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Kubernetes vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 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
8.5
Organizations see varied ROI from Kubernetes, influenced by expertise, scaling, technology adoption, and transitioning from VMs.
Sentiment score
6.9
Splunk Observability Cloud boosts ROI with improved efficiency, reduced downtime, faster problem resolution, and significant operational savings.
We receive revenue and returns from its deployment due to improved services and applications.
Scholar Trainee/Project Engineer at Wipro Limited
I have seen a return on investment, and the metrics in return for the investment are very fast.
Site Reliability Engineer at Tiendanube
Using Splunk has saved my organization about 30% of our budget compared to using multiple different monitoring products.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Anyone working in front-end management should recognize the market price to see the true value of end-user monitoring.
General Manager at MOCOMSYS
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.
IT Operations Engineer at ABC Supply Co. Inc.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.2
Kubernetes support is community-driven, with users favoring self-help, vendor options, and experiencing varied satisfaction levels with official channels.
Sentiment score
7.1
Splunk Observability Cloud's customer service is responsive and helpful but experiences issues with delays and limited staffing in regions.
The application is stable, and I seldom require support.
Scholar Trainee/Project Engineer at Wipro Limited
On a scale of 1 to 10, the customer service and technical support deserve a 10.
Systems Administrator at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
They have consistently helped us resolve any issues we've encountered.
Software Engineer at UKG
They often require multiple questions, with five or six emails to get a response.
Splunk Observability Expert
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Kubernetes efficiently scales for all sizes, supports horizontal and vertical growth, and integrates well with cloud services.
Sentiment score
7.3
Splunk Observability Cloud scales well but can be costly, requiring careful management of pricing and metric limits.
Kubernetes is highly scalable, earning a rating of eight out of ten.
Scholar Trainee/Project Engineer at Wipro Limited
By using horizontal pod autoscalers, Kubernetes automatically adjusts the number of pods based on CPU, memory usage, or other metrics.
AWS DevOps Engineer at Hexaware Technologies Limited
Kubernetes is a scalable platform, which is why we are using it.
Senior Manager at pnb metlife
We've used the solution across more than 250 people, including engineers.
Splunk Observability Expert
As we are a growing company transitioning all our applications to the cloud, and with the increasing number of cloud-native applications, Splunk Observability Cloud will help us achieve digital resiliency and reduce our mean time to resolution.
Application Developer at UMB Financial
I would rate its scalability a nine out of ten.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Kubernetes is stable and reliable, supported by extensive testing, automated repairs, and handles high-loads efficiently, despite occasional issues.
Sentiment score
7.7
Splunk Observability Cloud offers reliable performance with minimal issues, quickly resolving occasional glitches, leading to high user satisfaction.
Our organization performs robust testing before sending changes to production, ensuring the stability of Kubernetes in live environments.
AWS DevOps Engineer at Hexaware Technologies Limited
Kubernetes offers high stability, allowing for easy scaling of ports and containers.
Scholar Trainee/Project Engineer at Wipro Limited
If any containers take more space, sometimes the cluster goes down.
Senior Manager at pnb metlife
I would rate its stability a nine out of ten.
Head of DevOps at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
We rarely have problems accessing the dashboard or the page.
Splunk Observability Expert
Unlike NetScout or regular agents for APM, RUM has many problems during the POC phase because customer environments vary widely.
General Manager at MOCOMSYS
 

Room For Improvement

Kubernetes needs improved UI, security, management, cloud integration, and native features to enhance user experience and simplify processes.
Splunk Observability Cloud needs improved integration, cost transparency, better UI, enhanced AI, customization, stability, and streamlined processes.
Improved documentation would help in gaining scalable knowledge and making it more understandable.
Scholar Trainee/Project Engineer at Wipro Limited
After the upgrade, some pods were not up as expected, leading to downtime.
AWS DevOps Engineer at Hexaware Technologies Limited
Although we face issues when migrating to new versions of Kubernetes, such as misunderstandings on using new features or integration with proxy services, these issues can be addressed with proper preparation.
Head of Data Science center of excellence at Ameriabank CJSC
The out-of-the-box customizable dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are very effective in showcasing IT performance to business leaders.
IT Operations Engineer at ABC Supply Co. Inc.
The next release of Splunk Observability Cloud should include a feature that makes it so that when looking at charts and dashboards, and also looking at one environment regardless of the product feature that you're in, APM, infrastructure, RUM, the environment that is chosen in the first location when you sign into Splunk Observability Cloud needs to stay persistent all the way through.
Systems Monitoring Engineer II at a government with 10,001+ employees
There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available.
Head of DevOps at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
 

