Elastic Observability vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability comparison

Elastic and ServiceNow are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Elastic is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.7, while ServiceNow is ranked #37 with an average rating of 8.0. Elastic holds a 2.6% mindshare in APM, compared to ServiceNow’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Elastic users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of ServiceNow users who would recommend it.

Elastic Observability

Read 29 Elastic Observability reviews

8,436 Views
6,833 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Read 4 ServiceNow Cloud Observability reviews

1,064 Views
1,021 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Elastic Observability

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

ServiceNow Cloud Observability and Elastic Observability both offer robust solutions in the observability category. ServiceNow Cloud Observability is noted for its customer support and pricing, while Elastic Observability stands out for its extensive features.

Features: ServiceNow Cloud Observability offers comprehensive integration capabilities, real-time monitoring, and streamlined management of complex cloud environments. Elastic Observability provides powerful search functionalities, customizable dashboards, and extensive visualization tools.

Room for Improvement: ServiceNow Cloud Observability needs enhancements in its analytics capabilities, more user training resources, and improved data handling. Elastic Observability could benefit from better performance with large datasets, a more streamlined setup process, and smoother integration with other tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: ServiceNow Cloud Observability is praised for its straightforward deployment and responsive customer service. Elastic Observability, though more complex to deploy, offers extensive documentation and strong community support.

Pricing and ROI: ServiceNow Cloud Observability has competitive pricing suitable for enterprises with flexible budgets, delivering commendable ROI. Elastic Observability is perceived as expensive but offers high value through its extensive features and flexibility, justifying its cost.

To learn more, read our detailed Elastic Observability vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability

December 2025

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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

Elastic Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

6th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (9th), Log Management (14th), Container Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

37th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 2.6%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is 0.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Elastic Observability	2.6%
ServiceNow Cloud Observability	0.6%
Other	96.8%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Mohammed-Abdelalim

Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Has provided powerful customization for unique monitoring needs but needs more out-of-the-box capabilities

In my opinion, the best features of Elastic Observability are their flexibility to integrate with other existing systems and the ability to build a unified monitoring tool that can integrate with existing ones and end-to-end user journeys which require a lot of customizations. The greatest feature in Elastic is the ability to customize. This is similar to my comments about customizable dashboards in Elastic because it's visible to the analyst. However, it's very great. Customizing these dashboards can meet the customer's specific use cases and specific stories that they have in their environment, their special environment that doesn't look like other environments. The dashboarding in Elastic is highly customizable to the level of logos. If the customer wants his company logo in the dashboard, it can be done.

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VinayKumar16

Senior DeliveryManager at ITC Infotech

Provides ease of use in areas like analytics and reporting

The feature of the tool that is more impactful for cloud performance stems from the area revolving around analytics and reporting. It is an easy-to-use tool. There is something known as performance analytics within ServiceNow that offers complete analytics, which offers end-to-end analytics along with the KPI metrics with what we have in place and so on. With the aforementioned aspects of the tool, I think we should be able to create a dashboard according to the operations view called the operation dashboard view, specifically for C-level executives.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The customizable dashboards in Elastic Observability allow us to group relevant data to specific aspects of our solution, giving us around 20 interlinked dashboards which provide an overview, and if one aspect shows weird behavior, we can focus on that specific aspect of our software with a dedicated dashboard."

"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."

"The ability to ensure that the data is searchable and maintainable is highly valuable for our purposes."

"The most valuable feature of Elastic Observability is the text search."

"I think Elastic Observability is already in very good shape."

"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."

"It's easy to deploy, and it's very flexible."

More Elastic Observability pros

"The UI is very intuitive."

"To a certain extent, it is possible to save on the costs of the product."

"The solution Lightstep/ServiceNow has a couple of pretty advanced functionalities to help us investigate a deviation and help the development teams have better observability in the environment using distributed and complex services."

"The ability to create a stream based on different parameters, operation name, service name, URL, tags, and URI part, is one valuable feature."

Cons

"One example is the inability to monitor very old databases with the newest version."

"Simplifying the parsing of logs and manual efforts would also be beneficial."

"The interface could be improved."

"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 auto-discovery isn't nearly as good. That's a big portion of it. When you drop the agent onto the JVM and you're trying to figure things out, having to go through and manually do all that is cumbersome."

"I would have preferred built-in tools to manage the indexes on deployment for better visual representation, as the initial feedback regarding system performance and data storage was fairly primitive and lacking."

"More web features could be added to the product."

"The only challenging aspect for new users is often writing the query language."

