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Amazon CloudWatch vs Dynatrace comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 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
6.8
Amazon CloudWatch reduces monitoring costs, boosts operational efficiency, is vital for oversight, but not direct revenue, especially for small projects.
Sentiment score
6.9
Dynatrace boosts IT efficiency, reduces outages, and drives a 451% return by enhancing uptime and proactive problem management.
Amazon CloudWatch offers cost-saving advantages by being an inbuilt solution that requires no separate setup or maintenance for monitoring tasks.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
Using Dynatrace directly improved application uptime and reduced customer impacting incidents.
senior DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
ROI is hard to specify; however, incidents like impending ransomware attacks highlight its value, though those are exceptional events.
Enterprise Architect at DXC Technology
Save money by identifying problems, thereby reducing monetary losses on their application side.
Technical Manager, Consulting at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.4
Amazon CloudWatch support is reliable, with varying response times and expertise based on support level, premium ensures faster help.
Sentiment score
7.1
Dynatrace's support is praised for responsiveness and expertise, although complex queries may occasionally receive slower responses.
In recent years, due to business expansion, knowledge levels among support engineers seem to vary.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
While using their cloud and cloud resources, if you have an issue with CloudWatch, you must pay additional monthly fees to get time from dedicated tech support.
founder, ceo at Techrev Solutions Pvt Ltd
They have a good reputation, and the support is commendable.
Enterprise Architect at DXC Technology
The technical support from Dynatrace is excellent.
System Administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Whenever we faced any issues, we could get timely resolution from their support.
senior DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Amazon CloudWatch excels in scalability and performance, efficiently managing data and adapts quickly to diverse organizational needs.
Sentiment score
7.2
Dynatrace scales well for various environments, managing large data volumes, with scalability rated highly by most users.
It is already there as a managed service from AWS.
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
Amazon CloudWatch's scalability is managed by AWS.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
If it's an enterprise, increasing the number of instances doesn’t pose problems.
Enterprise Architect at DXC Technology
It is a powerful tool and helped us to reduce customer downtime and increase work efficiency.
senior DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
The scalability of Dynatrace is very significant, especially considering the current improvements in their features.
Technical Manager, Consulting at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Amazon CloudWatch is praised for its reliability and performance, though some note occasional data delays and slowness in low-capacity environments.
Sentiment score
7.6
Dynatrace is highly praised for its stability, reliability, and proactive monitoring, ensuring minimal outages and continuous high performance.
I sometimes notice slowness when Amazon CloudWatch agents are installed on machines with less capacity, causing me to use other monitoring tools.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
Generally, all are stable at ninety-nine point nine nine percent, but if the underlying infrastructure is not deployed correctly, stability may be problematic.
Enterprise Architect at DXC Technology
There have been no stability issues with Dynatrace.
System Administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Dynatrace is a SaaS product with frequent agent management updates.
Principal Consultant at a tech consulting company with 11-50 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Users seek better customization, visualization, and integration in CloudWatch, citing high costs, steep learning curve, and scalability challenges.
Users find Dynatrace expensive and complex, seeking intuitive interfaces, improved customization, security, infrastructure monitoring, and AI enhancements.
When using third-party dashboards such as Kibana or Grafana and other visualization tools, there should be a way to feed CloudWatch's data and logging capabilities into these visualization tools.
founder, ceo at Techrev Solutions Pvt Ltd
We are in a process of integrating Grafana, Loki, and Prometheus to have better visualization on Amazon CloudWatch.
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
Maybe Amazon Web Services can improve by providing a library for CloudWatch with some useful features.
Senior Software Engineer at Carnera
The definition of enterprise is loosely used, however, from a holistic security perspective, including infrastructure, network, ports, software, applications, transactions, and databases, there are areas lacking, especially in network monitoring tools.
Enterprise Architect at DXC Technology
Dynatrace could enhance cost and licensing structures, as the current pricing can be expensive for large-scale deployments.
BizOps Engineer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
I'm specifically looking at AIOps and how we can monitor AIOps-related things, considering we have LLMs and all that stuff.
Performance Architect at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

Amazon CloudWatch pricing is variable, with costs ranging from $25 to $350, depending on usage and AWS service integration.
Dynatrace costs can be high and complex, but users find value in its advanced features and transparency.
