Amazon CloudWatch Logs vs Logstash
Amazon CloudWatch Logs
aws.amazon.comLogstash
elastic.coSide by side
| Figure | Amazon CloudWatch Logs | Logstash |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $0.03/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 1 |
| Spec score · Log Management Software | 9.2 (#5) | 8.5 (#25) |
| Archive export | Yes | Yes |
| Deployment options | cloud | self-hosted |
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Integrations | CloudWatch Logs integrates with Amazon OpenSearch Service for querying and analyzing logs without moving or duplicating the data. | Elastic describes turn-key integrations for connecting data sources and ingesting logs, metrics, traces, files, web content, and security events. |
| 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. | Logstash is an open source server-side data processing pipeline that ingests data from multiple sources, transforms it, and sends it to a destination. |
| Security | CloudWatch Logs data is encrypted at rest and in transit, supports AWS KMS encryption for log groups, and is PCI and FedRAMP compliant. | The product page says ingest pipelines can be secured and describes built-in security features for Pipeline Management UI controls. |
| 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
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.
Logstash
Logstash is an open-source, server-side pipeline that collects data from many sources, transforms events, and sends results to destinations. It can continuously ingest logs, metrics, web application data, data-store information, and AWS service data. Filters parse events, identify fields, and transform content with features such as grok parsing, IP geolocation, and anonymizing or excluding sensitive fields. Data can go to multiple outputs, including Elasticsearch. Its plugin framework includes more than 200 input, filter, and output plugins, and custom plugins can be built with an API and generator. Persistent queues provide at-least-once delivery for in-flight events after node failures; dead letter queues retain events for inspection and replay. Monitoring tools show pipeline performance and availability. Logstash supports log pipelines, archive export, live tailing, and structured parsing. It is self-hosted, with Linux packages and Docker listed. The free plan is free under the Elastic License.