No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

AWS X-Ray vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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
24th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (6th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (4th), Container Management (5th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AWS X-Ray is 1.0%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 2.7%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Splunk Observability Cloud2.7%
AWS X-Ray1.0%
Other96.3%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Muhmad Tabrez A Deewanji - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
PK
Project Manager at AGRICULTURE SKILL COUNCIL OF INDIA (ASCI)
Unified observability has improved real-time governance and now drives data-led decisions
Log Observer Connect is embedded here, but we are facing some delays in centralized log collection and analysis, which can be further fastened. We are collecting all the data metrics and decision-making insights, but all these data-driven decisions coming from different applications are not connected somewhere. A consolidated form or correlation of these insights is not happening between each other due to which we feel we are missing something significant. Some generalized feedback includes that predictive alerts or alarms which can be integrated with AI-driven alarms and alerting features should be established so that there is AI-driven intelligence and anomaly detection happening with a complete systematic process in service delivery. Application dependencies are huge, and business and operational dashboards should be improved. Right now there are very interactive custom dashboards, and every now and then, the personalization of enhancements keeps happening. KPI monitoring, executive reporting, and analytics have definitely been introduced to a great extent. There are few things in cloud-native monitoring, such as integration with AWS and Azure, where we sometimes do face lags. Those things can definitely be improved upon. I have used Datadog and Dynatrace before using Splunk Observability Cloud. Datadog was definitely recommended by most of our peers because of its very strong comprehensive observability and very strong and unique dashboard systems. Dynatrace was also very good because they have offered a lot of AI-driven analysis methods and processes, which was helping our organization a lot. Since our organization has a very strong IT ecosystem for agriculture, very different kinds of customized things are required.

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."
"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 beneficial feature is that it shows a dashboard for performance intervals, which reveals latencies."
"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."
"I would give AWS X-Ray a nine out of ten overall."
"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 solution overall is very valuable for me."
"I recommend Splunk Observability Cloud to other organizations because we are currently saving our engineers time by 20 to 30 percent, and for infrastructure alerting, we can use it to ensure that servers will not go down."
"Splunk has drawn our attention to how the network is running. If there are alarms on things that are not functioning, it gives us early warning on problems that could arise."
"Splunk Observability Cloud scales with the growing needs of my organization effectively."
"It is a good tool. It allows you to set alerts for application and infrastructure monitoring, and it allows you to create dashboards."
"With the metrics collection, I can proactively find incidents and work on the major issues when they happen and predict these issues."
"I have definitely seen a return on investment with Splunk Observability Cloud, particularly through how fast it has grown and how comfortable other teams are in relying on its outputs for monitoring and observability."
"Comparing to Cloud, Splunk Cloud, or any other solution, the most valuable feature of Splunk Observability Cloud is that it is entirely based on metrics."
 

Cons

"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."
"They can improve how traces are sent to other providers."
"I do not have any notes in terms of improvements."
"It should have X-Ray SDKs for different languages like Node.js, Python, or Java."
"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."
"A significant downside is that it is very expensive."
"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."
"The user interface is sometimes kind of confusing to understand. It's not very user-friendly."
"I would like to see a very detailed tutorial about it and how any newcomer can be able to use it."
"The cardinality is pretty low."
"Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and process terms. These categories of dashboards would be very helpful for customers."
"The deployment can be quite complex."
"The solution's machine learning deployment is hard and should be made user-friendly."
"In terms of additional features I would want to see in future releases, since Cisco acquired Splunk, more Cisco integration could be beneficial."
"Price is always one of the factors; it's a little costlier when compared."
"There is a lot of room for improvement with the automation."
 

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."
"Splunk APM is a very cost-efficient solution."
"I would rate the price of Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring as an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."
"The solution's pricing is competitive. I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten. The price of the solution could be cheaper."
"Splunk's infrastructure monitoring costs can be high because our billing is based on data volume measured in terabytes, rather than the number of devices being monitored."
"The price of Splunk APM is less than some of its competitors."
"It appears to be expensive compared to competitors."
"Splunk Observability Cloud is expensive."
"It is expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise72
 

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 needs improvement with SignalFx?
Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and pr...
What is your primary use case for SignalFx?
The solution involves observability in general, such as Application Performance Monitoring, and generally addresses digital applications, web applications, sites, and mobile applications. I worked ...
What advice do you have for others considering SignalFx?
We're a customer and end-user. Currently, in France, we cannot use the artificial intelligence option. While this option is enabled for the United States and many countries, it's not yet available ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Synthetic Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

COMCAST, ConnectWise, skyscanner, AirAsia, cookpad, cimpress, VTEX, zowdow
Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS X-Ray vs. Splunk Observability Cloud and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.