Bronto vs. AWS CloudWatch
Collect logs and traces from any source in one platform with long-term retention and sub-second queries.
Why Teams are
Choosing Bronto
High-level comparison across what matters most.
Data Retention
1 Year Retention by Default
Bronto enables teams to retain a larger dataset so every root cause analysis has rich context. No archiving or rehydrating logs to find what matters.
Retention Billed Separately
Storage costs can add up fast in AWS depending on your logging retention policy configuration. This pricing model encourages teams to maintain short-term retention policies to minimize costs.
Cost of Ownership
Transparent & Predictable Pricing
Bronto charges only $0.10/GB of ingestion for always hot logs & traces. No extra fees for storage.
Expensive Usage-Based Model
CloudWatch charges $0.50/GB at ingestion and then additional rates for storage and insight queries.
Parsing
Logs from Anywhere
Bronto is schema agnostic and accepts logs from all sources, parsing them automatically. No manual configuration required.
Manual Log Configuration
If you have logs that are custom or use an unsupported schema, you'll have to spend time manually configuring parsing with Grok/regex rules.
Tracing
Built-In Tracing
Store all your logs and traces in one central platform to streamline investigations and lower MTTR with fast queries, log-to-trace and trace-to-log correlation.
Tracing Requires Multiple Tools
Setting up tracing with CloudWatch requires instrumenting via X-Ray or ADOT as a separate configuration step.
One platform for all of your data
Logs
Filter with smart SQL autocomplete and keyboard-driven shortcuts. Results return in seconds — even across terabytes. Drill into any attribute, view raw logs, or jump straight into traces from the log table.
Loved by teams
around the world
“Bronto fundamentally changed how we think about logging. We went from treating logs as a necessary evil — expensive, unreliable, and limited — to making them a key asset. The combination of unlimited retention, lightning-fast search, and AI-powered insights means we catch issues much earlier, often before customers notice them. But the real transformation is cultural: every team now has access to the data they need, when they need it.”
Paul Griffin
Head of Platform Engineering
“Bronto's long-term always-hot days mean we can access data with sub-second search, whether it's from last week or last year. This is huge for our security and AI strategy as we continue to revolutionize how we work at Nitro. For AI-powered analysis of our logs, data availability is key — it's just not possible with only a few days of retention. Bronto has become a key part of our toolkit when we think of log data and how it will play an important role for engineering, security and product teams going forward.”
John Fitzpatrick
CTO
“Tasks that used to take 15 minutes are now almost instant. I find myself using Bronto much more than the previous tool simply because it's faster and more responsive. I can quickly ask questions and get immediate answers, which makes it easier to explore insights that were previously hard to uncover. With a year's worth of data retention instead of just 90 days, I can now identify annual trends and patterns I couldn't see before. This extended retention opens the door for much deeper analytics.”
Brian Elliott
Senior Engineering Manager, SaaS Services
“It's a night and day difference to our previous logging provider. Bronto typically returns results in seconds, while our old vendor took over 30 minutes and frequently failed to render visualizations. Bronto has come a long way with everything from usage to UI. Our users are getting what they're looking for.”
Jaymin Patel
Team Lead
“Bronto helped us cut costs and centralize our multi-cloud application logging, as well as providing cost-effective 12 month retention for billing-related events. Troubleshooting is now significantly faster, and having all our logs correlate properly in one place has been a game-changer for our team.”
Joaquín Sargiotto
DevOps Team Lead
“The TCO reduction is significant — we're saving hundreds of thousands annually. But the real value is in new and significantly enhanced capabilities. A significant reduction in time to root cause, investigating issues from months ago, having logs actually available during incidents — these aren't just improvements, they're game-changers. Our SysOps team now get to work on platform innovation instead of keeping Graylog alive.”
Aodh O'Mahony
Engineering Manager
“Bronto fundamentally changed how we think about logging. We went from treating logs as a necessary evil — expensive, unreliable, and limited — to making them a key asset. The combination of unlimited retention, lightning-fast search, and AI-powered insights means we catch issues much earlier, often before customers notice them. But the real transformation is cultural: every team now has access to the data they need, when they need it.”
Paul Griffin
Head of Platform Engineering
“Bronto's long-term always-hot days mean we can access data with sub-second search, whether it's from last week or last year. This is huge for our security and AI strategy as we continue to revolutionize how we work at Nitro. For AI-powered analysis of our logs, data availability is key — it's just not possible with only a few days of retention. Bronto has become a key part of our toolkit when we think of log data and how it will play an important role for engineering, security and product teams going forward.”
