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AWS CloudTrail vs Amplitude comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 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

Amplitude
Ranking in User Activity Monitoring
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Customer Data Analysis (2nd), Web Analytics (1st), Mobile Marketing and Advertising (3rd), AI Data Analysis (8th), AI Customer Experience Personalization (10th)
AWS CloudTrail
Ranking in User Activity Monitoring
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the User Activity Monitoring category, the mindshare of Amplitude is 11.6%, up from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS CloudTrail is 9.3%, up from 7.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
User Activity Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AWS CloudTrail9.3%
Amplitude11.6%
Other79.1%
User Activity Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Saurav Bhattacharjee - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Business Analyst at Arcteryx
Empowers teams to build visualization-rich reports and make faster decisions using historical user behavior data
I think areas for Amplitude's improvement include data retention. The maximum data I have worked with, the clickstream data on Amplitude, is two years, whereas we rely on Tableau for historical data of at least two years. I am not sure whether it was my organization paying for lower retention or not, but having historical data would take away the reliance on Tableau. Secondly, reconciling clickstream data with Databricks or other AWS systems could help analysts spend less time verifying the accuracy of both sources, which would be really helpful. Lastly, a more focused approach on error logs is necessary. I have found that, at least with Intuit, we used Splunk more for error logs than Amplitude. Although Amplitude had the capability, developers seemed to prefer Splunk, so if that could be improved, it would be good.
Chukwudi Uzoma - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of IT, Infrastructure at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Comprehensive audit trails have transformed incident investigations and strengthen security posture
The best features AWS CloudTrail offers are complete API activity logging, multi-account audit visibility, integration with AWS Organizations, event history for investigation, integration with CloudWatch and Security Hub, S3 log activity, and compliance and forensic support. Using AWS CloudTrail in that investigation has significantly improved my security posture, governance capabilities, and audit readiness. It provides data accountability across the AWS environment that helps me investigate incidents much faster than would ever be possible. AWS CloudTrail has reduced investigation times dramatically. Activities that previously required hours of manual analysis can now be resolved in seconds because the audit trail is readily available. It has also simplified audit preparation because evidence of AWS activities is automatically captured and retained. I particularly value the ability to answer the questions: who did what, when, and from where. Those are the most important questions during incident investigations and audits. AWS CloudTrail has positively impacted my organization by significantly improving my security posture, audit readiness, governance, and control capabilities. It provides accountability across AWS environments and helps me investigate incident management much faster than ever was possible. I noticed that my investigations during incidents are significantly more surgical, more reliable, and straight to the point.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Other areas like cohort analysis, defining key events, and user properties were also well-suited for Amplitude. It is an easy tool to use."
"Amplitude offers flexibility in real-time data analysis, allowing users to make immediate decisions."
"Amplitude has provided almost instant value to our dev team when they are deploying new trackable events and seeing how those events line up before they go out to production."
"I loved using Amplitude because it allowed me to dive deep into product usage and analyze different customer segments."
"We can create charts and bar charts for visualization purposes and check real-time data with the solution."
"Having accessible data which can be easily customized and manipulated by even business stakeholders with less technical knowledge is one of the best things."
"Amplitude has positively impacted my organization as it allows us to make decisions based on data and iterate faster."
"Amplitude is a perfect product that will always fulfill all the data-related needs that your company has, and I would suggest anyone to go for it."
"What I found most valuable in AWS CloudTrail is that it provides a good context of what's happening in the environment, so it's an excellent way to baseline what's occurring. I also like that AWS CloudTrail helps with audits."
"It is a stable solution. AWS handles it well."
"The management events and CloudTrail Insights are valuable."
"I have not encountered any stability issues, glitches, or performance problems with AWS CloudTrail."
"AWS CloudTrail integrates with AWS Config and provides custom event, security, and compliance auditing."
"From a scalability point of view, the tool has no issue, and it is completely fine."
"AWS CloudTrail provides significant efficiency gains as it allows thorough monitoring of the environment, contributing substantially to security improvements."
"AWS CloudTrail helps in accelerating incident investigation and response. It increases it because I pull out the logs to CloudTrail, and from CloudTrail watch, I'll send it to the Security Hub and do a visualization with Prometheus and Grafana."
 

