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AWS X-Ray vs Elastic Observability 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
Elastic Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (10th), Log Management (16th), Container Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
 

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 Elastic Observability is 4.8%, down from 5.9% 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.
Adelina Craciun - PeerSpot reviewer
Customization enables tailored monitoring and alerting across departments
The possibility to customize it has been quite useful. Whatever the other departments want to dream up, we implement. Whatever they want to monitor, the granularity of it, the changes in the threshold, and the anomalies that they want reported all require some development. So far, every single request has been fulfilled.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The error analysis capabilities of X-Ray are really good."
"The solution has made it easier for us to trace the problems that we have with our requests and to monitor the timing of each step in each request we do in our endpoints."
"AWS X-Ray is a strong solution and has a smooth integration process."
"AWS X-RAY identifies bottlenecks in terms of stability and performance and how long certain data lives in terms of response time and duration."
"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."
"The most beneficial feature is that it shows a dashboard for performance intervals, which reveals latencies."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"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."
"I recommend Elastic Observability for its completeness of vision and wide ecosystem."
"It's easy to deploy, and it's very flexible."
"I have built a mini business intelligence system based on Elastic Observability."
"It is scalable and supports multitenancy, which is beneficial for MSPs."
"The tool's most valuable feature is centralized logging. Elastic Common Search helps us to search for the logs across the organization."
"It has always been a stable solution."
"Good design and easy to use once implemented."
"The Elastic User Interface framework lets us do custom development when needed. You need to have some Javascript knowledge. We need that knowledge to develop new custom tests."
 

Cons

"Sometimes, the collector agents are confusing to configure initially."
"Compared to other open-source tools, AWS X-Ray needs improvement in providing discounts."
"If you have a small team, it's probably overkill."
"I do not have any notes in terms of improvements."
"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 user interface is sometimes kind of confusing to understand. It's not very user-friendly."
"They can improve how traces are sent to other providers."
"It should have X-Ray SDKs for different languages like Node.js, Python, or Java."
"Elastic Observability is reactive rather than proactive. It should act as an ITSM tool and be able to create tickets and alerts on Jira."
"The solution would be better if it was capable of more automation, especially in a monitoring capacity or for the response to abnormalities."
"More web features could be added to the product."
"The solution needs to use more AI. Once the product onboards AI, users would more effectively be able to track endpoints for specific messages."
"If we had some pre-defined templates for observability that we could start using right away after deploying it – instead of having to build or to change some of the dashboards – that would be helpful."
"The only challenging aspect for new users is often writing the query language."
"When opening tickets, we cannot use our team mailbox."
"The cost must be made more transparent."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 solution is a bit expensive."
"The pricing for AWS X-Ray is a six out of ten."
"We will buy a premium license after POC."
"Elastic Observability's pricing could be better for small-scale users."
"There are two types: cloud and SaaS. They charge based on data ingestion, ingest rate, hard retention, and warm retention. I believe it costs around $25,000 annually to ingest 30GB of data daily. That is the SaaS version. There is also a self-managed license where the customer manages their own infrastructure on-prem. In such cases, there are three license tiers that respectively cost $5,000 annually per node, $7,000 per node, and $12,500 per node."
"Elastic Observability is cheaper than other similar solutions, such as Dynatrace. Its license calculation is based on various factors like data volume and physical infrastructure, particularly related to RAM capacity."
"The product is not that cheap."
"The product’s pricing needs improvement."
"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."
"Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."
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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%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
15%
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...
What do you like most about Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?
The license for Elastic Observability is the same as for other uses; you pay for Elastic, and you can use it for various cases. Observability is actually cheaper compared to logs because you're not...
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
I think they are working on the AI-based features, which are currently in technical preview. The only challenging aspect for new users is often writing the query language. Basic searching is very e...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

COMCAST, ConnectWise, skyscanner, AirAsia, cookpad, cimpress, VTEX, zowdow
PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS X-Ray vs. Elastic Observability and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.