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 #41 with an average rating of 7.5, while Splunk is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.7. ServiceNow holds a 0.4% mindshare in APM, compared to Splunk’s 1.9% 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
812 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Splunk Observability Cloud

Read 70 Splunk Observability Cloud reviews

5,720 Views
3,432 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Splunk Observability Cloud

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 19, 2025

Splunk Observability Cloud and ServiceNow Cloud Observability compete in the observability solutions category. ServiceNow is seen as having the upper hand due to its comprehensive features, whereas Splunk is recognized for its competitive pricing and support.

Features: Splunk Observability Cloud provides real-time data analytics, strong integration capabilities, and scalable solutions for large-scale environments. ServiceNow Cloud Observability offers advanced automation, anomaly detection, and comprehensive incident management tailored for reducing manual workloads.

Room for Improvement: Splunk could enhance its offerings by integrating more advanced automation and expanding its anomaly detection capabilities. Additionally, improvements in robust incident management would be beneficial. ServiceNow could focus on simplifying its deployment process and documentation for quicker onboarding. Reducing complexity in initial implementation could also provide a better user experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk Observability Cloud ensures an easier deployment process with extensive documentation and customer support that facilitates quick setup and resolution. ServiceNow, while comprehensive in support during onboarding, requires a more elaborate implementation phase, emphasizing continuous engagement throughout the customer journey.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk Observability Cloud offers a more affordable entry with an emphasis on delivering high ROI through efficient data processing. ServiceNow, though potentially higher in initial cost, justifies the investment with extensive functionality that promises long-term savings by enhancing operational efficiency.

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

41st

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 (7th), Container Management (7th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is 0.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 1.9%, up from 1.0% 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	1.9%
ServiceNow Cloud Observability	0.4%
Other	97.7%

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 UI is very intuitive."

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

"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."

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

"Once configured correctly, the analysis reporting the Splunk APM provides is better than that of the other APM tools."

"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."

"It's beneficial for monitoring performance and infrastructure, especially when deploying applications with multiple versions with Git."

"The solution's most valuable aspect is its ability to get information about all of the security measurements in my environment."

"Customer service and technical support respond very quickly."

"The product retains a lot of log data for subsequent analysis."

"The Add data feature lets you gather any type of log and easily analyze it."

"I like the fact that Splunk APM makes it easy to connect to the application database and run queries against the data."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pros

Cons

"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."

"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 user interface of Splunk Observability Cloud needs a lot of work."

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

"The only strain point we've encountered with Splunk Observability Cloud is that the search times can be lengthy for some things."

"Splunk would be better if some tools were integrated to be able to take action on security or network concerns."

"The solution's stability is an area that has room for improvement. It needs to provide constant stability to its users."

"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."

"There's no standard use case available where you can see the utilization of the number of use cases I have."

"This solution is difficult to configure and the instructions are complex."

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."

"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 Observability Cloud is expensive."

"It is expensive."

"The price of Splunk APM is less than some of its competitors."

"The pricing is based on several factors, including the scale of deployment."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"The solution's pricing is costly."

"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."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Retailer

11%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	19
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	44

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 36% of the time

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Compared 23% of the time

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Compared 19% of the time

IBM Instana Observability vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 12% of the time

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Sentry vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 7% of the time

Observe vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 6% of the time

Cribl vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 5% of the time

SigNoz vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 5% of the time

Dynatrace vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

More Splunk Observability Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

August 2025

Download ServiceNow Cloud Observability product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Observability Cloud

August 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

Free Report: ServiceNow Cloud Observability vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

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