Setup Cost

Kubernetes is affordable for large enterprises but can be costly for smaller entities due to variable infrastructure and operational costs.
Splunk Observability Cloud is costly but offers negotiable and flexible pricing justified by its features and solutions.
Since we use Kubernetes on-premises, the costs are related to our expertise and the personnel we hire.
Head of Data Science center of excellence at Ameriabank CJSC
the setup costs are high.
Site Reliability Engineer at Tiendanube
Splunk is a bit expensive since it charges based on the indexing rate of data.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
It is expensive, especially when there are other vendors that offer something similar for much cheaper.
Solutions Architect at Ikusi
It appears to be expensive compared to competitors.
Head of DevOps at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
 

Valuable Features

Kubernetes excels in scalability, automation, and container management, offering self-healing, cloud integration, and efficient microservices deployment.
Splunk Observability Cloud offers user-friendly dashboards, AI analytics, and seamless integration, improving visibility, issue resolution, and operational performance.
Kubernetes also offers rollback control and auto-scaling capabilities, which are crucial for maintaining an application's availability even if nodes or pods go down.
AWS DevOps Engineer at Hexaware Technologies Limited
For us, having fast storage classes is very important.
Head of Data Science center of excellence at Ameriabank CJSC
The most valuable feature of Kubernetes is its support for load balancing.
Senior Manager at pnb metlife
Splunk provides advanced notifications of roadblocks in the application, which helps us to improve and avoid impacts during high-volume days.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
For troubleshooting, we can detect problems in seconds, which is particularly helpful for digital teams.
Splunk Observability Expert
It offers unified visibility for logs, metrics, and traces.
Administrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Kubernetes
Ranking in Container Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Container Management
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (8th), Network Monitoring Software (6th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Kubernetes is 6.1%, up from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 0.7%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Kubernetes6.1%
Splunk Observability Cloud0.7%
Other93.2%
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Leonardo Brito - PeerSpot reviewer
Site Reliability Engineer at Tiendanube
Migration to managed containers has accelerated microservice deployments and reduced downtime
I am using add-ons for EKS Kubernetes that stand out to me. The useful add-ons help with administrating multiple clusters and accounts in AWS. My company uses Kubernetes for microservices within the organization. I advise others to look into using Kubernetes and not to pursue other options. Kubernetes is something I want to emphasize before we wrap up. I have given this review an overall rating of 80.
Dhananjay Dileep - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Unified monitoring has improved end-to-end visibility and reduced detection time across apps
When we have too many detectors in place for one particular app, such as when I have created 50+ detectors through my account, the entire page becomes a bit loaded when creating the 51st detector, feeling heavy and taking time to load. Additionally, it throws random errors; for example, when we try to save one detector, it might throw some random error which is not even related, with something else being wrong, not that particular error, but the underlying root cause might be different. Sometimes the error is just "some problem occurred," and we are not able to point out what the real cause is. This mainly happens when we have too many detectors or too many alerts in place rather than a standard number. One more thing is in the alert rules; if we have a main general alert, and instead of creating a new detector, we are adding a new rule under one detector, when the number of rules also increases, such as when we have 10 or 15 rules under one generic detector, that again creates the same kind of problem, taking some time to save that particular newly added rule, and it might not save at times, just keeps on spinning. Those are the two drawbacks which I spotted recently; other than that, everything looks perfect.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise47
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Kubernetes?
There are many good features. I feel that the scale-out features, like replica sets, are very good. The number of running containers can be autoscaled.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kubernetes?
I have had a good experience with pricing, but the setup costs are high.
What needs improvement with Kubernetes?
Kubernetes can be improved, though I cannot specify exactly how at this time.
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

K8
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Synthetic Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

China unicom, NetEase Cloud, Nav, AppDirect
Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Find out what your peers are saying about Kubernetes vs. Splunk Observability Cloud and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.