John Fitzpatrick
CTO
“Tasks that used to take 15 minutes are now almost instant. I find myself using Bronto much more than the previous tool simply because it's faster and more responsive. I can quickly ask questions and get immediate answers, which makes it easier to explore insights that were previously hard to uncover. With a year's worth of data retention instead of just 90 days, I can now identify annual trends and patterns I couldn't see before. This extended retention opens the door for much deeper analytics.”
Brian Elliott
Senior Engineering Manager, SaaS Services
“It's a night and day difference to our previous logging provider. Bronto typically returns results in seconds, while our old vendor took over 30 minutes and frequently failed to render visualizations. Bronto has come a long way with everything from usage to UI. Our users are getting what they're looking for.”
Jaymin Patel
Team Lead
“Bronto helped us cut costs and centralize our multi-cloud application logging, as well as providing cost-effective 12 month retention for billing-related events. Troubleshooting is now significantly faster, and having all our logs correlate properly in one place has been a game-changer for our team.”
Joaquín Sargiotto
DevOps Team Lead
“The TCO reduction is significant — we're saving hundreds of thousands annually. But the real value is in new and significantly enhanced capabilities. A significant reduction in time to root cause, investigating issues from months ago, having logs actually available during incidents — these aren't just improvements, they're game-changers. Our SysOps team now get to work on platform innovation instead of keeping Graylog alive.”
Aodh O'Mahony
Engineering Manager
“Bronto fundamentally changed how we think about logging. We went from treating logs as a necessary evil — expensive, unreliable, and limited — to making them a key asset. The combination of unlimited retention, lightning-fast search, and AI-powered insights means we catch issues much earlier, often before customers notice them. But the real transformation is cultural: every team now has access to the data they need, when they need it.”
Paul Griffin
Head of Platform Engineering
“Bronto's long-term always-hot days mean we can access data with sub-second search, whether it's from last week or last year. This is huge for our security and AI strategy as we continue to revolutionize how we work at Nitro. For AI-powered analysis of our logs, data availability is key — it's just not possible with only a few days of retention. Bronto has become a key part of our toolkit when we think of log data and how it will play an important role for engineering, security and product teams going forward.”
John Fitzpatrick
CTO
“Tasks that used to take 15 minutes are now almost instant. I find myself using Bronto much more than the previous tool simply because it's faster and more responsive. I can quickly ask questions and get immediate answers, which makes it easier to explore insights that were previously hard to uncover. With a year's worth of data retention instead of just 90 days, I can now identify annual trends and patterns I couldn't see before. This extended retention opens the door for much deeper analytics.”
Brian Elliott
Senior Engineering Manager, SaaS Services
“It's a night and day difference to our previous logging provider. Bronto typically returns results in seconds, while our old vendor took over 30 minutes and frequently failed to render visualizations. Bronto has come a long way with everything from usage to UI. Our users are getting what they're looking for.”
Jaymin Patel
Team Lead
“Bronto helped us cut costs and centralize our multi-cloud application logging, as well as providing cost-effective 12 month retention for billing-related events. Troubleshooting is now significantly faster, and having all our logs correlate properly in one place has been a game-changer for our team.”
Joaquín Sargiotto
DevOps Team Lead
“The TCO reduction is significant — we're saving hundreds of thousands annually. But the real value is in new and significantly enhanced capabilities. A significant reduction in time to root cause, investigating issues from months ago, having logs actually available during incidents — these aren't just improvements, they're game-changers. Our SysOps team now get to work on platform innovation instead of keeping Graylog alive.”
Aodh O'Mahony
Engineering Manager
Expand beyond AWS CloudWatch to retain full-fidelity logs, traces, & metrics from any source for a full year.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Bronto | AWS CloudWatch |
|---|---|---|
| Hot log retention | 12 months included | Indefinite retention possible, billed per GBs stored per month + search usage |
| Search cost | 20x – 100x tiered search | $0.05/GB scanned |
| AI log analysis | Bronto Scope, included | Billed anomaly detection |
| Bill predictability | Clear ingestion & search tiers | Multi-dimensional, prone to spikes |
Full fidelity, always hot, fully managed data
Always Hot Data
Every byte of telemetry is instantly queryable — no rehydration, no cold tiers, no waiting.
Long-Term Retention
12 months of retention included out of the box. Keep your data as long as you need it.
Full Fidelity, Full Coverage
No sampling, no aggregation, no data loss. Every log, trace, and metric stored exactly as received.
Transparent Usage & Controls
See exactly what you're ingesting and what it costs. Set quotas, alerts, and exclusion filters in seconds.
Fast at Large Scales
Sub-second queries across petabytes of data. Purpose-built indexing that scales with your growth.
Always Parsed & Searchable
At ingestion, Bronto parses your logs using known formats or AI — so every field is structured and instantly searchable.
