AWS X-Ray vs Cribl comparison

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AWS X-Ray

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

AWS X-Ray and Cribl compete in the application performance monitoring and data routing markets. AWS X-Ray has an advantage within AWS environments due to its seamless integration, while Cribl offers superior data routing capabilities for diverse environments.

Features: AWS X-Ray provides distributed tracing, service maps, and seamless integration with AWS services enhancing application performance visibility. Cribl features data stream routing, control over data flows, and compatibility with various data sources, offering flexibility for multi-cloud settings.

Room for Improvement: AWS X-Ray could enhance its user interface for developers and improve integrations with non-AWS services. It may also offer more advanced data visualization tools. Cribl can improve deployment efficiency, reduce pricing complexity, and enhance features for handling high-volume real-time data across multiple destinations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AWS X-Ray offers seamless deployment for AWS users with integration into the AWS support ecosystem. Cribl, although more complex to deploy, provides comprehensive documentation and dedicated support suitable for managing complex data pipelines.

Pricing and ROI: AWS X-Ray offers cost-effective solutions within the AWS framework with budget-friendly pricing for AWS-centric use. Cribl, requiring a higher initial investment, potentially delivers a high ROI by optimizing data management and reducing storage costs, making it beneficial for organizations handling large volumes of diverse data.

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

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AWS X-Ray vs. Cribl

December 2025

Helped 881,114 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

AWS X-Ray

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

15th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Cribl

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

9th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (5th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (8th), Observability Pipeline Software (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AWS X-Ray is 2.0%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cribl is 1.2%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cribl	1.2%
AWS X-Ray	2.0%
Other	96.8%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

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 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.

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Aman Verma

Senior Software Engineer at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

Has helped reduce daily log volume significantly and streamline data routing across multiple destinations

Regarding complexity, as I mentioned before, Cribl is very simple to use. When I started 2.5 years ago, it was very easy to learn. I learned Cribl within a week, and even though I was a fresher at the time, it was easy to understand and not complex enough that someone would need to spend money on labs. It's not that complex to learn. Regarding cost efficiency, it's very good because nowadays the SIEM tools we use are too expensive on license, and SIEM tools base their license on how many logs get ingested. The unwanted logs, particularly firewall logs, represent a significant portion of unnecessary ingestion. Cribl saves our license by filtering out half of the firewall logs that are unwanted. Our main purpose for using Cribl is to save our license and save money. Currently, everyone is moving toward AI agents. We currently use regex, and AI agents could help us create those regex patterns to drop events or add raw data to events. Currently, we sit down, review the logs, and create regex patterns manually, which can be time-consuming. An AI agent could reduce this time. I read some articles indicating that Cribl Cloud has started using AI and considering MCPs and model context, but I'm not certain how far along they are. If Cribl asked me what they could improve, that would be my suggestion. The support is very good, and I had a few issues with Cribl where I raised support cases and received good responses, which is better than the quick response I didn't get from other SIEM tools and vendor tools I use. Compared to other SIEM tools, Cribl is cheaper than Splunk and DataDogs. However, it's still a bit expensive from my point of view, though I won't call it expensive. Overall, I think 99% of companies use Cribl before their SIEM tools, and compared to SIEM tools, Cribl is cheaper. Companies can use any SIEM tool such as Google, Splunk, or Cisco, and Cribl is cheaper than those SIEM tools. They might have a slight chance to reduce costs further, but I'm not the correct person to evaluate that since I'm more focused on the operational side. Regarding training, it was quite easy to grasp. It took me almost a week to understand the basic functionalities and what Cribl does. Getting more expertise took additional time, but basic functionalities and understanding what Cribl does took around four to five days. One point I want to mention is that Cribl could improve their labs or training materials in their Cribl Cloud or whatever portal they have.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"AWS X-Ray's endpoints and user monitoring are considered the most valuable features."

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

"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."

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

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

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

"The most important one is compliance. We're able to achieve our regulatory levels. We're able to achieve the security level that we need for the federal government."

More AWS X-Ray pros

"Cribl's interface is user-friendly and easy to learn, making it simple to teach new users how to use it."

"Cribl is specifically designed to reduce the data costs associated with the destination platform, which is one of its core offerings."

"We reduce cost by using Cribl to control what data we need to be sent over to the SIEM, and we were able to use their functionality, specifically aggregation and also some of the drop functions within Cribl to cut down this noise, send a full copy of the data to S3 or a different data lake, and then send the reduced log over to the SIEM."

"We save around 2.2 TB every day using Cribl by filtering out unwanted logs coming from syslog devices and other networking devices, which saves our license."

"The feature I appreciate most about Cribl is that it is really easy to use and quick to replicate data models on different data sets."

