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Amazon CloudWatch vs Elastic Stack 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon CloudWatch
Ranking in Log Management
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (13th), Cloud Monitoring Software (10th)
Elastic Stack
Ranking in Log Management
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 2.2%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Stack is 5.4%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

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…
Balamurali P - PeerSpot reviewer
Advanced query capabilities enhance monitoring effectiveness
Elastic Stack should be more simplified with ready-to-use widgets. Also, incorporating AI capabilities is essential as monitoring and observability tools are now adding AI features. Ideally, it should evolve into a full-stack observability tool, similar to AppDynamics or DynaTrace, which offers a solution that includes ISP provider, API monitoring, and infrastructure monitoring.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution gives us very good real-time data."
"The initial setup is easy."
"You can enable alarms and metrics, and it has robust integration with AWS services. You can also trigger events. For example, if the CPU utilization is above 80%, it can launch a new instance for you."
"What I found most valuable in Amazon CloudWatch is that it gives you detailed information, which I found helpful because it can even provide you with data for the past one minute, which is quite granular. That was what helped me most in terms of finding the root causes. Task automation is another valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch."
"The tool's UI is good. One can scroll through the logs very easily."
"The solution offers very detailed metrics for their services."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is collecting the logs from Lambda."
"The scripting model in Elastic Stack allows me to query logs and then put the data into Grafana."
"The tool is huge, and it performs brilliantly. I tested it for malware, and within two weeks of launching, the product alerted me about a network intrusion. This was a tough test for it, but it performed admirably. The alerting system is excellent, and searching through logs is incredibly efficient. What's impressive is that all three products or options are integrated into one solution. This means I don't need separate logging, monitoring, or antivirus solutions."
"The machine learning capabilities are valuable."
"Elastic Stack is mainly used to monitor servers and APIs. It helps ensure the software's availability and sends notifications at the right time so the system is not down for a long time. The tool's stability and advanced features, such as anomaly detection, are the most valuable features. The benefit of using it is real-time monitoring."
"I have experienced a return on investment from the use of the solution."
"The detection rules in Elastic Stack are the most valuable feature. The search capabilities are excellent and fast. As we collect logs from workstations and devices, the detection rules run on top of the logs and detect any suspicious activity, raising alerts accordingly. Integration with Elastic Stack depends on the specific integration. Elastic provides some bridging integrations that make it easy, but require custom integration. Most integrations are simple, but customization can be challenging because we need to do some parsing. There's something called Elastic Common Schema, and we need to parse the source logs to match this schema, which can be a bit challenging."
"The biggest strength of Elastic Stack is its brilliant archiving capabilities."
"Elastic Stack has made a positive impact as we can now see our logs."
 

Cons

"The solution should provide human-readable metrics."
"There could be further enhancements through CloudWatch's partnerships."
"Improvement of SSSD logs would be beneficial."
"Amazon CloudWatch needs improvement. The main thing is we have noticed missing logs."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing, because they have a premium version, but it's not really a premium version. It's just an enhanced monitoring version, and it can be a bit expensive depending on your usage."
"The graphical interface has room for improvement. CloudWatch only gives you a breakdown of what's wrong. However, it would be nice if it could automatically remedy the problems it identifies. You should be able to configure it so that when a specific condition arises, it will take a predefined action."
"There's a learning curve with Amazon CloudWatch since we have to learn to write the queries to extract the keys and logs."
"Right now, in relation to monitoring services, there are too many services and too many metrics per service."
"Support could be improved. The error code is not helpful. We have to ask for it or pass it on to community forums."
"It lacks a clear NDR (Network Detection and Response) feature. If Elastic could enhance this aspect, it would significantly boost its capabilities."
"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."
"The implementation of dashboards in the solution needs to be made easier...I had some issues with the ports and configuration since it was kind of complex to implement with Docker."
"The stability of the solution is rated as three or four out of ten as we frequently encounter issues."
"The main issue related to Elastic Stack is in the area of its licensing."
"The tool's pricing can be improved."
"AI-enablement would be a big improvement in Elastic Stack...If there is room for an ML model in Elastic Stack, then it would be good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The price of Amazon CloudWatch is reasonable for detailed basic monitoring."
"We have monthly licensing costs. The licenses are probably in the vicinity of about $300 - $350/month."
"The tool is not expensive."
"The product's cost is relatively inexpensive."
"The price is okay for me."
"It is a free-of-charge service."
"The pricing is average."
"I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"If I compare Elastic Stack to the other products in the market, I would say that the tool is available at a competitive price."
"I used the open-source version of Elastic Stack, because of which I did not have to pay anything."
"The product is expensive."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Ultimately, the pricing depends upon the capacity planning that the enterprise architect does."
"We are using the open-source community version of the product."
"It depends on the specifics, but generally, Elastic is economical for certain use cases."
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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%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

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 Elastic Stack?
The tool is huge, and it performs brilliantly. I tested it for malware, and within two weeks of launching, the product alerted me about a network intrusion. This was a tough test for it, but it per...
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?
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 a...
 

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: June 2025.
860,632 professionals have used our research since 2012.