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AWS X-Ray vs Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) 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
19th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Google Cloud's operations s...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
26th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (29th), Cloud Monitoring Software (23rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AWS X-Ray is 3.3%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is 1.1%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Willy Moura - PeerSpot reviewer
Identifying and resolving deployment issues while configuring can be challenging
I have two use cases with my customers. One involves using AWS Fargate, and the other involves an application running on WordPress. The WordPress application was very slow, and we used AWS X-Ray to understand the main problem. X-Ray helped us identify issues with our EFS, allowing us to adjust…
Anand_Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers reliable Ops Agent and logging transport feature with easy third-party integrations
As part of our company, we implemented several changes in our log analytics pattern, including the storage and procurement process. Earlier, before implementing the solution, our company was able to procure only one year of data, but later, we came to the three-year mark. Around 15-20% reduction has been witnessed in the total analytic consumption of our company. The aforementioned result was possible because the solution allowed the creation of a dashboard where factors like storage costs, proportion of logs, and logs presence in a storage bucket or BigQuery can all be checked. Earlier all logs were stored in a raw storage, but currently our company is able to move logs in table bucket that contributes towards cost savings.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"AWS X-Ray is a strong solution and has a smooth integration process."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"It's easy to use."
"Our company has a corporate account for Google Cloud and so our systems and clusters integrate really well."
"We find the solution to be stable."
"The features that I have found most valuable are its graphs - if I need any statistics, in Kubernetes or Kong level or VPN level, I can quickly get the reports."
"Google's technical support is very good."
"The cloud login enables us to get our logs from the different platforms that we currently use."
"Provides visibility into the performance uptime."
"I like the monitoring feature."
 

Cons

"They can improve how traces are sent to other providers."
"If you have a small team, it's probably overkill."
"The user interface is sometimes kind of confusing to understand. It's not very user-friendly."
"I do not have any notes in terms of improvements."
"Sometimes, the collector agents are confusing to configure initially."
"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."
"It should have X-Ray SDKs for different languages like Node.js, Python, or Java."
"Compared to other open-source tools, AWS X-Ray needs improvement in providing discounts."
"It could be more stable."
"It could be even more automated."
"It is difficult to estimate in advance how much something is going to cost."
"The product provides minimal metrics that are insufficient."
"This solution could be improved if it offered the ability to analyze charts, such as a solution like Kibana."
"The logging functionality could be better."
"If I want to track any round-trip or breakdowns of my response times, I'm not able to get it. My request goes through various levels of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and comes back to my client machine. Suppose that my request has taken 10 seconds overall, so if I want to break it down, to see where the delay is happening within my architecture, I am not able to find that out using Stackdriver."
"The process of logging analytics can be improved"
 

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."
"We have a basic standard license without any additional costs."
"The cost of using Stackdriver depends on usage."
"The cost could be lower."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
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?
Compared to other open-source tools, AWS X-Ray needs improvement in providing discounts. Customers often seek cheaper solutions. When using many AWS resources, pricing can be a mid-range cost, give...
What needs improvement with AWS X-Ray?
Sometimes, the collector agents are confusing to configure initially. It requires research to understand the correct configurations, especially when deploying on-premises or on an EC2 instance. Usi...
What needs improvement with Google Stackdriver?
If the errors are caught early in the interface, it would be easier for users to manage. The process of logging analytics can be improved.
What is your primary use case for Google Stackdriver?
I use the solution for logging, defining alerts, and monitoring. Our company's Java and Python logging teams mainly use it.
What advice do you have for others considering Google Stackdriver?
The Ops Agent and logging transport feature of the solution have had a major impact on improving application performance. The solution also allows the transport of logs into log buckets, which is h...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Google Stackdriver, Stackdriver Monitoring, Stackdriver Logging, Google Cloud Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

COMCAST, ConnectWise, skyscanner, AirAsia, cookpad, cimpress, VTEX, zowdow
Uber, Batterii, Q42, Dovetail Games
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS X-Ray vs. Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.