Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Amazon CloudWatch vs Amazon OpenSearch Service comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 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

Amazon CloudWatch
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
13th
Ranking in Log Management
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (10th)
Amazon OpenSearch Service
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
25th
Ranking in Log Management
20th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Search as a Service (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 1.7%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon OpenSearch Service is 2.1%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Rahul Kundu - PeerSpot reviewer
Proactively address issues with seamless monitoring while enhancing custom metrics functionality
We use CloudWatch for monitoring and logging. It helps us monitor our applications' performance, particularly in ensuring that every API hit returns a response within four seconds, which is our SLA. We also monitor invocation errors in Lambda and use CloudWatch alerts to notify us of any issues…
Johnny Suleiman - PeerSpot reviewer
Scalability is a key feature as it allows easy scaling of the platform without downtime
OpenSearch is used as a search engine for specific logs, mainly in e-commerce and monitoring the logs themselves. It is very valuable for e-commerce, enabling data analysis on application logs and customer behavior, and can be integrated with other services, including AI and machine learning…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is the monitoring and UI."
"CloudWatch provides essential monitoring capabilities that integrate seamlessly with other AWS services."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is intrusion prevention."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is collecting the logs from Lambda."
"The solution effectively monitors golden signals like CPU, page requests, and queues."
"Amazon CloudWatch offers cost-saving advantages by being an inbuilt solution that requires no separate setup or maintenance for monitoring tasks."
"The monitoring feature is valuable."
"Scheduling is a valuable feature."
"In case there is a failure, Elastic manages everything well, and there no major downtime."
"I would definitely recommend Amazon OpenSearch Service to other professionals due to its fast and reliable search capabilities."
"It enables us to efficiently search and retrieve our event data, offering us a versatile approach to locate specific information within these logs."
"They have the good documentation in the help text and that is the reason the Amazon is the perfect solution in the current market."
"This service already sorts data like vectors. They have classified the storage pre-defined."
"Amazon OpenSearch Service provides a managed database solution, so we don't need to manage everything ourselves."
"The business analytics capabilities are the most important feature it provides."
"Our customers have seen tangible benefits from Amazon OpenSearch Service, especially in terms of their applications running smoothly, so they do get a return on investment."
 

Cons

"When customers want to see the CPU or memory utilization there is a cost. This should be free to see the utilization."
"I found several areas for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch. First is that it's tough to track issues and find out where it's going wrong. The process takes longer. For example, if I get an exception error, I read the logs, search, go to AWS Cloud, then to the groups to find the keyword to determine what's wrong. Another area for improvement in Amazon CloudWatch is that it's slow in terms of log streaming. It requires an entire twenty-four hours for scanning, rather than just one hour. This issue can be solved with Elasticsearch streaming with Kibana, but it requires a lot of development effort and integration with Kibana or Splunk, and this also means I need a separate developer and software technical stack to do the indexing and streaming to Kibana. It's a manual effort that you need to do properly, so log streaming should be improved in Amazon CloudWatch. The AWS support person should also have a better understanding of the logs in Amazon CloudWatch. What I'd like added to the solution is a more advanced search function, particularly one that can tell you more information or special information. Right now, the search function is difficult to use because it only gives you limited data. For example, I got an error message saying that the policy wasn't created. I only know the amount the customer paid for the policy, the mobile number, and the customer name, but if I use those details, the information won't show up on the logs. I need to enter more details, so that's the type of fuzzy matching Amazon CloudWatch won't provide. If this type of search functionality is provided, it will be very helpful for businesses and companies that provide professional services to customers, like ours."
"The drill-down aspect on the dashboard of the solution needs improvement. We get a very good high-level overview, but when we drill down, it becomes a little less clear. We have given this feedback to AWS as well and hope they will improve this in the future."
"The dashboard and the UI could improve in Amazon CloudWatch. Additionally, they should focus on visibility inside the servers with AI and machine learning integrations. This would allow users who are using the solution to see what is happening within the system better."
"What would make Amazon CloudWatch better is if it includes more on-site checks, particularly status checks on the CPU, network input/output, etc. It would also be helpful if there's built-in swap space, disk, and memory monitoring in Amazon CloudWatch because, at the moment, my team has to configure it manually through a shell script."
"It would be beneficial for CloudWatch to provide an API interface and some kind of custom configuration."
"I think something that can be improved are the alerts and alerting mechanism based on no rejects. We want to have it more flexible and that is one of the key things that is required."
"I do not know whether or not CloudWatch can be integrated with on-prem services."
"The configuration should be more straightforward because we had to select a lot of things."
"They can enhance data visualization."
"We faced documentation challenges during integration after migrating from Elasticsearch to Amazon OpenSearch Service. Better documentation on integration, query handling, and a more user-friendly UI could enhance the product."
"It would be beneficial to have some level of customization available in the managed service, tailored to the specific use cases of the end users."
"The pricing aspect is a concern. The service is way too costly. For the past month, I used only 30 to 40 MB of data, and the cost was $500. AWS could improve pricing."
"I would say that, basically, the configuration part is an area with a shortcoming...Some upgradation is required on the configuration side so that we can get to use it."
"One improvement I would like to see is support for auto-scaling."
"There is a problem with the database. Amazon only provides the hosting to run our applications bias, but there is no option to manage the database within the Elasticsearch product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It’s an open-source solution."
"What's were using is the free service of Amazon CloudWatch, so they're not charging us. As for hidden fees, we're not aware of them because we're using what our clients provided us."
"The tool is not expensive."
"We have monthly licensing costs. The licenses are probably in the vicinity of about $300 - $350/month."
"The price of Amazon CloudWatch is reasonable for detailed basic monitoring."
"The price of Amazon CloudWatch is reasonable. When the rate of data collection is done the price will increase. The price is less than other solutions."
"Its pricing is reasonable. It is sometimes tricky, but it is reasonable as compared to others."
"Amazon CloudWatch is a cheap solution."
"You only pay for what you use."
"Compared to other cloud platforms, it is manageable and not very expensive."
"There is a community edition available and the price of the commercial offering is reasonable."
"The solution is not expensive, but priced averagely, I will say."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
5%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon CloudWatch?
Overall, the pricing of Amazon CloudWatch is very expensive.
What needs improvement with Amazon CloudWatch?
Apart from traceability of network resources, Amazon CloudWatch needs to be more interoperable with other tools because many companies are starting to use AI-based dashboards. When using third-part...
What do you like most about Amazon OpenSearch Service?
We retrieve historical data with just a click of a button to move it from cold to hot or warm because it's already stored in the backend storage
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon OpenSearch Service?
I would consider the pricing as a six based on how much data we are handling; if we handle minimal data, it's cheap, but for large data, it becomes costly. Our clients usually pay between $1,000 to...
What needs improvement with Amazon OpenSearch Service?
In terms of data handling capabilities with Amazon OpenSearch Service, they can be complex and managing data in comparison to other SIM solutions is a major drawback, as it is very hard to handle t...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Amazon Elasticsearch Service
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus
VIDCOIN, Wyng, Yellow New Zealand, zipMoney, Cimri, Siemens, Unbabel
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudWatch vs. Amazon OpenSearch Service and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.