AWS X-Ray vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and SolarWinds are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #22 with an average rating of 7.4, while SolarWinds is ranked #19 with an average rating of 8.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 1.0% mindshare in APM, compared to SolarWinds’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

AWS X-Ray

Read 11 AWS X-Ray reviews

4,978 Views
4,779 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 44 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

7,596 Views
4,330 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

AWS X-Ray

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and AWS X-Ray are application and server management and monitoring solutions. AWS X-Ray holds an upper hand with its advanced features, appealing to those seeking comprehensive tracing and monitoring capabilities.

Features: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor provides comprehensive application monitoring with detailed dashboards, varied server environment insights, and robust on-premises integration. AWS X-Ray’s standout features include robust distributed tracing, microservices architecture optimization, and seamless integration with AWS services, offering detailed visibility into user requests and latency issues.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds could enhance its distributed tracing and AWS service integrations. It also lacks some of the advanced cloud-native capabilities of AWS X-Ray. AWS X-Ray could improve its support structures and ease of on-premises deployment. Additionally, it could offer more competitive pricing options for smaller enterprises.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is praised for its easy on-premises implementation and responsive customer support. In contrast, AWS X-Ray benefits from a cloud-native deployment model; however, its support structures are not as extensive as those from SolarWinds.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds offers competitive pricing with quick ROI, thanks to lower setup costs. Its inclusive features make it cost-effective for diverse server monitoring tasks. AWS X-Ray, despite higher setup costs, provides value for complex, cloud-native applications, justifying its expense with its robust feature set for organizations leveraging AWS cloud infrastructure extensively.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS X-Ray vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Report (Updated: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

AWS X-Ray vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

August 2026

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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

22nd

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

19th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (6th), Active Directory Management (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AWS X-Ray is 1.0%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.0%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.0%
AWS X-Ray	1.0%
Other	98.0%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Allan Møller

Consult Manager at Conscia

Provides quick insights into service interactions and identifies bottlenecks effortlessly

The challenges we faced with AWS X-Ray were that some of the AWS services we were using did not support it, which we discovered at a later stage. This was potentially a design consideration we should have known about, requiring us to redeploy some services in another SKU version to get it functioning. This is the only challenge, as AWS X-Ray is relatively new. It is important to consider that not all AWS services support it out of the box. My recommendation for AWS X-Ray would be broader support. We have been working in a relatively small area of AWS, using approximately six or seven services, so I have not explored all other available services. In general, the more services it supports, the better it would be. AWS X-Ray should be able to support more services for improved functionality.

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NikhilKalwint

Technical Specialist at ServiceIO

Monitoring over a thousand systems has improved decision making and operational visibility

From an advantage perspective, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is comparatively cheaper from a commercial point of view. It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization. It is compatible with most technologies for monitoring with very few chances of incompatibility. Configuration also allows us to monitor all the technical parameters we are looking for, making it a very good experience for us. The alerting feature in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is a main advantage, as it alerts based on threshold breaches and can raise tickets to the ticketing system, send SMS, and email notifications, allowing engineers to work on those tickets to resolve issues and avoid further impact. The visibility into server health is a beneficial feature that I am utilizing. We widely use various application performance metrics in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor such as database monitoring and server monitoring, which are quite good enough for any monitoring solution. We utilize the customizable dashboards in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most beneficial feature is that it shows a dashboard for performance intervals, which reveals latencies."

"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 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."

"It is a very scalable solution."

"AWS X-Ray's endpoints and user monitoring are considered the most valuable features."

"The best feature of AWS X-Ray is the ability to correlate data out of the box, ensuring that if one service calls another service, it will provide a full flow of what has happened without needing to build or develop anything around it."

"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."

More AWS X-Ray pros

"Having used various other vendors for monitoring over my career, the SolarWinds products give outstanding value for the price."

"Features like monitoring and infrastructure dependency mapping are valuable to us."

"SolarWinds is a very stable platform compared to others on the market."

"The OOTB (Out of the Box) implementation does have very good node specific pages and can provide a wealth of information."

"Extremely user friendly: Any IT professional can learn how to admin NPM in a short time."

"If you are looking for a single pane of glass to monitor Windows products then SolarWinds is your product."

"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."

"If a company would really like insight into its database utilization or performance and why their servers are slow or why the database is not giving a proper response, this solution will help."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"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."

"It should have X-Ray SDKs for different languages like Node.js, Python, or Java."

"Sometimes, the collector agents are confusing to configure initially."

"AWS X-Ray should improve its implementation process to make it easier for developers."

"Compared to other open-source tools, AWS X-Ray needs improvement in providing discounts."

"The user interface is sometimes kind of confusing to understand. It's not very user-friendly."

"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."

More AWS X-Ray cons

"Mapping interactions between systems."

"The product needs to reduce its price."

"It lacks a user experience for measuring things like the end-to-end time for which a user waits for a specific response in the system. In the application layer, it has some very basic stuff. You have to build your own with manuscripts and things like that."

