ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

ServiceNow and Splunk are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. ServiceNow is ranked #46 with an average rating of 7.3, while Splunk is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.4. ServiceNow holds a 0.5% mindshare in APM, compared to Splunk’s 2.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ServiceNow users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Read 4 ServiceNow Cloud Observability reviews

837 Views
804 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Splunk Observability Cloud

Read 71 Splunk Observability Cloud reviews

5,846 Views
3,391 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Splunk Observability Cloud

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 21, 2025

Splunk Observability Cloud and ServiceNow Cloud Observability compete in the observability sector. Splunk holds the upper hand with comprehensive monitoring capabilities, whereas ServiceNow shines with its integration strengths, appealing to enterprise needs.

Features: Splunk Observability Cloud offers real-time monitoring, advanced analytics, and seamless scalability, enabling agile IT environments. ServiceNow Cloud Observability provides deep integration with its ITSM ecosystem, delivering a unified incident and problem management platform, enhancing workflow automation.

Room for Improvement: Splunk could enhance its user interface to simplify complex data interpretation, improve its documentation for better user guidance, and expand integration with third-party applications. ServiceNow might enhance real-time data processing capabilities, streamline its user interface for ease of use, and improve scalability options for smaller businesses seeking flexible solutions.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk Observability Cloud is designed for rapid deployment with robust support, enabling quick system insights. ServiceNow Cloud Observability offers a more extensive deployment experience within existing environments, focusing on integration capabilities. Splunk tends to be more agile in customer service, whereas ServiceNow provides a cohesive IT operations solution through its broader platform.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk Observability Cloud's usage-based pricing model offers flexibility for various business scales, providing faster ROI due to its agile features and quick setup. ServiceNow Cloud Observability may require a higher initial investment and commitment, which is offset by its enterprise-grade integration and IT management capabilities, providing long-term value for organizations seeking a comprehensive IT service platform.

To learn more, read our detailed ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. Splunk Observability Cloud Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

September 2025

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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

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

46th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Splunk Observability Cloud

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

8th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (6th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th), Container Management (6th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 2.0%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Splunk Observability Cloud	2.0%
ServiceNow Cloud Observability	0.5%
Other	97.5%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

VinayKumar16

Senior DeliveryManager at ITC Infotech

Provides ease of use in areas like analytics and reporting

The feature of the tool that is more impactful for cloud performance stems from the area revolving around analytics and reporting. It is an easy-to-use tool. There is something known as performance analytics within ServiceNow that offers complete analytics, which offers end-to-end analytics along with the KPI metrics with what we have in place and so on. With the aforementioned aspects of the tool, I think we should be able to create a dashboard according to the operations view called the operation dashboard view, specifically for C-level executives.

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Taiwo Ige

IT Operations Engineer at ABC Supply Co. Inc.

Alerting improves incident response across teams and enables faster awareness before customer impact

Splunk Observability Cloud could be improved in terms of integrations with more technical add-ons, such as Zoom. Although they have one with Zoom, it's not available in the cloud, so having that feature would be beneficial. Essentially, Splunk should continue expanding to create easier ways to ingest logs from different products. The out-of-the-box customizable dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are very effective in showcasing IT performance to business leaders. However, there are aspects that could be improved, such as linking dashboards to one another. While IT leaders may not drill down, it's crucial to create levels of dashboards for technical users to find root causes, making it effective for stakeholders.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to create a stream based on different parameters, operation name, service name, URL, tags, and URI part, is one valuable feature."

"The UI is very intuitive."

"The solution Lightstep/ServiceNow has a couple of pretty advanced functionalities to help us investigate a deviation and help the development teams have better observability in the environment using distributed and complex services."

"To a certain extent, it is possible to save on the costs of the product."

"It is a great resource for us because we have so many different data sources and to be able to aggregate that and put it through a concise dashboard or an alert really helps."

"The most valuable features include user time tracking and the ability to analyze application load times."

"I manage six tools, but Splunk Observability Cloud is one of my favorites, and I aspire to build my career specializing in it because it has great features, more attention in the market, and is a relatively new tool with promising growth."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to customize dashboards based on my queries or any other customization I may need."

"Splunk APM helps us to find errors immediately and resolve them."

"The features I appreciate the most about Splunk Observability Cloud are the ServiceNow integration feature, which is very seamless, and that's probably my favorite since ServiceNow is big in the observability industry."

"The solution's basic visibility is one of its most valuable features. So, it is a solution that is easy to use...The solution's initial setup process was straightforward."

