AWS X-Ray vs Apica comparison

Apica and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Apica is ranked #17 with an average rating of 7.7, while Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #16 with an average rating of 7.2. Apica holds a 0.3% mindshare in APM, compared to Amazon Web Services (AWS)’s 3.2% mindshare. Additionally, 81% of Apica users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users who would recommend it.

Apica

Read 11 Apica reviews

666 Views
257 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

AWS X-Ray

Read 10 AWS X-Ray reviews

5,595 Views
4,086 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Apica

AWS X-Ray

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

Apica and AWS X-Ray are two competing solutions for performance monitoring and tracing. Apica shines with user satisfaction in overall support, while AWS X-Ray is preferred due to its extensive features and reliability.

Features: Apica is recognized for synthetic monitoring capabilities, ease of use, and competitive pricing. AWS X-Ray is preferred for comprehensive tracing, deep integration with AWS services, and reliability.

Room for Improvement: Apica could improve dashboard customization, reporting tools, and integration with non-synthetic sources. AWS X-Ray needs better support for non-AWS environments, enhanced documentation, and a more user-friendly interface for monitoring setups.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Apica offers a straightforward deployment process and excellent customer service, facilitating quick adoption. AWS X-Ray's deployment can be complex, particularly outside AWS ecosystems, but its customer support is responsive.

Pricing and ROI: Apica is often recognized for competitive pricing and favorable ROI, particularly for smaller setups. AWS X-Ray tends to be more costly but offers advanced features and integrations, leading to a higher perceived value despite higher costs.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS X-Ray vs. Apica Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS X-Ray vs. Apica

June 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 857,585 peers since 2012

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

Apica

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

17th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (17th), IT Operations Analytics (5th), Observability Pipeline Software (2nd)

AWS X-Ray

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

16th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Apica is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS X-Ray is 3.2%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Punith H K

Senior Systems Engineer at Infosys

Enables users to create scripts easily and provides excellent real-time monitoring features

It is easy to create scripts. We don't have to write any script. Ready-made options are available. We can select, drag, and drop the options, and the script is ready. The solution’s real-time monitoring features have had a huge impact on our service delivery. If we have an application and the script for it, we keep monitoring it. When the script goes red, it indicates that something is not working. So, we check and analyze the applications. We keep track of applications and monitor whether they are live or not. The tool is also useful for monitoring cloud services.

Read full review

Muhmad Tabrez A Deewanji

Lead Software Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Improving performance through efficient trace metrics and data insights

As an application developer and architect, I appreciate AWS X-Ray ( /products/aws-x-ray-reviews ) for checking latency and identifying bottlenecks. I use it for performance tuning, conducting performance testing on applications, getting real-time traces, and gaining data insights. It helps in improving throughput and tuning infrastructure. The trace metrics and data collected provide valuable insights.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is easy to set up and configure."

"You can tell from the operational space of people who are using and consuming this data that they are more integrated. It is not dependent on one team anymore. It saves a lot of time by capturing and pinpointing the exact problem that is happening quickly. We have moved from getting escalations manually to getting escalations synthetically."

"The solution’s real-time monitoring features have had a huge impact on our service delivery."

"It is easy for beginners to learn and use Apica."

"From our standpoint, there are a number of valuable features. The WebHooks are obviously really great. The alert framework is really good and then the reporting and visualizations that you get from the dashboards is good. Those three areas are primarily what my team's focused on in terms of usage from day to day."

"The GUI is powerful and doesn't require scripting or regular expressions. It has a vast finder for correlation, which is easier than other tools like JMeter and LoadRunner. It's also easy to integrate with other tools with a separate execution environment. The tool is also easy to use."

"There are several features that are really good. The first one is the flexibility and the advanced configuration that Apica offers when it comes to configuring synthetic checks. It provides the ability to customize how the check should be performed and it is very flexible in the number of synthetic locations that it can use. It allows us to run scripts from different locations all over the world, and they have a really good number of these locations."

"We see the benefit almost every day. It allows us to be alerted whenever there is a store that is not responding properly around the world. We do have a network operation center (NOC) who receives these alerts, immediately checking if everything is okay."

