Amazon CloudWatch Logs
8.3#11 in log management software$0.03 usage-basedFree planWebAPI
VisitAmazon CloudWatch Logs vs Grafana Loki
Grafana Loki
8.9#1 in log management softwareFrom $19 a monthFree planWebAPILinuxSelf-hosted
VisitWhat both publish
| Fact | Amazon CloudWatch Logs | Grafana Loki |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | Official documentation lists Grafana Alloy as the recommended collector and describes OpenTelemetry, Promtail, Fluent Bit, Fluentd, Vector, Logstash and other clients. |
| Live log tailing | Yes | Yes |
| Log pipelines | Yes | Yes |
| Purpose | Amazon CloudWatch collects and stores logs from AWS resources, applications, services, on-premises resources, and other clouds. | Loki is a log aggregation system designed to store and query logs from applications and infrastructure. |
Amazon CloudWatch Logs plans
- Logs data ingestion$0.50 a month
- Logs archive storage$0.03 a month
- Pay-as-you-go—
- Free tierFree
- Paid usage—
Grafana Loki plans
- Grafana Cloud Logs FreeFree
- Grafana Loki OSS self-hostedFree
- Loki (self-hosted)Free
- Grafana Cloud Logs Pro$19 a month
- Grafana Cloud Logs Enterprise—
Pick Amazon CloudWatch Logs if…
CloudWatch Logs suits teams that need to collect and analyze logs across AWS, on-premises, or other-cloud workloads. It is also relevant for teams using central cross-account views or the listed monitoring integrations.
Pick Grafana Loki if…
Loki suits teams that need to aggregate and query application or infrastructure logs and can manage a self-hosted deployment or use Grafana Cloud Logs. Its label-based indexing and LogQL are central considerations for selecting it.