More Elastic Observability cons

"The dashboard and graphics must be improved."

"The support team could be better. Because of the different versions of different tactics of integrating reactive code base, the documentation is not very clear if someone has to be onboard. I would rate the documentation of Lightstep a five out of ten. It could need improvement."

"The design of this solution is not very intuitive and probably could come with more friendly tips for beginners."

"In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."

"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."

"We will buy a premium license after POC."

"So far, there are just the standard licensing fees. Several of the components are embedded in the license or are even open source. They're even free depending on what you use, which makes it even more appealing to someone that is discussing pricing of the solution."

"The product’s pricing needs improvement."

"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."

"Elastic Observability's pricing could be better for small-scale users."

"Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."

More Elastic Observability pricing and cost advice

"The product is expensive. I rate the tool's pricing model an eight out of ten."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	16

No data available

Questions from the Community

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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?

The problem is their licensing model, which is a bit confusing. Many customers struggle to understand their total cost of ownership because Elastic licensing is not dependent on easy, quantifiable ...

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What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?

After careful consideration about areas for improvement in Elastic Observability, aspects such as pricing, customization, implementation, and scalability could be improved. As a user of the system,...

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What needs improvement with LightStep?

There are a lot of workflows and connectors. In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for LightStep?

I use the solution in my company since it has multiple tenants available. Basically, what happens in business is that you have a hybrid setup model, and for that, you extensively use a cloud platfo...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering LightStep?

I recommend the product to others. I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

See all answers

Comparisons

Sentry vs Elastic Observability

Compared 8% of the time

Dynatrace vs Elastic Observability

Compared 7% of the time

New Relic vs Elastic Observability

Compared 7% of the time

Grafana vs Elastic Observability

Compared 7% of the time

Zabbix vs Elastic Observability

Compared 6% of the time

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Datadog vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 13% of the time

Snyk vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 12% of the time

Cribl vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 9% of the time

Instana Dynamic APM vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 8% of the time

Splunk Observability Cloud vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 8% of the time

More ServiceNow Cloud Observability Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability

January 2026

Download Elastic Observability product report

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

January 2026

Download ServiceNow Cloud Observability product report

Also Known As

No data available

LightStep

Overview

Elastic Observability offers a comprehensive suite for log analytics, application performance monitoring, and machine learning. It integrates seamlessly with platforms like Teams and Slack, enhancing data visualization and scalability for real-time insights.

Elastic Observability is designed to support production environments with features like logging, data collection, and infrastructure tracking. Centralized logging and powerful search functionalities make incident response and performance tracking efficient. Elastic APM and Kibana facilitate detailed data visualization, promoting rapid troubleshooting and effective system performance analysis. Integrated services and extensive connectivity options enhance its role in business and technical decision-making by providing actionable data insights.

What are the most important features of Elastic Observability?

Centralized Logging: Streamlines the collection, analysis, and storage of log data.
Powerful Search: Provides robust search capabilities for quick access to relevant information.
Scalability: Supports growing data needs across diverse environments.
Real-time Telemetry: Ensures up-to-date insights and monitoring.
Platform Integration: Seamlessly connects with services like Teams and Slack.
Data Visualization: Enhances visibility with Elastic APM and Kibana.

What benefits and ROI should users explore in reviews?

Cost-effectiveness: Offers significant savings through efficient data management.
Rapid Incident Response: Minimizes downtime with quick troubleshooting tools.
Comprehensive Insights: Supports better business decisions with detailed data analysis.
Performance Tracking: Enables assessment of system effectiveness and improvements.

Elastic Observability is employed across industries for critical operations, such as in finance for transaction monitoring, in healthcare for secure data management, and in technology for optimizing application performance. Its data-driven approach aids efficient event tracing, supporting diverse industry requirements.

Elastic

ServiceNow Cloud Observability is a comprehensive platform designed to enhance visibility, control, and performance monitoring of your IT infrastructure and applications. It seamlessly integrates log management, trace management, metrics monitoring, and infrastructure monitoring in real-time, leveraging AI and machine learning for automated tasks and actionable insights. With benefits including improved visibility, faster incident resolution, enhanced application performance, simplified IT operations, and reduced costs, this cloud-native solution is ideal for businesses of all sizes with complex IT infrastructures. It integrates seamlessly with ServiceNow IT Operations Management (ITOM), supports OpenTelemetry standards, and provides AI-powered insights along with pre-built dashboards and reports.

ServiceNow

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank

InVision, Twilio, Lyft, Yext, DigitalOcean,

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability

December 2025

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