"The capability to reduce logs in a user-friendly manner is a standout feature. Cribl allows us to view logs live as they are being processed, giving us quick feedback on the changes made."

"Features such as Cribl Stream, Cribl LogStream, and Cribl Edge have been the most beneficial. The Cribl LogStream, in particular, is valuable for routing data, creating firewalls on pipelines, and putting security measures in place to ensure data reaches its destination without issues."

"When it comes to the product's installation phase, it is not tough for people who have good knowledge...The tool is worth the investment."

More Cribl pros

Cons

"It should have X-Ray SDKs for different languages like Node.js, Python, or Java."

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

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

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

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

"If you have a small team, it's probably overkill."

"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."

More AWS X-Ray cons

"Currently, Cribl Search is dedicated to one bucket at a time in the case of S3 buckets. The ability to search for multiple buckets would be awesome."

"There have been several administrative issues. Another point is that the browsing functions aren't very intuitive."

"Improvement could be made in the logging area, as sometimes we encounter issues in a pipeline or something, and it's not immediately obvious when you look at the logs that the pipeline is failing."

"I do not think that if the pricing is on the higher side, it could be suitable for all types of users, such as small or medium ones."

"Improvement could be made in the logging area, as sometimes we encounter issues in a pipeline or something, and it's not immediately obvious when you look at the logs that the pipeline is failing."

"I think it is a bit expensive. I heard that this might be expensive."

"Cribl can improve by providing automated analytics and advanced parsing capabilities since it handles data at its core."

"Regarding Cribl's ability to contain data cost and complexity, if they can reduce their cost, that will make them more competitive."

More Cribl cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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 product pricing is reasonable compared to other solutions."

"I would not say it is a cheaply priced tool as it has been doing wonders in the market. The tool has been budget-friendly for organizations."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

20%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Large Enterprise	3

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	18

Questions from the Community

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...

What needs improvement with AWS X-Ray?

The challenges we faced with AWS X-Ray were that some of the AWS services we were using did not support it, which we discovered at a later stage. This was potentially a design consideration we shou...

What is your primary use case for AWS X-Ray?

I have been using AWS X-Ray for creating insights to our applications we have developed. It is used to correlate different services in AWS when a transaction happens, allowing us to see the flow of...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cribl?

I'm not sure of Cribl pricing because it has been procured as a package by our client, and we are not exposed to or do not have an idea of how much they have spent to get a license from Cribl. But ...

What needs improvement with Cribl?

I am not in a position to comment on how Cribl could be improved or enhanced because it is a good tool, and I have only used a small part of the entire Cribl product. As of now I am pretty happy wi...

What is your primary use case for Cribl?

My usual use cases for Cribl involve collecting logs from many endpoints, including user activities. We collect logs into either Log Analytical Workspace or Event Hub and redirect to Cribl so that ...

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Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Download AWS X-Ray product report

AWS X-Ray

January 2026

Download Cribl product report

January 2026

Overview

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)

Cribl offers advanced data transformation and routing with features such as data reduction, plugin configurations, and log collection within a user-friendly framework supporting various deployments, significantly reducing data volumes and costs.

Cribl is designed to streamline data management, offering real-time data transformation and efficient log management. It supports seamless SIEM migration, enabling organizations to optimize costs associated with platforms like Splunk through data trimming. The capability to handle multiple data destinations and compression eases log control. With flexibility across on-prem, cloud, or hybrid environments, Cribl provides an adaptable interface that facilitates quick data model replication. While it significantly reduces data volumes, enhancing overall efficiency, there are areas for improvement, including compatibility with legacy systems and integration with enterprise products. Organizations can enhance their operational capabilities through certification opportunities and explore added functionalities tailored towards specific industry needs.

What are Cribl's most important features?

Data Transformation: Real-time data routing and transformation for improved efficiency.
Data Reduction: Reduces data volumes, lowering storage and licensing costs.
Routing and Masking: Offers powerful data masking and easy plugin configurations.
Log Collection: Simplifies the log collection process across different environments.
Deployment Flexibility: Supports on-prem, cloud, or hybrid deployments.
Seamless Integration: Facilitates easy migration to SIEMs and various data destinations.

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Cost Savings: Reduces licensing costs by trimming unnecessary data.
Enhanced Efficiency: Improves data handling through seamless integration and transformation.
Operational Flexibility: Provides multiple deployment options to suit organizational preferences.
Data Management: Enhances user control over logs with advanced data reduction and compression.
Certification Opportunities: Offers users chances to enhance skills and operational capabilities.

Cribl sees extensive use in industries prioritizing efficient data management and cost optimization. Organizations leverage its capabilities to connect between different data sources, including cloud environments, improving both data handling and storage efficiency. Its customization options appeal to firms needing specific industry compliance and operational enhancements.

Sample Customers

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

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