Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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:
 

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
1.0
Grafana Loki offers high ROI with quick setup and free on-premises version, enhancing cost savings and issue resolution efficiency.
Amazon CloudWatch offers cost-saving advantages by being an inbuilt solution that requires no separate setup or maintenance for monitoring tasks.
Loki leads to significant cost savings by reducing server downtime and aiding engineers in prompt issue resolution.
 

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
7.2
Grafana Loki's support leans on community resources, though official support is seldom used with mixed reviews on efficacy.
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.
We have not had to open any tickets yet, as we solve issues through forums and wikis.
I usually do not use official support; I typically rely on community blogs and forums for support of Grafana Loki.
 

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
6.5
Grafana Loki is highly scalable, performing reliably across infrastructures, efficiently handling diverse organizational log management needs.
It is already there as a managed service from AWS.
Amazon CloudWatch's scalability is managed by AWS.
Loki offers great scalability, allowing us to manage and compress logs extensively.
 

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
Grafana Loki is generally stable but faces mixed reviews on reliability, with some users suggesting improvements for consistent performance.
I sometimes notice slowness when Amazon CloudWatch agents are installed on machines with less capacity, causing me to use other monitoring tools.
 

Room For Improvement

Users seek better customization, visualization, and integration in CloudWatch, citing high costs, steep learning curve, and scalability challenges.
Grafana Loki needs improvements in security, ease of use, scalability, stability, and enterprise features to address setup complexity challenges.
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.
Improvements could be made in the enablement of the product, addressing the complexity of implementing these tools.
It would be beneficial if Loki could directly access Windows Server logs or events directly from the servers.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon CloudWatch pricing is variable, with costs ranging from $25 to $350, depending on usage and AWS service integration.
Enterprise buyers prefer Grafana Loki due to its open-source costs, competitive cloud pricing, and affordable enterprise features.
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 cloud version is competitively priced compared to other market solutions.
Since it is an open source tool, there are no charges or fees.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon CloudWatch offers real-time data, AWS integration, efficient monitoring, user-friendly interface, and versatile dashboards for enhanced system performance.
Grafana Loki offers efficient log management with user-friendly dashboards, seamless integrations, cost-effectiveness, and high availability supporting multi-cluster environments.
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.
It provides a clear picture about the state of the system and gives needed information for taking action and quickly fixing problems.
Grafana Loki is notably cost-effective.
The most valuable part of Loki is the ability to filter logs by keywords and devices.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon CloudWatch
Ranking in Log Management
14th
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
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 2.1%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana Loki is 7.6%, up from 6.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Grafana Loki7.6%
Amazon CloudWatch2.1%
Other90.3%
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.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Log Management solutions are best for your needs.
873,637 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
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 Enterprise4
 

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 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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudWatch vs. Grafana Loki and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.
873,637 professionals have used our research since 2012.