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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
7.7
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Azure Monitor
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
4th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AWS X-Ray is 3.2%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Monitor is 6.3%, 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 ( /products/aws-x-ray-reviews ) 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

"The most important one is compliance. We're able to achieve our regulatory levels. We're able to achieve the security level that we need for the federal government."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"The most promising feature of AWS X-Ray is that you can debug the issues through the proper logs. You can also get an analysis out of the logs for some use cases, though I have yet to try all the features of AWS X-Ray."
"AWS X-Ray is a strong solution and has a smooth integration process."
"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."
"The most beneficial feature is that it shows a dashboard for performance intervals, which reveals latencies."
"AWS X-RAY identifies bottlenecks in terms of stability and performance and how long certain data lives in terms of response time and duration."
"You can scale the product."
"I am monitoring all of my Azure Monitor and getting good reports. I can customize the reports to get the information I need. I am also getting emails about which AAS instances are down and everything in the system related to my services. It is easy to use, scalable, and user-friendly. Microsoft has Many guides and videos to help you understand how to create and use Azure Monitor."
"For me, the best feature is the log analysis with Azure Monitor's Log Analytics. Without being able to analyze the logs of all the activities that affect the performance of a machine, your monitoring effectiveness will be severely limited."
"The solution very easily integrates with Azure services and in one click you can monitor your resource."
"Azure Monitor gives us the observability to check everything that we have in the cloud."
"It has good troubleshooting features."
"Azure Monitor is useful because of the useful application insights and telemetry, such as metrics and logs."
"The ease of access in Azure is significant since it's native to the platform and easy to integrate."
 

Cons

"A significant downside is that it is very expensive."
"Sometimes, the collector agents are confusing to configure initially."
"If you have a small team, it's probably overkill."
"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."
"I do not have any notes in terms of improvements."
"Compared to other open-source tools, AWS X-Ray needs improvement in providing discounts."
"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."
"AWS X-Ray should improve its implementation process to make it easier for developers."
"They need to work on a more hybrid deployment that will allow us to monitor local on-premise deployments and connect to different systems. I would like to see more integration."
"The solution's monitoring feature has limitations for analyzing multiple metrics."
"We cannot use AI services with the solution."
"I believe Azure Monitor is already a top-notch solution with excellent functionality and there is not much I would suggest for improvement. However, there is one limitation that certain features require payment, even for testing purposes, which can be a challenge."
"What I feel is when I open a screen of Azure, some places are very complex to navigate to. It is not very user-friendly when it comes to accessing certain sections."
"Currently, it seems it's complicated to get the correct information in terms of what to do and how things work."
"In terms of pricing, Azure Monitor's billing based on data size can sometimes lead to increased costs, especially when developers need to purge data frequently. While there are mechanisms in place to track and manage this, there is room for improvement in terms of optimizing data pausing and related processes. Enhancements in this area could help mitigate potential billing concerns and provide a more seamless experience for users."
"n comparison to New Relic, which I've used before, it's a bit more complicated. It's not as easy to use. It also took some time to get it working. The implementation needs to be simpler."
 

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."
"Azure Monitor is a low-priced solution, which is why it would work best on small-scale projects."
"The licensing is a monthly fee."
"Azure Monitor is one of the more cost effective solutions on the market."
"I would rate Azure Monitor a two out of five for affordability."
"The tool's pricing is very good. I could say that Microsoft offers different cost models, which are listed on the product's website."
"The product offers a pay-as-you-go model to users. The charges are to be paid according to the usage of the product."
"The solution is very costly because you have to pay for various things such as adding to logs and internet alerts."
"Azure Monitor is cheaper compared to other third-party monitoring tools."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
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: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.