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

Amazon CloudWatch vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

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
6.3
Splunk Enterprise Security improves efficiency and threat detection, reducing time and costs despite its expense for larger organizations.
Amazon CloudWatch offers cost-saving advantages by being an inbuilt solution that requires no separate setup or maintenance for monitoring tasks.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
The documentation for Splunk Enterprise Security is outstanding. It is well-organized and easy to access.
DevOps&Cloud Engineer Mentee at CertDirectory.io
We couldn't calculate what would have been the cost if they had actually gotten compromised; however, they were in the process, so every investment was returned immediately.
Business Development Manager at Axians Germany
On average, my SecOps team takes probably at least a quarter of the time, if not more, to remediate security incidents with Splunk Enterprise Security compared to our previous solution.
IT Orchestration Architect at Penn State University
 

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
6.3
Splunk Enterprise Security is highly rated for support expertise, though some users report delays and inconsistent experiences.
In recent years, due to business expansion, knowledge levels among support engineers seem to vary.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
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.
founder, ceo at Techrev Solutions Pvt Ltd
We have paid for Splunk support, and we’re not on the free tier hoping for assistance; we are a significant customer and invest a lot in this service.
Senior System Administrator at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
I have had nothing but good experiences with Splunk support, receiving timely and helpful replies.
Cyber Security Associate at SAP
We've had great customer success managers who have helped us navigate scaling from 600 gigs to 30 terabytes.
Principal Engineer at Aviatrix
 

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
7.4
Splunk Enterprise Security offers excellent scalability, managing large data volumes and supporting effortless growth across industries.
It is already there as a managed service from AWS.
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
Amazon CloudWatch's scalability is managed by AWS.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
We currently rely on disaster recovery and backup recovery, which takes time to recover, during which you're basically blind, so I'm pushing my leadership team to switch over to a clustering environment for constant availability.
IT Security Engineer at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
It is one of the things that separates it from other tooling, and if not, it is the most scalable solution out there.
Systems Development Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
They struggle a bit with pure virtual environments, but in terms of how much they can handle, it is pretty good.
CTO at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

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
7.5
Splunk Enterprise Security is praised for stability and reliability, despite challenges with resource demands and custom configurations.
I sometimes notice slowness when Amazon CloudWatch agents are installed on machines with less capacity, causing me to use other monitoring tools.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
They test it very thoroughly before release, and our customers have Splunk running for months without issues.
Splunk System Engineer at a non-tech company with 11-50 employees
Splunk has been very reliable and very consistent.
Principal Engineer at Aviatrix
We need more SMEs, and there is no mechanism to tell us about indexer or search head issues.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

Users seek better customization, visualization, and integration in CloudWatch, citing high costs, steep learning curve, and scalability challenges.
Splunk Enterprise Security needs UI improvements, better integration, richer documentation, competitive pricing, and enhanced AI and threat detection.
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.
founder, ceo at Techrev Solutions Pvt Ltd
We are in a process of integrating Grafana, Loki, and Prometheus to have better visualization on Amazon CloudWatch.
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
Maybe Amazon Web Services can improve by providing a library for CloudWatch with some useful features.
Senior Software Engineer at Carnera
Improving the infrastructure behind Splunk Enterprise Security is vital—enhanced cores, CPUs, and memory should be prioritized to support better processing power.
Resident Consultant (Security Analyst) at helpag
Splunk Enterprise Security is not something that automatically picks things; you have to set up use cases, update data models, and link the right use cases to the right data models for those detections to happen.
Security & Risk Analyst at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
For any future enhancements or features, such as MLTK and SOAR platform integration, we need more visibility, training, and certification for the skilled professionals who are working.
Security Consultant at Matiq
 

Setup Cost

Amazon CloudWatch pricing is variable, with costs ranging from $25 to $350, depending on usage and AWS service integration.
Splunk Enterprise Security offers robust insights but can be costly for high data volumes, challenging affordability for smaller businesses.
Overall, the pricing of Amazon CloudWatch is very expensive.
founder, ceo at Techrev Solutions Pvt Ltd
Amazon CloudWatch charges more for custom metrics as well as for changes in the timeline.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
I saw clients spend two million dollars a year just feeding data into the Splunk solution.
CTO at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The platform requires significant financial investment and resources, making it expensive despite its comprehensive features.
System Engineer - Security Presales at Raya Integration
I find it to be affordable, which is why every industry uses it.
Vice President Research And Development at OSINT Ambition
 

Valuable Features

Amazon CloudWatch offers real-time data, AWS integration, efficient monitoring, user-friendly interface, and versatile dashboards for enhanced system performance.
Splunk Enterprise Security offers real-time threat detection, customization, and integration, enhancing security operations and data management capabilities.
Amazon CloudWatch allows me to set up and view even historical logs, which is one of the features I find valuable.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
If there is a CPU spike or system issues, we set alarms to notify us if the system is going down or not reachable.
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
I like its filtering capability and its ability to give the cyber engine insights.
Senior Software Engineer at Carnera
This capability is useful for performance monitoring and issue identification.
Staff Performance Engineer at ServiceNow
I assess Splunk Enterprise Security's insider threat detection capabilities for helping to find unknown threats and anomalous user behavior as great.
Splunk System Engineer at a non-tech company with 11-50 employees
Splunk Enterprise Security provides the foundation for unified threat detection, investigation, and response, enabling fast identification of critical issues.
Specialist-Infrastructure Opertions at Allianz Technology
 

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)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Log Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
374
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 2.1%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 7.3%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security7.3%
Amazon CloudWatch2.1%
Other90.6%
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.
reviewer1469784 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Helps us detect cyber threats quickly and integrate multiple feeds effectively
Overall, the product is good, but when it comes to some infrastructure issues, we have to dig into more logs. There is no straightforward indication of an issue. Health check kind of dashboards are not available. More AI would help us, and more optimization, since security products run more queries. The AI module could suggest solutions, optimizing queries or workload balancing. If the product itself advises on running queries during peak times, it would be similar to what ChatGPT currently offers. We see quite a few issues on stability. Even last week, we faced something, and identifying bottlenecks is not easy. We need more SMEs, and there is no mechanism to tell us about indexer or search head issues. Self-monitoring dashboards could be beneficial. The technical support still requires more improvement. Often, primary support takes a lot of time and forwards most solutions to the engineering side. The primary support team has very limited knowledge to provide.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Log Management solutions are best for your needs.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Feb 26, 2015
HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. ​McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm
We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Transportation Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

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 Business109
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise263
 

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 SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudWatch vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.