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Amazon CloudWatch vs Graylog comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 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 Log Management
12th
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 (10th)
Graylog
Ranking in Log Management
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudWatch is 2.2%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Graylog is 6.4%, up from 6.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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…
Ivan Kokalovic - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates backend service monitoring with efficient log retrieval and API flexibility
Graylog is valuable because it bridges technical knowledge to non-technical teams, presenting complex backend processes in a simple timeline. It boosts the knowledge of sales and customer support teams by allowing them to see the backend operations without needing to read the code. Its API is flexible for visualization, and its powerful search engine efficiently handles large volumes of log data. Moreover, its stability, fast search capabilities, and compatibility with languages like ANSI SQL enhance its utility in IT infrastructure.

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."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon CloudWatch is its ease of use and logs. You do not have to go to each separate system to see the logs, such as Syslog and they are located in one dashboard GUI."
"We use Amazon CloudWatch for logging."
"The tool enables live monitoring."
"Amazon CloudWatch is a cheap and easy-to-use solution."
"The product can be integrated with AWS very easily."
"The monitoring feature is valuable."
"It is a stable solution...I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"The best feature of Graylog is the Elasticsearch integration. We can integrate and we can run filters, such as an event of interest, and those logs we can send to any SIEM tool or as an analytic. Additionally, there are clear and well-documented implementation instructions on their website to follow if needed."
"We're using the Community edition, but I know that it has really good dashboarding and alerts."
"I am very proud of how very stable the solution is."
"The product is scalable. The solution is stable."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its new interface."
"Allowing us to set up alerts and integrate with platforms we already use, such as Slack and OpsGenie to alert users of these errors proactively, is also a very useful feature."
"The ability to write custom alerts is key to information security and compliance."
"Graylog's search functionality, alerting functionality, user management, and dashboards are useful."
 

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."
"There's a learning curve with Amazon CloudWatch since we have to learn to write the queries to extract the keys and logs."
"The solution should provide human-readable metrics."
"We'd like the interface to be as easy as Datadog."
"It would be beneficial for CloudWatch to provide an API interface and some kind of custom configuration."
"I would like to monitor inbound and outbound transfer. I would also like to control the traffic for load balancing."
"The technical support must be improved."
"More customization is always useful."
"More complex visualizations and the ability to execute custom Elasticsearch queries would be great."
"When it comes to configuring the processing pipeline, writing the rules can be very tedious, especially since the documentation isn't extensive on how the functions provided for these rules work."
"With technical support, you are on your own without an enterprise license."
"I hope to see improvements in Graylog for more interactivity, user-friendliness, and creating alerts. The initial setup is complex."
"Graylog needs to improve their authentication. Also, the fact that Graylog displays logs from the top down is just ridiculous."
"The biggest problem is the collector application, as we wanted to avoid using Graylog Collector Sidecar due to its architecture."
"Elasticsearch recommendations for tuning could be better. Graylog doesn't have direct support for running the system inside of Kubernetes, so it can be challenging to fill in the gaps and set up containers in a way that is both performant and stable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's cost is relatively inexpensive."
"It’s an open-source solution."
"Its pricing is reasonable. It is sometimes tricky, but it is reasonable as compared to others."
"The tool is not expensive."
"The pricing model is pay-as-you-go so you have to be mindful of usage to manage costs."
"Amazon CloudWatch is a cheap solution."
"The price is okay for me."
"The pricing can be considered reasonable, especially when already operating on a cloud platform."
"It's open source and free. They have a paid version, but we never looked into that because we never needed the features of the paid version."
"I am using a community edition. I have not looked at the enterprise offering from Graylog."
"We're using the Community edition."
"​You get a lot out-of-the-box with the non-enterprise version, so give it a try first."
"If you want something that works and do not have the money for Splunk or QRadar, take Graylog.​​"
"We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive."
"There is an open source version and an enterprise version. I wouldn't recommend the enterprise version, but as an open source solution, it is solid and works really well."
"Graylog is a free open-source solution. The free version has a capacity limitation of 2 GB daily, if you want to go above this you have to purchase a license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
5%
Computer Software Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Government
8%
University
7%
 

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 Graylog?
The product is scalable. The solution is stable.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Graylog?
I am not familiar with the pricing details of Graylog, as I was not responsible for that aspect. It was determined that we didn't need an enterprise plan, which is more suited for clients with less...
What needs improvement with Graylog?
An improvement I would suggest is in Graylog's user interface, such as allowing for font size adjustments. A potential enhancement could be the integration with Ollama to run large language models ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Graylog2
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AirAsia, Airbnb, Aircel, APUS, Avazu, Casa & Video, Futbol Club Barcelona (FCBarcelona), National Taiwan University, redBus
Blue Cross Blue Shield, eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn, SAP, King.com, Twilio, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudWatch vs. Graylog and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.