AWS X-Ray vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

The compared Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Splunk solutions aren't in the same category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #16 in APM , with an average rating of 7.2, and holds a 3.2% mindshare in the category. Splunk is ranked #1 in SIEM , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 9.4% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

AWS X-Ray

Read 10 AWS X-Ray reviews

5,439 Views
5,385 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Splunk Enterprise Security

Read 318 Splunk Enterprise Security reviews

25,544 Views
13,027 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

AWS X-Ray

Splunk Enterprise Security

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between AWS X-Ray and Splunk Enterprise Security based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS X-Ray vs. Splunk Enterprise Security Report (Updated: May 2023).

Buyer's Guide

AWS X-Ray vs. Splunk Enterprise Security

May 2023

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Helped 861,524 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

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (16th)

Splunk Enterprise Security

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

318

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (2nd), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Lifecycle Management solutions, they serve different purposes. AWS X-Ray is designed for Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability and holds a mindshare of 3.2%, down 3.4% compared to last year.
Splunk Enterprise Security, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 9.4% mindshare, down 12.1% since last year.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

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 ( /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

ROBERT-CHRISTIAN

CTO at kyndryl

Has many predefined correlation rules and is brilliant for investigation and log analysis

It is very complicated to write your own correlation rules without the help of Splunk support. What Splunk could do better is to create an API to the standard SIEM tools, such as Microsoft Sentinel. The idea would be to make it less painful. In ELK Stack, Kibana is the query language with which you can search log files. I believe Splunk has also a query language in which they search their log files, but once you have identified the log file that you want to use for further security correlation, you want to very quickly transport that into your SIEM tool, such as Microsoft Sentinel. That is something that Splunk could make a little bit less painful because it is a lot of effort to find that log file and forward it. An API with Microsoft Sentinel or a similar SIEM tool would be a good idea.

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 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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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

"Easy to deploy and simple to use."

"The completeness of the solution is what we like the most."

"Splunk can deliver more information by going deeper. By creating a dashboard, we can identify the root cause of the threat. Let's say I have a firewall from Check Point. Splunk will find the dashboard for Check Point, implement it in our environment, and connect it to the Check Point firewall logs, which are shown on the dashboard. If we request a custom dashboard, the engineer will take longer to complete the task."

"It has a drag-and-drop interface, so you don't need to know SQL or Java to construct a query on Splunk. The resolution time is about the same, but it took longer to discover the issue with ArcSight. Our previous solution took about an hour or more, but Splunk can do it within a few minutes or an hour at most."

"The solution's most valuable feature is that it helps with our use cases to detect anomalies in our data and it is important to my company since we have a lot of data on different logs on the systems."

"The search function for spam is like a google search. You just enter and it will quickly show you the results."

"Splunk Enterprise Security is more advanced compared to other solutions, which makes it stand out as a better option."

"I haven't had the chance to properly sink my teeth into Enterprise Security but so far I like that they added the MITRE ATT&CK features."

More Splunk Enterprise Security pros

Cons

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

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

More AWS X-Ray cons

"Splunk could enhance its offerings by incorporating modules for network detection and response and fraud management, along with improving its threat intelligence management capabilities."

"We had an instance when Splunk failed and it took us a couple of days to recover."

"The threat management part is still lagging. There are some gaps in threat management. Other vendors have built-in threat management systems, but Splunk lacks the threat management component in its portal. The UEBA and everything else is perfect, but it lacks a unified threat intelligence and management part."

"I would like some additional AI capabilities to provide additional information about things going wrong and things going well."

"It works as intended for us, and we are getting everything that we need out of it. If anything, its initial setup can be improved a bit."

"The product's price may be an area of concern where improvements are required."

"Better directions on search head clusters."

"The training was mostly sales-focused, like how to monitor your sales. It was hard to then come back from doing the training and try to switch it to a cybersecurity focus because all the training we did was sales oriented. The basic training didn't really touch on any kind of cybersecurity use cases or anything like that. That would have been great to see in the training."

More Splunk Enterprise Security cons

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

"The solution is a bit expensive."

