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AWS X-Ray vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 6, 2025

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
19th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (9th), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th), Container Management (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AWS X-Ray is 3.3%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Muhmad Tabrez A Deewanji - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Lakshmi Padaga - PeerSpot reviewer
Collaborates performance metrics with log data to pinpoint the exact cause of issues and offers error detection
Splunk APM is a robust tool with many capabilities. There are always areas for potential improvement to enhance its functionality and user experience. For Splunk APM, there could be simplified navigation, like streamlining the user interface to make navigation more intuitive for our users, especially those new to APM, which can enhance usability. We can provide more customization options for dashboards and visualizations to help users tailor the platform to their specific needs. There could be more integration capabilities with a wider range of third-party tools and platforms would also be beneficial. By focusing on these areas, Splunk APM can enhance its value proposition, improve user satisfaction, and better meet the evolving needs of organizations monitoring their application performance.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would give AWS X-Ray a nine out of ten overall."
"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 shows us exactly when there are delays, helping us understand the depth of issues and what is happening point-to-point."
"AWS X-Ray shows us exactly when there are delays, helping us understand the depth of issues and what is happening point-to-point."
"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 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 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 company has many systems that the customer is paying to access. Splunk APM issued via AppDynamics helps find problems in the feed. It reduces the risk of supervising all the devices. I can supervise the flow and simulate the conditions of the repository across several dashboards to show what's happening at the moment."
"The most valuable feature is dashboard creation."
"The solution monitors attacks or unauthorized access to the information we want to protect."
"Splunk APM helps us to find errors immediately and resolve them."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"Great monitoring of network devices."
"Splunk's dashboards are great."
"It is a good tool. It allows you to set alerts for application and infrastructure monitoring, and it allows you to create dashboards."
 

Cons

"AWS X-Ray should improve its implementation process to make it easier for developers."
"I do not have any notes in terms of improvements."
"Sometimes, the collector agents are confusing to configure initially."
"If you have a small team, it's probably overkill."
"They can improve how traces are sent to other providers."
"The user interface is sometimes kind of confusing to understand. It's not very user-friendly."
"It should have X-Ray SDKs for different languages like Node.js, Python, or Java."
"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 deployment can be quite complex."
"The clustering part of indexes can be more refined."
"The UI enhancements could be a way to improve the solution in the future."
"Splunk isn't an ideal tool for application performance management due to the extensive setup required."
"Splunk's functionality could be improved by adding database connectors for other platforms like AWS and Azure."
"We never had any issues when it comes to the type of use cases we are using it for. We did not need more advancement on it, but I know that, in general, everything can be updated. There are tiny little tweaks that can be made regardless of whether it looks better or has a different flow to it than it does right now, but it works pretty well for what we use it for."
"There are some predefined metrics.......we may want to create customized metrics."
"Primarily, the logs in Splunk APM can be challenging to navigate and comprehend, making it difficult to understand the details within each log. Compared to other tools like LogDNA, which are more intuitive in this aspect, the logs in Splunk APM can require more effort to understand."
 

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 is a bit expensive considering the competition but the company may negotiate the price."
"I would rate the price of Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring as an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."
"Splunk offers a 14-day free trial and after that, we have to pay but the cost is reasonable."
"It is expensive."
"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."
"Licensing cost is the biggest argument I get from those divesting from Splunk. There are those within our organization who say we are going to go to other tools since Splunk is too expensive."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"This is an expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Retailer
8%
Government
7%
 

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.
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?
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...
What do you like most about SignalFx?
The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.
What needs improvement with SignalFx?
There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available. We sometimes encountered issues in setting up alerts. The custom detector could be m...
What is your primary use case for SignalFx?
The main purpose of using Splunk APM is to optimize our application. We use Splunk APM primarily to understand how the application works, how it uses resources, and its response time in connection ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Splunk Infrastructure 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: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.