Amazon CloudWatch Logs vs Google Cloud Logging
Amazon CloudWatch Logs
aws.amazon.com
Google Cloud Logging
cloud.google.comSide by side
| Figure | Amazon CloudWatch Logs | Google Cloud Logging |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $0.03/mo | $0.01/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| iOS | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 13 |
| Spec score · Log Analysis Software | 9.2 (#1) | 9.2 (#2) |
| Spec score · Log Management Software | 9.2 (#5) | 9.5 (#2) |
| Spec score · Log Monitoring Tools | 9.1 (#5) | 9.3 (#2) |
| Archive export | Yes | Yes |
| Deployment options | cloud | cloud |
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Integrations | CloudWatch Logs integrates with Amazon OpenSearch Service for querying and analyzing logs without moving or duplicating the data. | Official integrations include Cloud Monitoring, Error Reporting, Cloud Trace, Pub/Sub, Cloud Storage and BigQuery. |
| 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. | Cloud Logging is a fully managed, real-time log management service for storage, search, analysis, and alerting at exabyte scale. |
| Support | The CloudWatch page directs users with questions to contact AWS. | The product page directs customers who need help getting started to contact sales. |
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
Google Cloud Logging
- Logging storage (non-vended network logs)$0.50 a month
- Vended network logs storage$0.25 a month
- Logging retention beyond default period$0.01 a month
- Free allotmentFree
- Log AnalyticsFree
- Log RouterFree
- Logs RouterFree
- Extended retention$0.01 a month
- Logging retention$0.01 a month
- Vended network logs storage$0.25, 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.
Google Cloud Logging
Google Cloud Logging is a managed cloud service for storing, searching, analyzing and alerting on logs. Logs Explorer supports query-based searches, sorting, histogram views, field exploration and saved queries. Log Analytics uses BigQuery for SQL analysis, and log data can also be accessed in BigQuery alongside other business data. Google Cloud platform logs are ingested without setup; GKE workload logs are captured automatically, while the Ops Agent collects VM workload logs. Logs Router can send logs to external systems through Pub/Sub, and Cloud Storage can hold archives. Regional log buckets keep and process workload data in a selected region, with configurable access controls and retention. The service integrates with Cloud Monitoring, Error Reporting and Cloud Trace. Cloud Audit Logs records administrative activity and resource access, and its entries are immutable; the product page states 400 days of audit-log retention at no additional cost. Standard logging storage includes the first 50 GiB per project per month free, and new Google Cloud customers are offered $300 in credits. The listed deployment is cloud; platforms include API, Linux and web.