"It is expensive. I work for multiple clients. I am working for more than five clients, but most of the clients are switching from Splunk to Sentinel because of the cost. Even though Sentinel is very limited, clients are moving to Sentinel."

"It's more expensive than the other tools, but it's worth it. Every penny is worth it."

"Luckily, we come under a large federal agency, and before the pandemic, they signed a large enterprise license agreement. It worked out great and to our advantage because we are a small organization. We got a 300 gig license, and we just did not have the buying power to be able to get products cheaply. Because we all partnered together under the agency umbrella, we were able to get Splunk Enterprise Security, UBA, and ITSI for cheap. This was good considering the fact that some of these premium apps require a minimum number of users, and we do not have the number of people needed to even justify buying it."

"The pricing depends on the bandwidth of an organization and is good compared to some SIEM tools. IBM, for example, is quite costly. But Microsoft Sentinel is notably cheaper."

"Splunk licensing model might seem expensive but with all the gain in functionalities you will have compared to traditional SIEM solutions I think it’s worth the price."

"You will eat up whatever you purchase quickly. The level of insights that Splunk empowers is addictive."

"Its price is fair. Like with anything else, if you go into the cloud, different providers cost more, and you are able to throttle back or throttle up. The cost is comparable with anything else."

"The pricing of Splunk Enterprise Security is somewhat high, but comparing it with its benefits, it's acceptable. It depends on the type of business."

More Splunk Enterprise Security pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

Vinod Shankar

Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at Deloitte & Touche

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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.

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

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Datadog vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 22% 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 9% of the time

New Relic vs AWS X-Ray

Compared 9% of the time

More AWS X-Ray Competitors

IBM Security QRadar vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 8% of the time

Wazuh vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 8% of the time

Dynatrace vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 7% of the time

Datadog vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 6% of the time

Security Onion vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 4% of the time

More Splunk Enterprise Security Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS X-Ray

July 2025

Download AWS X-Ray product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Enterprise Security

June 2025

Download Splunk Enterprise Security 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)

Splunk Enterprise Security is widely used for security operations, including threat detection, incident response, and log monitoring. It centralizes log management, offers security analytics, and ensures compliance, enhancing the overall security posture of organizations.

Companies leverage Splunk Enterprise Security to monitor endpoints, networks, and users, detecting anomalies, brute force attacks, and unauthorized access. They use it for fraud detection, machine learning, and real-time alerts within their SOCs. The platform enhances visibility and correlates data from multiple sources to identify security threats efficiently. Key features include comprehensive dashboards, excellent reporting capabilities, robust log aggregation, and flexible data ingestion. Users appreciate its SIEM capabilities, threat intelligence, risk-based alerting, and correlation searches. Highly scalable and stable, it suits multi-cloud environments, reducing alert volumes and speeding up investigations.

What are the key features?

Comprehensive Dashboards: Provide a holistic view of security operations.
Flexible Data Ingestion: Supports various data sources for better analysis.
Robust Log Aggregation: Centralizes log management for easier monitoring.
Machine Learning Toolkit: Enhances threat detection and prediction capabilities.
SIEM Capabilities: Integrates security information and event management.
Threat Intelligence: Utilizes external information to improve security measures.
Risk-Based Alerting: Prioritizes alerts based on the risk they pose.
Correlation Searches: Identifies and correlates security events effectively.

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Enhanced Visibility: Improves monitoring across endpoints, networks, and users.
Faster Incident Response: Speeds up identification and resolution of security issues.
Reduced Alert Volumes: Lowers false positives and enhances signal-to-noise ratio.
Scalability: Adapts to growing and changing security needs.
Improved Security Operations: Integrates multiple security facets into one platform.

Splunk Enterprise Security is implemented across industries like finance, healthcare, and retail. Financial institutions use it for fraud detection and compliance, while healthcare organizations leverage its capabilities to safeguard patient data. Retailers deploy it to protect customer information and ensure secure transactions.

Splunk

Sample Customers

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

Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.

Buyer's Guide

AWS X-Ray vs. Splunk Enterprise Security

May 2023

Free Report: AWS X-Ray vs. Splunk Enterprise Security

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