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Amazon CloudWatch vs Grafana Loki comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

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 Log Management
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (13th), Cloud Monitoring Software (11th)
Grafana Loki
Ranking in Log Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 2.1%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana Loki is 7.9%, up from 6.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Grafana Loki7.9%
Amazon CloudWatch2.1%
Other90.0%
Log Management
 

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…
Volodymyr Bondarchuk - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrations enhance monitoring but problem-solving proves challenging
Different types of integrations with various sources are the most helpful and useful features of Grafana Loki that I found for myself. As part of Kubernetes technology, I noticed benefits from using this product such as availability, configuration balancing, high availability solutions for high performance, and failover clustering. It provides a clear picture about the state of the system and gives needed information for taking action and quickly fixing problems.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We can create events and alerts. We use the information to dive down into the infrastructure performance."
"It's a very simple logging system."
"The alarms are one thing I love about AWS CloudWatch. It has alerts that notify us when resource use is approaching the limit."
"Amazon CloudWatch's best feature stems from its ability to monitor app performance."
"We use Amazon CloudWatch for logging."
"The solution is easy to use."
"Amazon CloudWatch offers cost-saving advantages by being an inbuilt solution that requires no separate setup or maintenance for monitoring tasks."
"Amazon CloudWatch is a cheap and easy-to-use solution."
"The most valuable part of Loki is the ability to filter logs by keywords and devices."
"I appreciate the capability to process logs from microservices and seamlessly integrate them into Grafana."
"Loki also utilizes the same service discovery mechanism as used by Prometheus. So, whatever labeled metadata you see in Prometheus, you have the exact same metadata in the Loki system. Given this level of intricacy and the attempt to address these challenges, I firmly believe that Loki deserves praise for the work."
"We are using Grafana Loki as a database for real-time metrics."
"Grafana Loki is easy to monitor and detect errors."
"The most valuable features of the solution stem from the fact that it is an open-source tool that is stable and flexible."
"The log collection feature is good and the solution is easily understandable. v"
"Grafana agent is very lightweight and does not cost significant resources of our cluster."
 

Cons

"Better reporting is always something needed. That could be an answer to just about anything. But you always want better reporting, better dashboards, things that are just more dynamic and more accessible."
"Amazon CloudWatch charges extra for custom metrics, which is a significant disadvantage."
"Amazon CloudWatch needs improvement. The main thing is we have noticed missing logs."
"The product’s documentation must be improved."
"Incorporating a straightforward method or a plug-and-play solution for integrating these databases with our systems, facilitating smooth data transfer, and enabling the creation of dashboards for monitoring and analysis would be beneficial."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing, because they have a premium version, but it's not really a premium version. It's just an enhanced monitoring version, and it can be a bit expensive depending on your usage."
"For monitoring applications or for APM, CloudWatch has some limitations. You cannot monitor application performance from CloudWatch, and you have to go for a third-party tool."
"Adding conditional expressions would enhance its functionality."
"It's not intended for proprietary services, so you have to struggle with configuration a lot."
"The platform's stability needs improvement."
"The Docker container partition feature needs improvement as they do not reuse the space and goes into a pending state."
"We face some bugs when we install the latest version of Grafana Loki."
"The solution has shortcomings regarding security monitoring-oriented features that need improvement."
"My main concern is the recommended production-grade setup. They suggest using tools like Tanka or Jsonnet. They should simplify the process to increase adoption."
"In Grafana Loki, the creation of metrics is not so easy, making it an area that could be made easier."
"I do not see any areas for improvement at the moment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a free-of-charge service."
"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 price is okay for me."
"I consider it as a medium-priced solution."
"The product's cost is relatively inexpensive."
"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."
"The price of Amazon CloudWatch is reasonable for detailed basic monitoring."
"We have monthly licensing costs. The licenses are probably in the vicinity of about $300 - $350/month."
"I find the licensing structure quite reasonable, as the free license effectively meets my requirements."
"I use the open-source version of the product."
"You can use the free version of Grafana Loki on-premises."
"The cost is less than other paid services like CloudWatch."
"We use a free version."
"Grafana Loki is a free, open-source solution."
"The pricing structure varies based on the number of users; there might be specific taxes to pay for it."
"My company doesn't need to pay for the licensing cost of the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
4%
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise3
 

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 Grafana Loki?
We are using Grafana Loki as a database for real-time metrics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana Loki?
Since it is an open source tool, there are no charges or fees.
What needs improvement with Grafana Loki?
I have no ideas at this moment about what could be improved in Grafana Loki.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudWatch vs. Grafana Loki and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.