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Amazon CloudWatch vs Logstash comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (20th), Cloud Monitoring Software (14th)
Logstash
Ranking in Log Management
30th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 1.5%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Logstash is 0.9%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon CloudWatch1.5%
Logstash0.9%
Other97.6%
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.
reviewer2727468 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Application Engineer at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
Transforms logs for real-time insights and seamless reporting
Logstash is used for transforming logs, and you can use many plugins in Logstash. Logstash works with configuration files that contain three main parts: an input part, a filter part, and an output part. In the input part, we can take logs from many sources such as Beats, files, or Kafka. The filter part is used to filter the logs that are shipped from Beats. From my understanding and experience with Logstash, it is usually used for processing logic, meaning I can control what fields should be transferred to Elastic and what fields shouldn't be transferred. This is the main function I use Logstash for. Elastic is a famous open-source searching engine that helps operation teams speed up the investigation process and provides real-time insights for performance reporting.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Scheduling is a valuable feature."
"The tool's UI is good. One can scroll through the logs very easily."
"There is a clear return on investment, as you can reduce a lot of manual staff and physical staff monitoring by getting CloudWatch to do that work for you and save a lot based on that."
"Amazon CloudWatch is a cheap and easy-to-use solution."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is the monitoring and UI."
"What I would advise anyone looking into using Amazon CloudWatch is to go for it especially when you're on the AWS environment."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is its ease of use and logs. You do not have to go to each separate system to see the logs, such as Syslog and they are located in one dashboard GUI."
"It's a very simple logging system."
"We have three or four Logstash servers for high availability."
"Everything aligns well with improving our organization."
"The functionality of Logstash is quite easy to implement and the plugin ecosystem of Logstash is great, with plugins for shell script monitoring and SQL monitoring working well with the tool."
"Logstash has numerous plugins for inputs and outputs, allowing it to work well in environments that do not contain other Elastic components."
"I can collect logs from various data sources, including hardware."
"The transformation means we ship the logs in the way that we want them to be presented in Kibana, which is the main function we use Logstash for."
 

Cons

"Incorporating a straightforward method or a plug-and-play solution for integrating these databases with our systems, facilitating smooth data transfer, and enabling the creation of dashboards for monitoring and analysis would be beneficial."
"The product's configuration has some challenges. The solution needs to be more user-friendly."
"I think the machine learning aspect of it probably does help because machine learning is not really machine learning."
"The solution's pricing is a bit higher."
"The solution's auto-scaling could be improved."
"The solution should provide human-readable metrics."
"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."
"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 product needs to improve its compatibility."
"There can be a UI to implement with Logstash. Currently, I have to work with config files and everything."
"An enhancement we could implement is the ability to cluster Logstash to exist in more than one node."
"Almost all the research can be very bad. We still have a problem with importing the log system."
"Elastic does not provide proper support for Logstash worldwide, and I rate their technical support as one out of ten."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Amazon CloudWatch is reasonable for detailed basic monitoring."
"Its pricing is reasonable. It is sometimes tricky, but it is reasonable as compared to others."
"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 tool is not expensive."
"The pricing model is pay-as-you-go so you have to be mindful of usage to manage costs."
"The pricing can be considered reasonable, especially when already operating on a cloud platform."
"It’s an open-source solution."
"The price of Amazon CloudWatch is reasonable. When the rate of data collection is done the price will increase. The price is less than other solutions."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Transportation Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
No data available
 

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 ...
What needs improvement with Logstash?
Customization can be automated with Logstash, but it is at the developer's disposal. The developer has to do it, not the tool as such. There is scope for optimization, but that is all outside the t...
What is your primary use case for Logstash?
The purposes for which I am using Logstash largely include log aggregation and application monitoring.
What advice do you have for others considering Logstash?
I am using Logstash for log management and also implement it. Logstash can be deployed both on-cloud and on-premises. On a scale of 1-10, I rate Logstash an 8.
 

Comparisons

 

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. Logstash and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
899,283 professionals have used our research since 2012.