithms become better with time; as they ingest a huge volume of data, they become better.
Chief Product Officer at ClusterPower
 

Setup Cost

Amazon CloudWatch pricing is variable, with costs ranging from $25 to $350, depending on usage and AWS service integration.
Elastic Security provides a free open-source option, competitive pricing, and subscription plans, appealing to cost-conscious enterprises.
Overall, the pricing of Amazon CloudWatch is very expensive.
founder, ceo at Techrev Solutions Pvt Ltd
Amazon CloudWatch charges more for custom metrics as well as for changes in the timeline.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
The pricing is reasonable, especially for Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs), making it a viable option for businesses building their security infrastructure.
Senior Cyber Security Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
This is beneficial for SMEs as they do not need extensive budgets for security solutions.
Assistant Director at PTA
Elastic Security is considered cost-effective, especially at lower EPS levels.
Performance Practice Specialist at a local government with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

Amazon CloudWatch offers real-time data, AWS integration, efficient monitoring, user-friendly interface, and versatile dashboards for enhanced system performance.
Elastic Security provides scalable, customizable threat response with fast search, real-time analysis, and strong community support for actionable insights.
Amazon CloudWatch allows me to set up and view even historical logs, which is one of the features I find valuable.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
If there is a CPU spike or system issues, we set alarms to notify us if the system is going down or not reachable.
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
I like its filtering capability and its ability to give the cyber engine insights.
Senior Software Engineer at Carnera
Elastic Security offers good insight regarding alerts, reports, and cases.
Senior Cyber Security Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Elastic Security offers advanced features such as machine learning and integration with ChatGPT.
Performance Practice Specialist at a local government with 10,001+ employees
We require rapid processing speed for alerts and event data, and Elastic Security is very efficient at handling this level of data.
Assistant Director at PTA
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon CloudWatch
Ranking in Log Management
18th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (21st), Cloud Monitoring Software (15th)
Elastic Security
Ranking in Log Management
11th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (7th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (19th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (11th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 1.7%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Security is 3.0%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Security3.0%
Amazon CloudWatch1.7%
Other95.3%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Azam S M - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Laurentiu Popescu - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Product Officer at ClusterPower
Has improved threat detection with deep log analysis and streamlined investigation workflows
The most useful features I find in Elastic Security are the forensic ones that allow us to carry deeper analysis into the logs for in-depth investigations, and the dashboards, with the reporting dashboard being quite user-friendly. Elastic Security is quite good at identifying threats, as it is part of the deep investigation tool that I mentioned before. Unless we need to look further into a certain log, we can carry out a deeper analysis and forensics on those particular logs. I can assess the impact of Elastic Security's real-time data analysis on our threat response efficiency as working pretty good. We are looking for real-time analysis because we have a continuous inflow of logs from different sources: from our cloud, from Active Directory, from our network. So it works pretty well.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Transportation Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

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 Business40
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise15
 

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 is your primary use case for Amazon CloudWatch?
Amazon CloudWatch is a very small service that AWS provides. It is a monitoring service for applications within the AWS cloud, and we can integrate external applications using the APIs or SDK. The ...
Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
What do you like most about Elastic Security?
Elastic provides the capability to index quickly due to the reverse indexes it offers. This data is crucial as it contains critical information. The reverse index allows fast data indexing because ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Security?
I am satisfied with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing cost. It is a pure 10.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Elastic SIEM, ELK Logstash
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus
Texas A&M, U.S. Air Force, NuScale Power, Martin's Point Health Care
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudWatch vs. Elastic Security and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
886,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.