"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve the server monitoring and the web application monitoring features are not good. Microsoft SCOM has better server monitoring."

"When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed."

"I would like to see support for non-Windows or non-Microsoft domains, especially Apache and other non-Windows servers."

"MS Azure Service and user experience monitoring is an area in which the SolarWinds tools are lacking; without a doubt, this is the Achilles heel of the Orion monitoring tools, and I am currently reviewing other vendors for Azure service monitoring tools."

"The tool's AppStack needs to improve in the storage monitoring part. It should also include an analytics and recommendation approach. If I have found a fault in a server or application, I would like to know what caused it and how do I recover from it."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing for AWS X-Ray is a six out of ten."

"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 licenses start from USD 3000.00 and go up to USD 20,000.00 for the year. It's a perpetual license. Nothing is free in SolarWinds, anything that you need is an additional cost."

"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."

"Understanding the counts of objects to monitor will determine the licensing need. In terms of pricing, it’s not cheap but it’s not expensive as larger vendors whose products don’t have all the features or integrations."

"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."

"The price is too high."

"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."

"SAM is not per server so the pricing model can be deceiving. If you have an enterprise environment, you will quickly exceed your licensing quickly. You should know this before going in."

"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

13%

University

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Large Enterprise	3

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	21

Questions from the Community

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS X-Ray?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for AWS X-Ray?

I have been using AWS X-Ray for creating insights to our applications we have developed. It is used to correlate different services in AWS when a transaction happens, allowing us to see the flow of...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

The initial cost is quite high, but the renewal cost is reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

There is definitely room for improvement besides simplifying its setup. As a non-technical person, I believe the dashboards could be improved. Everything we use appears on video walls, and we need ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

I am doing research as we currently have both solutions, and I am looking to see if we need both or can manage with one. Currently, the outcome indicates that we need both. The focus point is diffe...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS X-Ray

August 2026

Download AWS X-Ray product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

July 2026

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Also Known As

No data available

SolarWinds SAM

Overview

AWS X-Ray offers comprehensive visibility into service flow, aiding in error tracking and regulatory compliance. It enhances performance tuning and real-time tracing, allowing users to effectively analyze, debug, and monitor microservices environments.

AWS X-Ray is leveraged to correlate data effortlessly and analyze logs, providing insightful service flow visibility. It aids in debugging and meeting compliance standards. Users rely on it for identifying bottlenecks, real-time issue tracing, and monitoring latency and endpoints via performance dashboards. While integration is smooth, enhancements in navigation and broader AWS service support are needed. Improving log filtering, KPI visualization, and integration with external APIs would benefit deployments. Costs and configuration complexities also present areas for improvement.

What are the key features of AWS X-Ray?

Error Tracking: Correlating data automatically for streamlined error identification.
Service Flow Visibility: Comprehensive insights into service interactions and performance.
Performance Tuning: Identifying bottlenecks and optimizing application performance.
Real-Time Tracing: Effective tracing of requests and issues in real-time.
Latency Checks: Monitoring latency across services to ensure prompt response times.

What benefits should users look for in AWS X-Ray?

Efficient Debugging: Streamlined debugging leading to faster issue resolution.
Compliance Support: Assistance in achieving regulatory and security compliance standards.
Insightful Metrics: Access to trace metrics for detailed analysis and decision-making.
Performance Monitoring: Comprehensive monitoring capabilities for system performance.
Cost Management: Analysis of costs associated with tracing and monitoring.

Organizations in microservices environments use AWS X-Ray to gain insight into system behavior by tracing HTTP requests, monitoring performance, and identifying vulnerabilities. It is integrated with other AWS tools to enhance performance monitoring and code execution analysis, ensuring efficient detection of errors and improvement opportunities.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor provides comprehensive server, application, and infrastructure monitoring, focusing on integration, application dependency, and network insights through user-friendly interfaces and detailed dashboards.

With AppStack and AppInsight support, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor offers service management, detailed resource dashboards, and integration capabilities. It monitors hardware metrics and performance parameters, facilitating database and network insights for cloud and virtual environments. Robust alerting, predictive analytics, and capacity planning ensure efficient management of server health and application performance.

What are the key features?

Integration: Seamlessly connects with existing tools.
AppStack: Provides a holistic view of applications.
AppInsight: Supports widely-used applications.
SNMP Polling: Efficient network data collection.
Diagnostics: Real-time troubleshooting.
Customizable Dashboards: Tailored monitoring views.

What benefits should users expect?

Comprehensive Monitoring: Extends from servers to databases.
Transparent Control: Enhances visibility into performance metrics.
User-Friendly: Simplifies proactive monitoring with alerts.
Predictive Features: Supports capacity and trend planning.

Industries implement SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor to enhance server utilization reporting, network configuration, and AV equipment performance tracking. They benefit from monitoring critical services across diverse deployment models, improving management efficiency and decision-making.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

COMCAST, ConnectWise, skyscanner, AirAsia, cookpad, cimpress, VTEX, zowdow

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Buyer's Guide

AWS X-Ray vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

August 2026

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