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Amazon CloudWatch vs Elastic Stack comparison

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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon CloudWatch
Ranking in Log Management
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (22nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (15th)
Elastic Stack
Ranking in Log Management
21st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 1.4%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Stack is 1.7%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon CloudWatch1.4%
Elastic Stack1.7%
Other96.9%
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.
LB
Senior Consultant at Skillfield
Offers robust out-of-the-box integrations and streamlines logging processes effortlessly
There are improvements needed for Elastic Stack. It is mostly based on Lucene, and the heart of Elastic Stack is Lucene, which has some limitations. Anything built on top of Lucene often feels an add-on, and that includes vector databases. Elastic Stack can store vector embeddings as well and perform AI and machine learning tasks out of the box without excessive configuration. The main improvements involve increasing speed and compression capabilities; I have seen databases that claim to achieve significantly better compression. While Elastic Stack can manage vast amounts of data, if the mapping is not specified correctly, the indexing time can be slow, especially with many events per second. Improper mapping usually means that every document received gets indexed for all fields, which is not desired. Elastic consultants typically optimize this, but out of the box, as data volume increases, scaling becomes necessary. They are working on these improvements in new versions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The technical support is fantastic; it's the best ever."
"We use Amazon CloudWatch for logging."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is collecting the logs from Lambda."
"The solution effectively monitors golden signals like CPU, page requests, and queues."
"You can automate actions or use AWS functionalities like auto-scaling, where you can configure the metrics to add more nodes if the threshold is exceeded."
"Our team finds it overall quite useful."
"What my company likes best about Amazon CloudWatch is that it's on AWS. My team also likes it for its log feature. As the solution is on AWS, it also has good pricing and resource availability, plus it's what clients choose. My company also chose AWS for Forge ECS, and at the time, there was a need for the log features provided by Amazon CloudWatch, so it's the solution my team went with."
"The scripting model in Elastic Stack allows me to query logs and then put the data into Grafana."
"It is a very scalable solution...I didn't face any problem with this scalability part of the solution since we only have a few pieces of equipment in our company."
"I have benefited from the security features provided by X-Pack in Elastic Stack, particularly the SIEM capability, which is very good for checking security issues."
"The tool's most powerful aspect is its search engine capability. It's a highly effective and powerful solution for searching. We use it in professional and student projects at universities, and it delivers promising results."
"The only beneficial aspect of Elastic Stack is that it's open source."
"We can group a lot of alarms into one automation alarm supervision. The alarm supervision allows us to put the alarm under the same. It's quite helpful for us. We used that to suppress our alarms. Elastic already provides the agent. It is easy to integrate Elastic Stack with other devices and vendors."
"I have experienced a return on investment from the use of the solution."
"Elastic Stack has made a positive impact as we can now see our logs."
 

Cons

"I think the machine learning aspect of it probably does help because machine learning is not really machine learning."
"There is room for improvement in terms of stability."
"The solution could benefit from a price decrease."
"Amazon CloudWatch has all the data, but to see what is happening, you need some third-party tool."
"The pricing model can get very expensive as the project's scope grows."
"I found several areas for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch. First is that it's tough to track issues and find out where it's going wrong. The process takes longer. For example, if I get an exception error, I read the logs, search, go to AWS Cloud, then to the groups to find the keyword to determine what's wrong. Another area for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch is that it's slow in terms of log streaming. It requires an entire twenty-four hours for scanning, rather than just one hour. This issue can be solved with Elasticsearch streaming with Kibana, but it requires a lot of development effort and integration with Kibana or Splunk, and this also means I need a separate developer and software technical stack to do the indexing and streaming to Kibana. It's a manual effort that you need to do properly, so log streaming should be improved in Amazon CloudWatch. The AWS support person should also have a better understanding of the logs in Amazon CloudWatch. What I'd like added to the solution is a more advanced search function, particularly one that can tell you more information or special information. Right now, the search function is difficult to use because it only gives you limited data. For example, I got an error message saying that the policy wasn't created. I only know the amount the customer paid for the policy, the mobile number, and the customer name, but if I use those details, the information won't show up on the logs. I need to enter more details, so that's the type of fuzzy matching Amazon CloudWatch won't provide. If this type of search functionality is provided, it will be very helpful for businesses and companies that provide professional services to customers, like ours."
"The technical support must be improved."
"It is hard to configure; it is not a straightforward tool."
"Elastic Stack should be more simplified with ready-to-use widgets."
"It should facilitate easier manual integration."
"It lacks a clear NDR (Network Detection and Response) feature. If Elastic could enhance this aspect, it would significantly boost its capabilities."
"There could be better documentation."
"Elastic Stack's search capabilities can be challenging, especially when searching for precise data from past years, such as two or ten years ago. Its indexing performance for exact data retrieval may decrease as the data volume grows. Therefore, I believe there is room for improvement in the product's search functionality. It needs to improve its pricing as well."
"While Elastic Stack can manage vast amounts of data, if the mapping is not specified correctly, the indexing time can be slow, especially with many events per second."
"Elastic Stack should work on their dashboards and integration process."
"The stability of the solution is rated as three or four out of ten as we frequently encounter issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have monthly licensing costs. The licenses are probably in the vicinity of about $300 - $350/month."
"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 product's cost is relatively inexpensive."
"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."
"I consider it as a medium-priced solution."
"The pricing is average."
"Amazon CloudWatch is a cheap solution."
"Ultimately, the pricing depends upon the capacity planning that the enterprise architect does."
"We are using the open-source community version of the product."
"I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"I used the open-source version of Elastic Stack, because of which I did not have to pay anything."
"The product is expensive."
"It depends on the specifics, but generally, Elastic is economical for certain use cases."
"If I compare Elastic Stack to the other products in the market, I would say that the tool is available at a competitive price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon CloudWatch?
The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Amazon CloudWatch has been positive. It was very easy to set up because it is built into AWS and does not require separate licensing, bein...
What needs improvement with Amazon CloudWatch?
For improvements, I think Amazon CloudWatch could enhance certain areas, particularly regarding pricing structure. I wish to see simpler pricing, more intuitive dashboards, easier log queries for b...
What is your primary use case for Amazon CloudWatch?
My main use case for Amazon CloudWatch is the monitoring and analytics of the application servers. I basically use Amazon CloudWatch to monitor the microservices and AWS infrastructure, helping me ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Stack?
My experience with Elastic Stack pricing indicates that it is node-based. While I do not have complete pricing details, they are available online. If I choose Elastic Cloud, it includes licensing a...
What needs improvement with Elastic Stack?
I would like to improve Elastic Stack by addressing the current big problem we face with importing logs and log files, such as syslogs. To import these log files, we need to design the ingest pipel...
What is your primary use case for Elastic Stack?
Elastic Stack is primarily used for everything related to security, including security systems, checking the security system, and also servers and networks.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus
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Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudWatch vs. Elastic Stack and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.