Amazon CloudWatch Container Insights vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Amazon CloudWatch Container Insights8.6Visit Splunk Observability Cloud8.5Visit

Higher score Amazon CloudWatch Container Insights #6 in Kubernetes Monitoring 8.6/10 Paid ✓ 0 of 4 features Visit AWS

vs

Splunk Observability Cloud #7 in Kubernetes Monitoring 8.5/10 Free plan Free plan✓ 0 of 4 features Visit Splunk

• Amazon CloudWatch Container Insights fits best

  AWS teams monitoring EKS and container workloads

• Splunk Observability Cloud fits best

  Teams needing broad observability with a free tier

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Side by side

Feature	Amazon CloudWatch Container Insights 8.6/10 Visit ↗	Splunk Observability Cloud 8.5/10 Visit ↗
At a glance
Editor score	8.6	8.5
Ranking	#6 in Kubernetes Monitoring	#7 in Kubernetes Monitoring
Best for	AWS teams monitoring EKS and container workloads	Teams needing broad observability with a free tier
Pricing model	Paid	Free plan + paid
Starting price	$0.08/GB usage-based	$15/mo
Free plan	—	✓ (best)
Free trial	—	—
Deployment	Cloud	Cloud
Platforms	Web	Web
Features Amazon CloudWatch Container Insights 0/4 · Splunk Observability Cloud 0/4
Control-plane monitoring	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Kubernetes logs	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Distributed tracing	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Managed Kubernetes support	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Specs
Alerting channels	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Data retention	Not checked yet	416 days
Our review
Pros	Tracks CPU, memory, disk, and network metrics across container workloads. Combines performance logs, CloudWatch alarms, and restart-failure diagnostics. Offers cluster-, service-, task-, and container-level observability modes.	Free Edition covers up to 15 hosts with full feature parity Combines infrastructure, application, database, log, trace, and user monitoring Supports OpenTelemetry plus AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Splunk integrations
Cons	No free plan; pricing is usage-based and varies by AWS Region and mode. Its supported environments are centered on AWS and AWS services. Support channels listed are documentation only.	Kubernetes-specific capabilities are not a stated focus Paid plans use annual billing and per-host pricing SaaS delivery excludes customer-managed deployment
Our verdict	For teams monitoring container workloads in AWS, Amazon CloudWatch Container Insights collects, aggregates, and summarizes metrics and logs from applications and microservices. It supports Amazon ECS and EKS, Red Hat OpenShift on AWS,… Read the review →	Splunk Observability Cloud is a cloud-based observability platform for engineering, operations, and development teams. It brings infrastructure, applications, services, user interfaces, metrics, traces, and logs into one environment, with… Read the review →

Strengths and trade-offs

• Amazon CloudWatch Container Insights — where it wins

  • Tracks CPU, memory, disk, and network metrics across container workloads.
  • Combines performance logs, CloudWatch alarms, and restart-failure diagnostics.
  • Offers cluster-, service-, task-, and container-level observability modes.

  Where it doesn't

  • No free plan; pricing is usage-based and varies by AWS Region and mode.
  • Its supported environments are centered on AWS and AWS services.
  • Support channels listed are documentation only.

• Splunk Observability Cloud — where it wins

  • Free Edition covers up to 15 hosts with full feature parity
  • Combines infrastructure, application, database, log, trace, and user monitoring
  • Supports OpenTelemetry plus AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Splunk integrations

  Where it doesn't

  • Kubernetes-specific capabilities are not a stated focus
  • Paid plans use annual billing and per-host pricing
  • SaaS delivery excludes customer-managed deployment

• Amazon CloudWatch Container Insights8.6/10 · Paid

  AWS-focused container monitoring with metrics, logs, alarms, and restart diagnostics.

  Visit AWSFull verdict →
• Splunk Observability Cloud8.5/10 · Free plan

  Broad observability coverage with a useful free tier, but limited Kubernetes-specific emphasis.

  Visit SplunkFull verdict →