"Splunk Observability Cloud scales with the growing needs of my organization effectively."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pros

Cons

"In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs."

"The dashboard and graphics must be improved."

"The design of this solution is not very intuitive and probably could come with more friendly tips for beginners."

"The support team could be better. Because of the different versions of different tactics of integrating reactive code base, the documentation is not very clear if someone has to be onboard. I would rate the documentation of Lightstep a five out of ten. It could need improvement."

"There is not a lot of support for the tool's on-premises version, especially since everything is on the cloud."

"I would like to see an improvement and some innovation in the customer interface."

"There are always areas for potential improvement to enhance its functionality and user experience."

"The UI enhancements could be a way to improve the solution in the future."

"Splunk APM should include a better correlation between resources and infrastructure monitoring."

"The solution should have more sensors regarding fiber intelligence for security measures."

"Splunk's functionality could be improved by adding database connectors for other platforms like AWS and Azure."

"The clustering part of indexes can be more refined."

More Splunk Observability Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive. I rate the tool's pricing model an eight out of ten."

"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."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"Splunk APM is a very cost-efficient solution."

"The solution's pricing is costly."

"Splunk has been fairly expensive, but it has been predictable."

"This is an expensive solution."

"Splunk Observability Cloud is expensive."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Government

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	43

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about LightStep?

The UI is very intuitive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with LightStep?

There are a lot of workflows and connectors. In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for LightStep?

I use the solution in my company since it has multiple tenants available. Basically, what happens in business is that you have a hybrid setup model, and for that, you extensively use a cloud platfo...

See all answers

What do you like most about SignalFx?

The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 22% of the time

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Compared 17% of the time

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Compared 13% of the time

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Compared 13% of the time

IBM Instana Observability vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 7% of the time

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Sentry vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 5% of the time

Observe vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 5% of the time

Cribl vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

SigNoz vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

Dynatrace vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 3% of the time

More Splunk Observability Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

October 2025

Download ServiceNow Cloud Observability product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Observability Cloud

October 2025

Download Splunk Observability Cloud product report

Also Known As

LightStep

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

Overview

ServiceNow Cloud Observability is a comprehensive platform designed to enhance visibility, control, and performance monitoring of your IT infrastructure and applications. It seamlessly integrates log management, trace management, metrics monitoring, and infrastructure monitoring in real-time, leveraging AI and machine learning for automated tasks and actionable insights. With benefits including improved visibility, faster incident resolution, enhanced application performance, simplified IT operations, and reduced costs, this cloud-native solution is ideal for businesses of all sizes with complex IT infrastructures. It integrates seamlessly with ServiceNow IT Operations Management (ITOM), supports OpenTelemetry standards, and provides AI-powered insights along with pre-built dashboards and reports.

ServiceNow

Splunk Observability Cloud offers sophisticated log searching, data integration, and customizable dashboards. With rapid deployment and ease of use, this cloud service enhances monitoring capabilities across IT infrastructures for comprehensive end-to-end visibility.

Focused on enhancing performance management and security, Splunk Observability Cloud supports environments through its data visualization and analysis tools. Users appreciate its robust application performance monitoring and troubleshooting insights. However, improvements in integrations, interface customization, scalability, and automation are needed. Users find value in its capabilities for infrastructure and network monitoring, as well as log analytics, albeit cost considerations and better documentation are desired. Enhancements in real-time monitoring and network protection are also noted as areas for development.

What are the key features?

Log Searching: Efficiently search and analyze logs from various sources.
Data Integration: Seamlessly integrate with multiple environments.
Dashboard Customization: Tailor dashboards to specific monitoring needs.
Monitoring Capabilities: Provides comprehensive insights into application performance.
Security Features: Analyze and address security threats across systems.
Visualization Tools: Enhance data analysis and system performance optimization.

Why consider this for ROI?

Comprehensive Visibility: Gain complete insights into IT infrastructure.
Performance Optimization: Improve overall system performance and efficiency.
Rapid Deployment: Quick setup to meet organization demands swiftly.
Enhanced Security: Strengthen security measures through detailed analytics.

In industries, Splunk Observability Cloud is implemented for security management by analyzing logs from detection systems, offering real-time alerts and troubleshooting for cloud-native applications. It is leveraged for machine data analysis, improving infrastructure visibility and supporting network and application performance management efforts.

Splunk

Sample Customers

InVision, Twilio, Lyft, Yext, DigitalOcean,

Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

September 2025

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