Amazon CloudWatch Logs vs Central Logging
Amazon CloudWatch Logs
aws.amazon.com
Central Logging
centrallogging.comSide by side
| Figure | Amazon CloudWatch Logs | Central Logging |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $0.03/mo | $187/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 3 |
| Spec score · Log Management Software | 9.2 (#5) | 8.5 (#32) |
| Archive export | Yes | Yes |
| Deployment options | cloud | It runs as a statically linked, self-contained executable with no installer, runtime, or dependencies. |
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Integrations | CloudWatch Logs integrates with Amazon OpenSearch Service for querying and analyzing logs without moving or duplicating the data. | The site documents log shipping guides for Nginx, Caddy, Docker, Kubernetes, Proxmox, PostgreSQL, rsyslog, systemd, and Python. |
| Live Tail | Live Tail provides interactive real-time analysis of streaming log data from a central view. | Yes |
| Log pipelines | Yes | Yes |
| Purpose | Amazon CloudWatch collects and stores logs from AWS resources, applications, services, on-premises resources, and other clouds. | Central Logging is a self-hosted logging, alerting, cron monitoring, and uptime system installed on the customer's server. |
| Structured log parsing | Yes | Yes |
Plans
Amazon CloudWatch Logs
- Logs data ingestion$0.50 a month
- Logs archive storage$0.03 a month
- Pay-as-you-goPrice not published
- Free tierFree
- Paid usagePrice not published
Central Logging
- Free trialFree
- Unlimited license$187 a month
- Unlimited license$187, paid once
In their own words
Amazon CloudWatch Logs
Amazon CloudWatch Logs collects and stores logs from AWS resources, applications, services, on-premises systems, and other clouds. It offers log pipelines, structured parsing, archive export, and live tailing through web and API access. Logs Insights lets users query records with filters, aggregations, and regular expressions, then visualize time-series data or export results to CloudWatch Dashboards. Logs are available in Standard for real-time monitoring and advanced analytics, or Infrequent Access for ad-hoc queries and forensic analysis. Live Tail provides a central interactive view of streaming logs, while anomaly detection uses machine learning to identify patterns and changes. Users can search and analyze logs across accounts from a monitoring account at no additional cost. The free tier includes 5 GB for ingestion, archive storage, and query scans, plus 1,800 Live Tail minutes per month. Usage-based charges are billed at month end, with no upfront commitment or minimum fee; rates vary by Region.
Central Logging
Central Logging has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.