Amazon CloudWatch Logs vs ELK Stack
Amazon CloudWatch Logs
aws.amazon.com
ELK Stack
elastic.coSide by side
| Figure | Amazon CloudWatch Logs | ELK Stack |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $0.03/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 12 |
| Spec score · Log Management Software | 9.2 (#5) | 9.5 (#1) |
| Archive export | Yes | Yes |
| Deployment options | cloud | Elastic Stack is available as hosted Elastic Cloud service or self-managed software for on-premises, public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid environments. |
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Integrations | CloudWatch Logs integrates with Amazon OpenSearch Service for querying and analyzing logs without moving or duplicating the data. | Elastic offers over 300 turn-key integrations for Search, Security, Observability, and cloud providers including AWS, Azure, and GCP. |
| 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. | The Elastic Stack combines Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, and Logstash to take data from any source and format for search, analysis, and visualization. |
| Security | CloudWatch Logs data is encrypted at rest and in transit, supports AWS KMS encryption for log groups, and is PCI and FedRAMP compliant. | Security capabilities include authentication integrations, role-based access control, SSL/TLS encryption, IP filtering, audit logging, and field- and document-level controls. |
| Structured log parsing | Yes | Yes |
| Support | The CloudWatch page directs users with questions to contact AWS. | Elastic Cloud subscription tiers include varying levels of support, while paid self-managed Gold, Platinum, and Enterprise subscriptions include support. |
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
ELK Stack
- BasicPrice not published
- Logs EssentialsPriced on request
- Complete$0.09 a month
- Standard$99 a month
- Gold$114 a month
- Platinum$131 a month
- Enterprise$184 a month
- Basic (self-managed)Free
- Elastic Cloud hostedPriced on request
- Elastic Cloud ServerlessPriced on request
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.
ELK Stack
The Elastic Stack combines Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats and Logstash to bring data from different sources into search, analysis and visualization workflows. Elasticsearch is a distributed, JSON-based search and analytics engine, while Kibana provides dashboards, visualizations, live presentations and deployment management. Elastic Agent, Beats and a web crawler can ingest information from applications, infrastructure and public content. Features include alerting, machine learning, vector search, graph analytics, clustering, high availability and data lifecycle management. Elastic positions the platform for Search, Observability and Security, including centralized logging, monitoring and security analytics. It is available as hosted Elastic Cloud or as self-managed software for on-premises, public cloud, private cloud and hybrid environments. Elasticsearch and Kibana have an open source foundation, and Elasticsearch can be downloaded and started free. Elastic Cloud offers a 14-day trial without a credit card. Hosted pricing depends on deployment components and can include snapshot storage and data transfer charges; listed hosted tiers start at $99 a month.