Cons

"Regarding how Amplitude can be improved, I think that dashboards and charts are ephemeral; people often create dashboards but rarely revisit them, so while a handful of dashboards might survive, the real value lies in the insight derived from them."
"There was a little bit of a problem with pricing since the price of Amplitude was really expensive, and although its features and functionality are powerful, making it worth it, it could be a huge obstacle for startups or those not making lots of money."
"I give it a nine because it is close to a perfect ten for me, but it is only useful in one layer of the project, not the other, which the tool is supposed to do."
"We attempted to use their screen recording and session recording capabilities as a replacement for a previous vendor, and we found that the functionality they offered did not stack up to the previous vendor."
"I choose nine because, lately, when I was using it, the more people wanted to improve, the more complex things got—not in a good way, but confusing."
"The free features in Amplitude Analytics need enhancement."
"I think areas for Amplitude's improvement include data retention. The maximum data I have worked with, the clickstream data on Amplitude, is two years, whereas we rely on Tableau for historical data of at least two years."
"We have seen tagging issues with Amplitude in rare scenarios, which can be improved."
"The product's initial setup phase is not pretty straightforward."
"The solution's operation visibility could be improved."
"Filtering multiple values within the console is a feature that has yet to exist in AWS CloudTrail. You can look up a user identity, service, or action, but you can't search for multiple dimensions."
"AWS CloudTrail only supports AWS, and Azure has its functions, GCP has their own. Dynatrace offers more flexible dashboards and services, making it more adaptable compared to AWS CloudTrail."
"Maybe if we could do direct queries on CloudTrail without needing to export it to Athena, that'd be great."
"AWS CloudTrail should be redesigned to capture non-API calls. It would be more effective to have one tool that can perform multiple tasks instead of relying on multiple services for non-API activities."
"I have not experienced any challenges while using it."
"AWS CloudTrail can sometimes generate too much information, which might lead to a lot of unnecessary data, particularly false positives."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is a little on the higher end, especially when considering scalability."
"It is a very cheap service because management is a SaaS offering from AWS."
"CloudTrail itself is free of cost."
"AWS CloudTrail is a cheap solution."
"AWS CloudTrail is pretty affordable, and I have to double-check, but the service is free to use. I can add logs on the console, but if I want to store logs long-term, then I have to pay a storage fee, but it's relatively inexpensive."
"AWS CloudTrail is free."
"The solution is free if you don't need customizations but is not expensive otherwise."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
13%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Construction Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amplitude?
Amplitude and all SaaS software nowadays need to improve their AI feature to keep up with competitors, and my experience with the demo showed it looks cool but needs enhancement.
What is your primary use case for Amplitude?
As a growth marketer, product analytics tools like Amplitude are a powerful weapon for marketers, allowing us to see all user funnels from acquisition to churn and retention. It was really easy to ...
What advice do you have for others considering Amplitude?
There are currently really good product analytics tools, and some are free, but if you want to analyze and see really proper data, especially as a CEO wanting to encounter the truth of your own dat...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS CloudTrail?
AWS CloudTrail is categorized into management events, data events, and CloudTrail Insights. For one hundred thousand events, management costs are approximately two dollars, data events ten cents, a...
What needs improvement with AWS CloudTrail?
AWS CloudTrail could be improved by adding more intelligent anomaly detection capabilities, stronger AI-assisted investigation workflows, easier root cause analysis for complex event chains, and im...
What is your primary use case for AWS CloudTrail?
The primary use case for AWS CloudTrail is auditing and security monitoring. AWS CloudTrail allows me to track all API activity across my AWS organization, investigate security events, support comp...
 

Also Known As

ClearBrain
CloudTrail
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nokia, Yik Yak, QuizUp, CrunchBase, Rhapsody, PlanGrid, Acquia, Patreon, SeatGeek, Etermax
HTC, British Gas, Solinor, 2C2P
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS CloudTrail vs. Amplitude and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,336 professionals have used our research since 2012.