AWS X-Ray vs Dynatrace comparison

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AWS X-Ray

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

Dynatrace and AWS X-Ray are two prominent products in the APM and monitoring space. Dynatrace seems to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive features and ease of deployment, despite AWS X-Ray's lower cost and integration with AWS services.

Features: Dynatrace has AI-driven insights, full-stack monitoring, and detailed analytics. AWS X-Ray provides tracing capabilities, seamless AWS integration, and value for cost. Dynatrace's extensive features give it an edge in functionality and versatility.

Room for Improvement: Dynatrace needs better documentation and more flexible pricing models. AWS X-Ray requires improved debugging capabilities and broader support for non-AWS environments. Addressing documentation and pricing can benefit Dynatrace, while AWS X-Ray should focus on expanding environment compatibility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dynatrace offers a straightforward deployment process and strong customer support. AWS X-Ray is easy to deploy within AWS but needs more steps for mixed environments. Dynatrace's superior customer support and smoother deployment process are significant advantages.

Pricing and ROI: Dynatrace is expensive but yields high ROI due to its capabilities. AWS X-Ray has a lower cost and offers good value within the AWS environment. Dynatrace seems worth the higher price for comprehensive monitoring needs.

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

AWS X-Ray vs. Dynatrace

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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

16th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Dynatrace

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

2nd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

350

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (5th), Mobile APM (2nd), Container Monitoring (2nd), AIOps (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AWS X-Ray is 2.8%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dynatrace is 8.8%, down from 12.2% 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 (%)
Dynatrace	8.8%
AWS X-Ray	2.8%
Other	88.4%

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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Anand_Kumar

Enterprise Architect at DXC Technology

Provides a comprehensive view by integrating with other monitoring systems

There may be an issue since there are many tools like Splunk involved in network monitoring. From an IP perspective, Dynatrace is performing well. If they want to develop in network monitoring, they can, as it's part of their product line. It's not rocketry, so they can accomplish it. If I, as an SI, look at it from an enterprise perspective, considering the cost from the client, I prefer not to go with multiple systems, as they don't provide a complete 360-degree view. They need to improve on claims about being an enterprise system. The definition of enterprise is loosely used, however, from a holistic security perspective, including infrastructure, network, ports, software, applications, transactions, and databases, there are areas lacking, especially in network monitoring tools.

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

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

"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."

"It is a very scalable solution."

"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."

"The solution has made it easier for us to trace the problems that we have with our requests and to monitor the timing of each step in each request we do in our endpoints."

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

"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."

More AWS X-Ray pros

"The most valuable feature is the 360-degree view for monitoring, infrastructure, and application worlds."

"Dynatrace is capable of following all user actions across all monitored infrastructure, even to systems not monitored, but interconnected."

"I think with Dynatrace, it has helped to bring value to the business because now we can speak using the same language."

"Dynatrace positively impacts my organization in various ways."

"Dynatrace alerts are based on deviations from the reference metrics which are constantly collected."

"The ability to use PurePath in analytics is definitely the most valuable feature. It helps you pinpoint issues, then develop and focus them in the right way."

"Its monitoring and key purpose capabilities are the most valuable. It provides the root cause of problems and helps peers join the war room."

"It scales well. We are going to be able to use it for everything we need. "

More Dynatrace pros

Cons

"I do not have any notes in terms of improvements."

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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

"Dynatrace SaaS still lacks configuration API or command line which would allow moving configuration from one tenant to the other."

"Improvements are needed in the navigation and timeframe selection when browsing problems."

"It definitely needs HA, because we have so many applications that are dependent on AppMon that it has been deemed critical. Any downtime, it just affects so many users. So that's one of our key asks for the future."

"This solution would be improved with the addition of annotations for automated custom metrics creation."

"The user interface is complicated, but recent web versions are getting better all the time."

"This solution needs improvement in terms of automation."

"Some of the APIs and integrations are a bit tougher than others to integrate."

"The analytics feature provides us some information, but is limited for now. We want to see how we can consume the data further down and have analytics guys look at the datacenter information."

More Dynatrace cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is a bit expensive."

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

"They could improve their price ranges, as there is no option for startups or testing."

"We have not fully been able to get the full value out of the product. It is expensive compared to other things that we have had in the past. Paying that much and not being able to get the full return on the product is a downgrade. "

"The licensing model is confusing in solutioning clients for the number of hosts needed to deploy."

