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Amazon OpenSearch Service vs Grafana comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 16, 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 OpenSearch Service
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
26th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (22nd), Search as a Service (3rd)
Grafana
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Amazon OpenSearch Service is 1.6%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana is 3.6%, down from 6.7% 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 (%)
Grafana3.6%
Amazon OpenSearch Service1.6%
Other94.8%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Md. Shahariar Hossen - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at Cefalo
Event tracking has become smoother and data analytics provide clear insights for user actions
Amazon OpenSearch Service is not providing the processing feature directly. From Amazon OpenSearch Service, we are actually maintaining the AWS SQS, the queue service, which is responsible for providing information about what data has to be modified. So using that SQS, we're actually providing it, but we're not directly using Amazon OpenSearch Service for keeping data to other data pipeline thing. So far we didn't use it for any machine learning purposes, but in future, we have plans to extend or implement this feature. Since AWS itself is secure and Amazon OpenSearch Service is a part of this entire ecosystem, it becomes much easier for security purposes. From the validation point of view, Amazon OpenSearch Service itself provides easy to communicate APIs and up-to-date documents, which is much beneficial. For example, if I'm missing anything, I can directly go and check the documentation. That is actually much easier. I would rate it as really good so far. It's much faster. For our local machine, we can also use a kind of replica of Amazon OpenSearch Service just for development purposes. That is another good feature. I would say for the encryption thing and also the user access control management, it's much faster. For some of these hashing algorithms, it also worked really well so far. To be honest, I didn't find any places where it can be improved. However, I think they could provide more abstraction. For example, still for searching, we have to write down the queries in a specific manner, such as for a specific JSON structure or in a specific way. Otherwise, they don't provide us the actual results. For at least this purpose, I think abstraction could be a bit easier or a bit improved. Other than that, right now there is the age of AI, so some kind of prompting could also work, but I'm not sure how it could be integrated. As a user, lower prices or reasonable pricing is always better. Those can be improved as well. However, it is good that most of the services including Amazon OpenSearch Service actually provide pay as you go pricing. So if there were a bit lower version or a bit less payment methodology, it might be much better.
BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Unified dashboards have empowered teams and have democratized real-time operational insights
Grafana's snapshot and dashboard sharing features are critical for our remote incident response. During production issues, I generate a public snapshot of a dashboard at a specific point and share the URL in our Slack war room so every engineer can see exactly what the metrics looked like when the error occurred. This helps significantly during the process of finding the root cause in those scenarios. The best features Grafana offers go beyond just pretty charts; it is an integration engine. The fact that I can join data from my SQL database with metrics from Prometheus in the same table is a feature I have not found performed as well elsewhere. My team uses this feature by comparing two different tables from the databases to show one single view, which Grafana is really helping with. In a visualized way, the charts can be displayed on one dashboard, allowing end users who are not familiar with these technical aspects to extract valuable data from it. Grafana has positively impacted our organization by democratizing data within our company. Before using Grafana, only developers could see the system health, but now our product managers and executives have their own high-level dashboards, which has improved cross-departmental transparency and alignment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The business analytics capabilities are the most important feature it provides."
"This service already sorts data like vectors. They have classified the storage pre-defined."
"The initial set up is very easy...We really appreciate Amazon!"
"I would definitely recommend Amazon OpenSearch Service to other professionals due to its fast and reliable search capabilities."
"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"
"The most valuable features of Amazon Elasticsearch are ease of use, native JSON, and efficiency. Additionally, handles many use cases and search grammar was useful."
"The customer service is excellent, rated nine out of ten."
"The most valuable aspect is customization. There are many customizations possible, so I like that."
"Collaboration: Shares data and dashboards across teams."
"What I found most valuable in Grafana is that it has a lot of integrations and features that I need for data processing and visualization."
"The features I appreciate most are the dashboards and the integrations with multiple data sources."
"Grafana is stable and has great engineers."
"It's easy to make changes. We can put many dashboards in one place. There's no delay in showing data - what you see on Grafana matches the server metrics."
"Grafana integrates with some of the tools we've chosen beforehand, and while I'm not the right person to elaborate on this since I'm more focused on managing big teams, the teams working with it seem happy."
"The best thing about Grafana is the visualization. The colors and the ease of use make it very user-friendly."
 

Cons

"Amazon Elasticsearch can improve the bullion in the near search and the ease of integration with Kibana. Additionally, there could be more flexibility in the configuration and documentation."
"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."
"They can enhance data visualization."
"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."
"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 the data."
"I want to see a new feature in Amazon Elasticsearch Service that allows users to create default filters for filtered levels."
"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."
"I rate Grafana a six out of ten."
"There is room for improvement when using multiple dashboards because they can become complicated to keep track of and use."
"The main drawback is the necessity for endpoint monitoring."
"The features are complicated and not intuitive."
"Grafana could consider building its own metrics system to eliminate the reliance on other tools like Prometheus, providing a one-stop solution."
"There is a need for improvement in automating daily monitoring reports, especially when alerts are triggered due to system downtimes or fluctuations."
"I find that the alerting UI in Grafana can be complex for new users."
"Lacks event management which affects our DevOps people."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You only pay for what you use."
"The solution is not expensive, but priced averagely, I will say."
"There is a community edition available and the price of the commercial offering is reasonable."
"Compared to other cloud platforms, it is manageable and not very expensive."
"We are using the open-source license."
"Since Grafana is an open-source solution, it is free of cost."
"For me, Grafana is a cheap tool because I don't have to spend much time learning the product since it is a simple solution."
"I give the price an eight out of ten."
"I use the open source model so it is free."
"It's free of cost; it operates as an open-source tool."
"You need to purchase the solution's license for its commercial use."
"We use the open-source version of Grafana."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about Grafana?
The product's initial setup phase was very easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana?
The costs associated with using Grafana are somewhere in the ten thousands because we are able to control the logs in a more efficient way to reduce it. That is pretty much great for us.
What needs improvement with Grafana?
Grafana could be improved through enhancement of graphs and visualizations and providing more integrations. Grafana is going to start working with OpenTelemetry, which would be helpful to have the ...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Elasticsearch Service
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

VIDCOIN, Wyng, Yellow New Zealand, zipMoney, Cimri, Siemens, Unbabel
Microsoft, Adobe, Optum, Sky, Nvidia, Roblox, Wells Fargo, BlackRock, Informatica, Maersk, Daimler Truck, SNCF, Atlassian, DHL, SAP, JPMorgan Chase, Cisco, Citi and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon OpenSearch Service vs. Grafana and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.