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AWS X-Ray vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

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
17th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (8th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th), Container Management (5th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of AWS X-Ray is 1.7%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 2.4%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Splunk Observability Cloud2.4%
AWS X-Ray1.7%
Other95.9%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Muhmad Tabrez A Deewanji - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Software Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
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.
Taiwo Ige - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Operations Engineer at ABC Supply Co. Inc.
Alerting improves incident response across teams and enables faster awareness before customer impact
Splunk Observability Cloud could be improved in terms of integrations with more technical add-ons, such as Zoom. Although they have one with Zoom, it's not available in the cloud, so having that feature would be beneficial. Essentially, Splunk should continue expanding to create easier ways to ingest logs from different products. The out-of-the-box customizable dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are very effective in showcasing IT performance to business leaders. However, there are aspects that could be improved, such as linking dashboards to one another. While IT leaders may not drill down, it's crucial to create levels of dashboards for technical users to find root causes, making it effective for stakeholders.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 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."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"The error analysis capabilities of X-Ray are really good."
"AWS X-Ray's endpoints and user monitoring are considered the most valuable features."
"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."
"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."
"It is a great resource for us because we have so many different data sources and to be able to aggregate that and put it through a concise dashboard or an alert really helps."
"Splunk Observability Cloud has enhanced our operational performance and our company's resilience, ultimately contributing to improved customer satisfaction."
"Splunk Observability Cloud is effective for detecting anomalies and preventing system outages."
"Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring gives us complete visibility without the need for storage."
"Once configured correctly, the analysis reporting the Splunk APM provides is better than that of the other APM tools."
"After moving to Splunk Observability Cloud, it is almost zero downtime."
"The solution's service map feature allows us to have a holistic overview and to see quickly where the issues are."
"The most valuable thing that we have seen within our group is the ability to ingest all this raw data and have it organized in a certain way so that different groups can get effective alerting from this massive amount of raw data that is out there."
 

Cons

"Sometimes, the collector agents are confusing to configure initially."
"They can improve how traces are sent to other providers."
"The user interface is sometimes kind of confusing to understand. It's not very user-friendly."
"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."
"I do not have any notes in terms of improvements."
"Compared to other open-source tools, AWS X-Ray needs improvement in providing discounts."
"AWS X-Ray should improve its implementation process to make it easier for developers."
"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."
"Splunk Observability Cloud could be improved in terms of integrations with more technical add-ons, such as Zoom."
"In terms of additional features I would want to see in future releases, since Cisco acquired Splunk, more Cisco integration could be beneficial."
"The licensing model is expensive. We need to monitor the amount of data ingested because the cost is based on the data collected."
"The user interface of Splunk Observability Cloud needs a lot of work."
"The implementation can be more user-friendly."
"Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and process terms. These categories of dashboards would be very helpful for customers."
"Technical support is good but could be improved, particularly concerning the time taken for ticket resolution."
"Particularly what we're having is disconnection from the cloud console, where we will be working in it and receive a message saying that we've been disconnected and have to wait for it to come up."
 

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."
"This is an expensive solution."
"It appears to be expensive compared to competitors."
"The solution's pricing is costly."
"Splunk APM is a very cost-efficient solution."
"The price of Splunk APM is less than some of its competitors."
"Splunk APM is expensive."
"I would rate the price of Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring as an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."
"The product is a bit expensive considering the competition but the company may negotiate the price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise53
 

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...
What needs improvement with AWS X-Ray?
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 shou...
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...
What do you like most about SignalFx?
The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.
What needs improvement with SignalFx?
Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and pr...
What is your primary use case for SignalFx?
The solution involves observability in general, such as Application Performance Monitoring, and generally addresses digital applications, web applications, sites, and mobile applications. I worked ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Synthetic Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

COMCAST, ConnectWise, skyscanner, AirAsia, cookpad, cimpress, VTEX, zowdow
Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS X-Ray vs. Splunk Observability Cloud and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.