More Apica pros

"I would give AWS X-Ray a nine out of ten overall."

"AWS X-Ray shows us exactly when there are delays, helping us understand the depth of issues and what is happening point-to-point."

"The most promising feature of AWS X-Ray is that you can debug the issues through the proper logs. You can also get an analysis out of the logs for some use cases, though I have yet to try all the features of AWS X-Ray."

"It is a very scalable solution."

"AWS X-RAY identifies bottlenecks in terms of stability and performance and how long certain data lives in terms of response time and duration."

"The most beneficial feature is that it shows a dashboard for performance intervals, which reveals latencies."

"The error analysis capabilities of X-Ray are really good."

More AWS X-Ray pros

Cons

"The accuracy of alerts can be improved a little bit. Right now, it's pretty good in terms of alerting pretty quickly about failures or changes in response times. However, what we have seen happen is the number of alerts that we are getting is very frequent, and we would like to tone down the number of alerts. That's the only trouble we have. Apica could tone down those settings because there is no option for us to tone it down to a level that would reduce the alerts to a minimum. As a platform, it does send us good alerts, but it could be improved a bit."

"It is difficult to create a script using ZebraTester."

"I have noticed that the tool isn't widely recognized outside our organization. Also, there aren't any tutorials or dedicated resources for this tool, making it challenging for newcomers to learn. It would be beneficial if someone experienced with it could provide guidance."

"The reporting part that we use for our executives needs a bit more customization capabilities. Right now, you can use only the three main templates for reporting. We would like to be able to customize them."

"If you are adding any input file, the tool fails to capture the path."

"We have been focused on reducing polling times for synthetic checks. We have gone from 10 minutes down to five minutes for a pretty broad swath, but there is some appetite to reduce that further, which could be an improvement."

"The tool does not provide automatic correlation features."

"Alerting needs improvement. It's a little noisy. It needs some better options. Currently, they have an issue, when you set up a synthetic monitor, you can set up where it's monitoring from, a data center that Apica owns."

More Apica cons

"A significant downside is that it is very expensive."

"Compared to other open-source tools, AWS X-Ray needs improvement in providing discounts."

"They can improve how traces are sent to other providers."

"AWS X-Ray should improve its implementation process to make it easier for developers."

"Like most Amazon products, the user interface, configuration, and tuning aren't the easiest. That's the biggest reason why people tend to go to products like TerraForm and Terragrunt. We use TerraForm and Terragrunt. So, for setting things up and interacting with X-Ray, it's definitely the user interface that can be better."

"The user interface is sometimes kind of confusing to understand. It's not very user-friendly."

"What needs to be better in AWS X-Ray is the log filtering. Predefined filters could be helpful because the power of analytics comes from how you can filter the data. I also want to see more KPIs from AWS X-Ray."

"Sometimes, the collector agents are confusing to configure initially."

More AWS X-Ray cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is fair. It is neither too cheap nor too expensive."

"I am sure that Apica's price will be lower than LoadRunner."

"Another main difference between Apica and the other products was the cost. We really thought that the balance in Apica between the features and costs was the best among all the products on which we did a PoC."

"The tool is completely free and open source. I've been using it for about two and a half years and installed it on both my personal and client machines without needing a license. All features are available for use without any hidden fees."

"The product is less expensive compared to LoadRunner."

"I know Apica is an expensive solution, but it is worth the money for the service it provides."

"Apica is pretty cost-effective if you buy both solutions together: Synthetic and LoadTest. If you are going for one solution, the cost is on par with any tool in the market."

"The level of alerting accuracy has saved us time and money in operational costs. Overall, it has automated a lot of the manual efforts which have been more complex with some of our other scripting tools or monitors. So, it brings things together by doing things faster and saves us money."