Overall, the pricing of Amazon CloudWatch is very expensive.
founder, ceo at Techrev Solutions Pvt Ltd
Amazon CloudWatch charges more for custom metrics as well as for changes in the timeline.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
Dynatrace is known to be costly, which delayed its integration into our system.
System Administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
If setting up in a large scale environment, it is overwhelming because it is expensive.
senior DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
The cost can be controlled from our side, and it is very transparent with Dynatrace regarding DPS and licensing.
Technical Manager, Consulting at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Amazon CloudWatch offers real-time data, AWS integration, efficient monitoring, user-friendly interface, and versatile dashboards for enhanced system performance.
Dynatrace provides AI-driven root cause analysis, full-stack observability, and user monitoring to enhance system performance and efficiency.
Amazon CloudWatch allows me to set up and view even historical logs, which is one of the features I find valuable.
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
If there is a CPU spike or system issues, we set alarms to notify us if the system is going down or not reachable.
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
I like its filtering capability and its ability to give the cyber engine insights.
Senior Software Engineer at Carnera
The integration with Power BI for generating detailed reports is a standout feature.
System Administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Dynatrace's AI-driven Davis engine absolutely helps identify performance issues by showing root cause analysis for us up to 200%; whatever is integrated, if it is visible, it can stitch and show.
Technical Associate at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Dynatrace links compute with services and services with code and other components.
Principal Consultant at a tech consulting company with 11-50 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon CloudWatch
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
13th
Ranking in Log Management
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (11th)
Dynatrace
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
2nd
Ranking in Log Management
6th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
358
Ranking in other categories
Mobile APM (2nd), Container Monitoring (1st), AIOps (2nd), AI Observability (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 1.3%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dynatrace is 6.6%, down from 11.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Dynatrace6.6%
Amazon CloudWatch1.3%
Other92.1%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Azam S M - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Lead at Danat Fz LLC
Has provided reliable monitoring and alerting through extensive metric tracking and dashboard configuration
Amazon CloudWatch itself provides a lot of data. However, for visualization, we need to use third-party tools. We are in a process of integrating Grafana, Loki, and Prometheus to have better visualization on Amazon CloudWatch. We are also integrating Grafana with the application itself to get the application data and logs. Alternatively, there is AWS Kinesis and Glue where you can scrape the logs and have visualization, but a more easy option is Grafana. If you want to get a proper visual representation to see what is happening, then you need to integrate a third-party tool. Amazon CloudWatch has all the data, but to see what is happening, you need some third-party tool.
Manish Indupuri - PeerSpot reviewer
senior DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
AI-driven insights have reduced downtime and improved cross-team collaboration
We encountered some challenges while using Dynatrace. Although the initial setup was smooth, fine-tuning alert thresholds and custom metrics took some time. Another challenge was that Dynatrace charges based on host units, so we had to carefully plan our agent deployments. The licensing model is expensive. Additionally, the complexity of setup is an issue. While OneAgent and auto-discover services are powerful, the setup is more complex compared to other tools such as Prometheus and Grafana. These integrations are simple and basic, but Dynatrace setup requires more complexity based on the environment. For new users wanting to use Dynatrace, it is difficult. However, the AI-related solutions and metrics took us to the next level for identifying and fixing things. Dynatrace requires an agent for operation. OneAgent is powerful, but it is also resource-heavy. On lightweight nodes or older systems, the agent can slightly impact performance. If Dynatrace could implement a lightweight agent behavior, we could make things faster. Additionally, if Dynatrace could add a long-term retention policy so that we could store more data and find fine-grained details, that would help us. While Dynatrace managed edition supports on-premises deployment, the SaaS version depends on cloud connectivity. For highly regulated or air-gapped environments, setup and updates can be challenging. Although the initial setup is smooth, if someone wants to fine-tune it and fully understand the tool end-to-end, it could be tricky.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Transportation Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business78
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise298
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon CloudWatch?
Amazon CloudWatch itself provides a lot of data. However, for visualization, we need to use third-party tools. We are in a process of integrating Grafana, Loki, and Prometheus to have better visual...
Any advice about APM solutions?
The key is to have a holistic view over the complete infrastructure, the ones you have listed are great for APM if you need to monitor applications end to end. I have tested them all and have not f...
What cloud monitoring software did you choose and why?
While the environment does matter in the selection of an APM tool, I prefer to use Dynatrace to manage the entire stack. Both production and Dev/Test. I find it to be quite superior to anything els...
Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus
Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudWatch vs. Dynatrace and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.