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AWS X-Ray vs Azure Monitor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 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

AWS X-Ray
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
16th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Azure Monitor
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
5th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AWS X-Ray is 3.1%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Monitor is 6.0%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Muhmad Tabrez A Deewanji - PeerSpot reviewer
Improving performance through efficient trace metrics and data insights
As an application developer and architect, I appreciate AWS X-Ray for checking latency and identifying bottlenecks. I use it for performance tuning, conducting performance testing on applications, getting real-time traces, and gaining data insights. It helps in improving throughput and tuning infrastructure. The trace metrics and data collected provide valuable insights.
Muhammad Usman Khawar - PeerSpot reviewer
Native integration simplifies monitoring but documentation and cost improvements are needed
The ease of access in Azure is significant since it's native to the platform and easy to integrate. It has no maintenance overhead, and users don't have to navigate to another portal to get their desired result. It's the handiness that it has, rather than the features. The interpretation from the logs and injection requires custom runbooks. While it's complex, many services provide native insights and workbooks. It does the basic job quite efficiently. They added new kinds of metrics with more integrations to send out metrics. They have even added support for third-party tools that can be integrated. Azure Monitor is working on improvements and becoming more mature. Azure Monitor is stable and scalable. Azure Monitor is evolving with new workbooks and dashboards.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a very scalable solution."
"AWS X-RAY identifies bottlenecks in terms of stability and performance and how long certain data lives in terms of response time and duration."
"AWS X-Ray shows us exactly when there are delays, helping us understand the depth of issues and what is happening point-to-point."
"AWS X-Ray is a strong solution and has a smooth integration process."
"I would give AWS X-Ray a nine out of ten overall."
"The most beneficial feature is that it shows a dashboard for performance intervals, which reveals latencies."
"The error analysis capabilities of X-Ray are really good."
"AWS X-Ray shows us exactly when there are delays, helping us understand the depth of issues and what is happening point-to-point."
"A product that is well-integrated for monitoring Microsoft Azure."
"The features that are most valuable are the alerting function and also the logging functionality to analyze certain issues using log analytics"
"The tools for logs and metrics are pretty good and easy to use."
"The solution integrates well with the Microsoft platform."
"The solution has tons of valuable features."
"Good load and metrics gathering and very good analysis."
"Azure Monitor's best features are its graphs and charts, the different visibility options, and reporting."
"Azure Monitor is really just a source for Dynatrace. It's just collecting data and monitoring the environment and the infrastructure. It is fairly good at that."
 

Cons

"Like most Amazon products, the user interface, configuration, and tuning aren't the easiest. That's the biggest reason why people tend to go to products like TerraForm and Terragrunt. We use TerraForm and Terragrunt. So, for setting things up and interacting with X-Ray, it's definitely the user interface that can be better."
"Sometimes, the collector agents are confusing to configure initially."
"Compared to other open-source tools, AWS X-Ray needs improvement in providing discounts."
"I do not have any notes in terms of improvements."
"If you have a small team, it's probably overkill."
"A significant downside is that it is very expensive."
"AWS X-Ray should improve its implementation process to make it easier for developers."
"What needs to be better in AWS X-Ray is the log filtering. Predefined filters could be helpful because the power of analytics comes from how you can filter the data. I also want to see more KPIs from AWS X-Ray."
"The troubleshooting logs need improvement. There should be some improvement there. I have a hard time finding the right logs at the right times whenever there is an issue occurring."
"In my opinion, they should improve the overall user experience, especially when it comes to indexing and searching collective logs."
"It's really complex to retrieve or query the logs in Azure Monitor."
"The onboarding process of certain assets and the overall UI can be improved in Azure Monitor"
"Lacks information including details related to where problems lie."
"The monitoring of Kubernetes clusters needs improvement to be on par with competitors."
"The solution needs better monitoring. It requires better log controls."
"I need connectivity with cost management."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is a bit expensive."
"As you develop a relationship with Amazon, your pricing gets lower. You get credits for the amount of the system you use, and then if you're the government, you can get government pricing. For commercial users, there's a hump when you go from small to medium to big enterprise. Small businesses can live pretty easily off the free tier in a lot of cases, but when you go from a medium to a big enterprise, it becomes more expensive on a per-user basis. I'd like to see that curve going in a different way where pricing can be driven down while people are trying to adopt the technology."
"The pricing for AWS X-Ray is a six out of ten."
"Regarding pricing, Azure Monitor is free with Azure license, so there are no additional costs for using it."
"The cost of Azure Monitor application performance should be less expensive."
"The Azure Insight is a little bit expensive."
"The solution is expensive, but it is worth the price."
"Azure Monitor is one of the more cost effective solutions on the market."
"Besides standard licensing fees the customer needs to additionally pay based on the ingested data size"
"Its cost depends on the ingestion of the logs. It could go anywhere. For an out-of-the-box platform such as FrameFlow, you pay pretty much a fixed price and you get what you get, whereas, with something like Azure Monitor, you pay by the ingestion charge, so you can have one client who pays hardly anything for the same alerts, and another client pays loads and loads."
"The product offers a pay-as-you-go model to users. The charges are to be paid according to the usage of the product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS X-Ray?
AWS X-Ray is a strong solution and has a smooth integration process.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS X-Ray?
While I have not compared it with GCP or Azure ( /products/microsoft-azure-reviews ), AWS generally offers cost-effective services. Some services, like Athena ( /products/odyssey-software-athena-eo...
What needs improvement with AWS X-Ray?
AWS X-Ray should improve its implementation process to make it easier for developers. The current manual instrumentation is challenging compared to the almost automatic instrumentation of other pro...
How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
What do you like most about Azure Monitor?
Azure Monitor is a very easy-to-use product in the cloud environment.
What needs improvement with Azure Monitor?
The primary challenge is the documentation. The major challenge that remains is the costing factor for the logs ingestion. The cost skyrockets once you start using it, and there are complaints that...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

COMCAST, ConnectWise, skyscanner, AirAsia, cookpad, cimpress, VTEX, zowdow
Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS X-Ray vs. Azure Monitor and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.