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Google Kubernetes Engine vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 11, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
9.0
Google Kubernetes Engine offers cost-effectiveness, operational productivity, and flexibility, though competitor offerings affect ROI and challenge startups.
Sentiment score
7.8
Splunk Observability Cloud enhances visibility, productivity, and efficiency, reducing downtime and facilitating real-time data access for better decision-making.
By migrating from AWS to Google Cloud Platform, we have saved a lot of time and money.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.5
Google Kubernetes Engine's customer support is mixed; some users find it satisfactory, while others rely on alternative solutions.
Sentiment score
7.4
Users find Splunk's customer support satisfactory, responsive, but sometimes experience slow responses; documentation aids effective troubleshooting.
Problem resolution typically takes between two and five days, which isn't very helpful.
They did not have a clear answer.
If any issues arise, we can raise a vendor case, and resolutions are provided in a timely and accurate manner.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Google Kubernetes Engine offers scalable, efficient, and flexible resource management for various applications, including machine learning on cloud platforms.
Sentiment score
7.8
Splunk Observability Cloud scales efficiently with growing data and users, despite challenges in monitoring large clusters and cost considerations.
The autoscaling capabilities of Google Kubernetes Engine have significantly impacted our operations.
We've used the solution across more than 250 people, including engineers.
I would rate its scalability an eight out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Google Kubernetes Engine is praised for stability, frequent updates, scalability, seamless integration, and high satisfaction ratings, despite minor challenges.
Sentiment score
8.3
Users praise Splunk Observability Cloud for stability and reliability, with minor subscription-related performance limits being manageable.
We rarely have problems accessing the dashboard or the page.
I would rate its stability a nine out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Google Kubernetes Engine needs improved security, integration, user-friendliness, monitoring, pricing, and application-level security for better user experience.
Splunk Observability Cloud needs better integration, automation, and usability, facing challenges in cost, support, scalability, and deployment.
When looking at the web interface, it feels kind of slow due to the many features involved.
It would be helpful if I could easily find log information in a particular namespace without needing to write certain labels.
Log observability could be made easier so someone from high school can use it without having technological expertise.
It would be beneficial if server details could be retrieved directly in synthetic monitoring.
Customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and process terms.
There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available.
 

Setup Cost

Google Kubernetes Engine offers flexible, open-source pricing based on resource usage, competitive with AWS, affecting costs for high availability.
Splunk Observability Cloud offers flexible pricing based on usage, but it may be expensive compared to competitors.
Google is considered cheaper compared to AWS, making it suitable for smaller to medium companies concerning cost.
The on-demand nodes are quite expensive.
It appears to be expensive compared to competitors.
Splunk Observability Cloud is expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Google Kubernetes Engine offers easy deployment, auto-scaling, robust security, seamless cloud integration, and efficient resource and traffic management.
Splunk Observability Cloud offers rapid log searching, seamless integration, user-friendly dashboards, AI analytics, and quick deployment for enhanced monitoring.
The most valuable aspect of Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is its managed nature, which significantly reduces the burden on our platform team.
GKE is easier to understand and use than Elastic Kubernetes Service.
What I find most valuable is the ability to focus solely on my product without worrying about the Kubernetes infrastructure itself.
It offers unified visibility for logs, metrics, and traces.
For troubleshooting, we can detect problems in seconds, which is particularly helpful for digital teams.
Splunk APM provides a holistic view of the application.
 

Categories and Ranking

Google Kubernetes Engine
Ranking in Container Management
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Container Management
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (11th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Google Kubernetes Engine is 2.1%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 0.5%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Immánuel Fodor - PeerSpot reviewer
The auto-scaling feature ensures that we only use resources when needed
The most valuable aspect of Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is its managed nature, which significantly reduces the burden on our platform team. Features like auto-scaling are highly beneficial for both handling traffic spikes and optimizing costs. Furthermore, Google's promise of good SLA availability, with the service being available in different locations, adds to its robustness.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
12%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
16%
Retailer
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Kubernetes Engine?
The on-demand nodes are quite expensive, so we now use spot machines.
What needs improvement with Google Kubernetes Engine?
Gemini could be more integrated with Google Kubernetes Engine ( /products/google-kubernetes-engine-reviews ). For example, it would be helpful if I could easily find log information in a particular...
What do you like most about SignalFx?
The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.
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 ...
 

Also Known As

GKE
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Philips Lighting, Alpha Vertex, GroupBy, BQ
Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Find out what your peers are saying about Google Kubernetes Engine vs. Splunk Observability Cloud and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.