"Dynatrace is still kind of an expensive solution compared to others. But I recognize that they are ahead of the competition when we do a feature by feature comparison."

"We found a tool that can be utilized by testing, DevOps, marketing, software engineering, and monitoring. Before, we always had everybody doing their own thing. Now, everybody's utilizing one tool, which is huge. That is a huge savings."

"The setup costs for Dynatrace are low, however licensing costs are high."

"Its licensing is complicated or not transparent."

"It is quite costly. Dynatrace was the most expensive, compared to the other products we looked at. But it was also a lot better. If you want value for your money, Dynatrace is the way to go."

More Dynatrace pricing and cost advice

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.

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867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

24%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

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	76
Midsize Enterprise	50
Large Enterprise	288

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS X-Ray?

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

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...

Any advice about APM solutions?

The key is to have a holistic view over the complete infrastructure, the ones you have listed are great for APM if you need to monitor applications end to end. I have tested them all and have not f...

What cloud monitoring software did you choose and why?

While the environment does matter in the selection of an APM tool, I prefer to use Dynatrace to manage the entire stack. Both production and Dev/Test. I find it to be quite superior to anything els...

Any advice about APM solutions?

There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...

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

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Datadog vs Dynatrace

Compared 11% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Dynatrace

Compared 6% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs Dynatrace

Compared 5% of the time

New Relic vs Dynatrace

Compared 5% of the time

Azure Monitor vs Dynatrace

Compared 5% of the time

More Dynatrace Competitors

Product Reports

AWS X-Ray

Download AWS X-Ray product report

Download Dynatrace product report

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)

Dynatrace is an AI-powered software intelligence monitoring platform that accelerates digital transformation and simplifies cloud complexities. Dynatrace is an entirely automated full-stack solution that provides data and answers about the performance of your applications and deep insight into every transaction throughout every application, including the end-user experience. By modernizing and automating enterprise cloud operations, users can deliver an optimal digital experience with higher quality software to customers faster.

Dynatrace offers an all-in-one automated artificial intelligence solution that brings together application performance, cloud and infrastructure, and digital experience monitoring. Dynatrace accelerates performance-driven results through operations, development, and business teams with a shared metrics platform. In addition, users are provided a full-stack monitoring experience with three patented technologies:

Smartscape - visualization mechanism that maps the totality of everything working in your environment and detects any casual dependencies between your applications, processes, websites, services, hosts, cloud infrastructure, and networks.
OneAgent - a technology that analyzes, gathers ,and unifies all business performance metrics throughout every layer of your technology stack.
PurePath Technology - code-level context and timings are captured from the mainframe to the cloud for all end-to-end transactions.

What does Dynatrace offer?

Dynatrace redefines how organizations monitor their digital ecosystems. The solution offers:

Cloud Automation: With AI engine Davis®, users can see the exact reason for problems and facilitate quick auto-remediation and intelligent cloud orchestration.
Application Security: With automated application vulnerability management, users can deliver applications faster and more securely.
Infrastructure Monitoring: Convenient broad visibility across your environments is provided with streamlined, automated infrastructure monitoring.
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM): Optimize your applications, provide better support, and improve user experience with a combination of Real User Monitoring (RUM), Session Replay, and synthetic monitoring throughout your environment.
Applications and Microservices: For complex cloud environments, Dynatrace can automatically provide visibility and root-cause answers. It can also monitor microservices.
Digital Business Analytics: Get AI-powered, real-time answers to analytical business queries with KPIs and metrics that are already flowing through applications.

Reviews from Real Users

Dynatrace is the only solution that provides answers to organizations based on deep insight into each user, transaction, and organization's environment.

Barry P., a managing performance engineer at Medica Health Plans, writes, "With Dynatrace, we have synthetic checks and real-user monitoring of all of our websites, places where members and providers can interact with us over the web. We monitor the response times of those with Dynatrace, and it's all integrated into one place."

A consultant at a tech service company notes, "A feature that's one of the highlights of Dynatrace is the AI. The second most valuable feature is OneAgent. Between infrastructures, applications, operating systems, you can deploy with just a single agent and can practically install and forget about it."

Sample Customers

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

Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express

AWS X-Ray vs. Dynatrace