More Apica pricing and cost advice

"As you develop a relationship with Amazon, your pricing gets lower. You get credits for the amount of the system you use, and then if you're the government, you can get government pricing. For commercial users, there's a hump when you go from small to medium to big enterprise. Small businesses can live pretty easily off the free tier in a lot of cases, but when you go from a medium to a big enterprise, it becomes more expensive on a per-user basis. I'd like to see that curve going in a different way where pricing can be driven down while people are trying to adopt the technology."

"The solution is a bit expensive."

"The pricing for AWS X-Ray is a six out of ten."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

857,585 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

31%

Computer Software Company

10%

Media Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Apica Synthetic?

The GUI is powerful and doesn't require scripting or regular expressions. It has a vast finder for correlation, which is easier than other tools like JMeter and LoadRunner. It's also easy to integr...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apica Synthetic?

I know Apica is an expensive solution, but it is worth the money for the service it provides.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Apica Synthetic?

Apica cannot perform endurance or scale-up tests independently. It requires other tools like ALM. When editing scripts, only one can be accessed at a time, risking changes affecting other folders. ...

See all answers

What do you like most about AWS X-Ray?

AWS X-Ray is a strong solution and has a smooth integration process.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS X-Ray?

While I have not compared it with GCP or Azure ( /products/microsoft-azure-reviews ), AWS generally offers cost-effective services. Some services, like Athena ( /products/odyssey-software-athena-eo...

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS X-Ray?

AWS X-Ray should improve its implementation process to make it easier for developers. The current manual instrumentation is challenging compared to the almost automatic instrumentation of other pro...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dynatrace vs Apica

Compared 28% of the time

Cribl vs Apica

Compared 21% of the time

Datadog vs Apica

Compared 15% of the time

AlertSite vs Apica

Compared 13% of the time

Grafana vs Apica

Compared 12% of the time

More Apica Competitors

Datadog vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 21% of the time

Sentry vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 18% of the time

Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 10% of the time

Azure Monitor vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 10% of the time

New Relic vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 9% of the time

More AWS X-Ray Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Apica

June 2025

Download Apica product report

Buyer's Guide

AWS X-Ray

June 2025

Download AWS X-Ray product report

Also Known As

Apica LoadTest, Apica Synthetic

No data available

Overview

Apica offers a unified platform to remove complexity and cost associated with data management. You collect, control, store, and observe your data and can quickly identify and resolve performance issues before they impact the end-user. Apica Ascent swiftly analyzes telemetry data in real-time, enabling prompt issue resolution, while automated root cause analysis, powered by machine learning, streamlines troubleshooting in complex distributed systems. The platform simplifies data collection by automating and managing agents through the platform’s Fleet product. Its Flow product simplifies and optimizes pipeline control with AI and ML to help you easily understand complex workflows. Its Store component allows you to never run out of storage space while you index and store machine data centrally on one platform and reduce costs, and remediate faster. Observe offers modern observability data management, helping you with MELT data, effortless dashboarding, and seamless integration of synthetic and real data.

Experience the Apica Ascent Platform

Apica

AWS X-Ray is a powerful debugging and performance analysis tool offered by Amazon Web Services. It allows developers to trace requests made to their applications and identify bottlenecks and issues.

With X-Ray, developers can visualize the entire request flow and pinpoint the exact location where errors occur. It provides detailed insights into the performance of individual components and helps optimize the overall application performance.

X-Ray integrates seamlessly with other AWS services, making it easy to trace requests across different services and identify dependencies. It also offers a comprehensive set of APIs and SDKs, enabling developers to instrument their applications and capture valuable data for analysis. With its user-friendly interface and powerful features, AWS X-Ray is a valuable tool for developers looking to improve the performance and reliability of their applications.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Sample Customers

HBO, JPMC, Morgan Stanley, Xander, EA Sports, Volvo

COMCAST, ConnectWise, skyscanner, AirAsia, cookpad, cimpress, VTEX, zowdow

Buyer's Guide

AWS X-Ray vs. Apica

June 2025

Free Report: AWS X-Ray vs. Apica

Find out what your peers are saying about AWS X-Ray vs. Apica and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

857,585 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our AWS X-Ray vs. Apica report.

See our list of best Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability vendors.

We monitor all Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.