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

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jun 29, 2023

We performed a comparison between AWS X-Ray and Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) based on real PeerSpot user reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: Google Cloud's operations suite is generally easy and straightforward, with helpful documentation and a simple step to enable API features. Meanwhile, AWS X-Ray is doable and fast, with a rating of seven out of ten for difficulty. It can be completed within minutes with some configuration in AWS CloudFormation and adding a line of code, but the difficulty depends on how deep you want to go.
  • Features: AWS X-Ray is great for error identification and regulatory compliance, while Google Cloud's operations suite's strengths lie in its logging and tracing abilities, scalability, and user-friendliness. Additionally, it has excellent cloud logging capabilities.
  • Pricing: The pricing and licensing of Google Cloud's operations suite are varied with some considering it inexpensive and others believing it could be less. AWS X-Ray's pricing is usage-based and reasonably priced, with discounts available for system usage as businesses grow. However, the cost increases for larger organizations.
  • Service and Support: Google Cloud's operations suite has excellent technical support, and users trust them. AWS X-Ray's customer service has received mixed reviews, with some users never requiring assistance, while others rate their support as an eight out of ten.
  • ROI: Google Cloud's operations suite is deemed to be more valuable than AWS X-Ray in terms of ROI. It is more efficient in providing insights and monitoring capabilities. AWS X-Ray's ROI is not as clear as Google Cloud's operations suite.

Comparison Results: Google Cloud's operations suite is commended for its ease of use, scalability, stability of logging and tracing, and impressive cloud logging feature, making it the preferred solution. While AWS X-Ray is noted for its ability to quickly identify errors, users suggest that log filtering could be better and the user interface could be easier to configure. AWS X-Ray's pricing is based on usage and is relatively affordable, while Google Cloud's operations suite has mixed opinions on pricing and licensing.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS X-Ray vs. Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) Report (Updated: March 2024).
767,667 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
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 is a strong solution and has a smooth integration process.""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 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 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."

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"Our company has a corporate account for Google Cloud and so our systems and clusters integrate really well.""It's easy to use.""The most valuable feature is the multi-cloud integration, where there is support for both GCP and AWS.""The features that I have found most valuable are its graphs - if I need any statistics, in Kubernetes or Kong level or VPN level, I can quickly get the reports.""I like the monitoring feature.""The cloud login enables us to get our logs from the different platforms that we currently use.""Google's technical support is very good.""Provides visibility into the performance uptime."

More Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) Pros →

Cons
"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.""I do not have any notes in terms of improvements.""If you have a small team, it's probably overkill.""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.""The user interface is sometimes kind of confusing to understand. It's not very user-friendly."

More AWS X-Ray Cons →

"If I want to track any round-trip or breakdowns of my response times, I'm not able to get it. My request goes through various levels of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and comes back to my client machine. Suppose that my request has taken 10 seconds overall, so if I want to break it down, to see where the delay is happening within my architecture, I am not able to find that out using Stackdriver.""It could be more stable.""The product provides minimal metrics that are insufficient.""The logging functionality could be better.""While we are satisfied with the overall performance, in certain cases we must add additional metrics and additional tools like Grafana and Dynatrace.""It could be even more automated.""Lacking sufficient operations documentation.""This solution could be improved if it offered the ability to analyze charts, such as a solution like Kibana."

More Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) 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."
  • More AWS X-Ray Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The cost of using Stackdriver depends on usage."
  • "The cost could be lower."
  • "We have a basic standard license without any additional costs."
  • More Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:AWS X-Ray is a strong solution and has a smooth integration process.
    Top Answer:They can improve how traces are sent to other providers.
    Top Answer:It could be even more automated. For instance, the moment you deploy something, the monitoring can be there for everything. You will just have to launch or click the console in the morning, and then… more »
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    274
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    7.8
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Google Stackdriver, Stackdriver Monitoring, Stackdriver Logging, Google Cloud Monitoring
    Learn More
    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.

    Real-time log management and analysis

    Cloud Logging is a fully managed service that performs at scale and can ingest application and platform log data, as well as custom log data from GKE environments, VMs, and other services inside and outside of Google Cloud. Get advanced performance, troubleshooting, security, and business insights with Log Analytics, integrating the power of BigQuery into Cloud Logging.

    Built-in metrics observability at scale

    Cloud Monitoring provides visibility into the performance, uptime, and overall health of cloud-powered applications. Collect metrics, events, and metadata from Google Cloud services, hosted uptime probes, application instrumentation, and a variety of common application components. Visualize this data on charts and dashboards and create alerts so you are notified when metrics are outside of expected ranges.

    Stand-alone managed service for running and scaling Prometheus

    Managed Service for Prometheus is a fully managed Prometheus-compatible monitoring solution, built on top of the same globally scalable data store as Cloud Monitoring. Keep your existing visualization, analysis, and alerting services, as this data can be queried with PromQL or Cloud Monitoring.

    Monitor and improve your application's performance

    Application Performance Management (APM) combines the monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities of Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring with Cloud Trace and Cloud Profiler to help you reduce latency and cost so you can run more efficient applications.

    Sample Customers
    COMCAST, ConnectWise, skyscanner, AirAsia, cookpad, cimpress, VTEX, zowdow
    Uber, Batterii, Q42, Dovetail Games
    Top Industries
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Computer Software Company16%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Comms Service Provider6%
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider29%
    Financial Services Firm29%
    Energy/Utilities Company14%
    Manufacturing Company14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Computer Software Company16%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Company Size
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise69%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise70%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise70%
    Buyer's Guide
    AWS X-Ray vs. Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver)
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about AWS X-Ray vs. Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    767,667 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    AWS X-Ray is ranked 13th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 6 reviews while Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is ranked 24th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 9 reviews. AWS X-Ray is rated 8.0, while Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of AWS X-Ray writes "Saves time, is relatively cheap, and helps find errors". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) writes "Good logging and tracing but does need more profiling capabilities". AWS X-Ray is most compared with Datadog, Azure Monitor, New Relic, Sentry and Grafana, whereas Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is most compared with Datadog, Azure Monitor, Amazon CloudWatch, Grafana and Prometheus. See our AWS X-Ray vs. Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) report.

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    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.