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Amazon CloudWatch vs Grafana Loki 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
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (13th), Cloud Monitoring Software (11th)
Grafana Loki
Ranking in Log Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 2.1%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana Loki is 7.9%, up from 6.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Grafana Loki7.9%
Amazon CloudWatch2.1%
Other90.0%
Log Management
 

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.
Volodymyr Bondarchuk - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrations enhance monitoring but problem-solving proves challenging
Different types of integrations with various sources are the most helpful and useful features of Grafana Loki that I found for myself. As part of Kubernetes technology, I noticed benefits from using this product such as availability, configuration balancing, high availability solutions for high performance, and failover clustering. It provides a clear picture about the state of the system and gives needed information for taking action and quickly fixing problems.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"CloudWatch provides essential monitoring capabilities that integrate seamlessly with other AWS services."
"The most valuable features of Amazon CloudWatch are metrics, dashboards, alarms, logs, events, logs insight, and application insights."
"The most valuable part is the metrics part, which is really good."
"We have found the pricing to be reasonable."
"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 scalability of Amazon CloudWatch rates as high scalability, scoring a perfect ten."
"I have found the memory metrics and the CPU metrics valuable."
"Different types of integrations with various sources are the most helpful and useful features of Grafana Loki that I found for myself."
"The most valuable feature of Grafana Loki is the dashboards which are really simple to create."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the tool's GUI. The solution's GUI is very user-friendly."
"The product's most valuable features are ease of installation, management, and reporting. It has an efficient ability to set thresholds for alerts, as well."
"The log collection feature is good and the solution is easily understandable. v"
"The most valuable feature is the capability to set up alerts, which becomes necessary when we need to receive notifications for specific events."
"We are using Grafana Loki as a database for real-time metrics."
"The effectiveness of filters is pivotal for optimizing the search process and extracting the specific information we need from the extensive log data."
 

Cons

"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."
"The solution could benefit from a price decrease."
"Right now, in relation to monitoring services, there are too many services and too many metrics per service."
"The product should provide more features."
"There is room for improvement in terms of stability."
"We'd like the interface to be as easy as Datadog."
"Adding conditional expressions would enhance its functionality."
"Better reporting is always something needed. That could be an answer to just about anything. But you always want better reporting, better dashboards, things that are just more dynamic and more accessible."
"It would be beneficial if Loki could directly access Windows Server logs or events directly from the servers."
"We had a well-structured dashboard with a functional query. However, an issue arose when the Kubernetes pod restarted. The statistics from our Grafana query would reset, dropping to zero and starting anew. This was particularly noticeable with linear graphs, which are expected to show consistent growth."
"In Grafana Loki, the creation of metrics is not so easy, making it an area that could be made easier."
"We encountered certain limitations when it came to alerting, particularly when dealing with specific data sources."
"I do not see any areas for improvement at the moment."
"It's not intended for proprietary services, so you have to struggle with configuration a lot."
"The correlation of requests is not simple in Grafana Loki and can be improved."
"Visualization-wise, Grafana Loki's dashboard looks a little outdated compared to other open-source visualization tools like Chronograf."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is okay for me."
"Its pricing is reasonable. It is sometimes tricky, but it is reasonable as compared to others."
"The solution is expensive."
"It is a free-of-charge service."
"The pricing can be considered reasonable, especially when already operating on a cloud platform."
"The product's cost is relatively inexpensive."
"The tool is not expensive."
"I consider it as a medium-priced solution."
"I use the open-source version of the product."
"The solution is open source."
"I use the solution's open-source version. Grafana Loki is a completely free solution for me."
"The pricing structure varies based on the number of users; there might be specific taxes to pay for it."
"Grafana Loki is an open-source solution."
"You can use the free version of Grafana Loki on-premises."
"Grafana Loki is a free, open-source solution."
"We use a free version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
5%
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
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 Business7
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise3
 

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 Grafana Loki?
We are using Grafana Loki as a database for real-time metrics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana Loki?
Since it is an open source tool, there are no charges or fees.
What needs improvement with Grafana Loki?
I have no ideas at this moment about what could be improved in Grafana Loki.
 

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. Grafana Loki and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.