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Best cloud monitoring tools in 2026

The monitoring built into AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and other providers, and managed Prometheus services. This list has the top 5 of 11 cloud monitoring tools, ranked by a published score. Of these, 0 are open source, 5 have a free plan and 0 can be self-hosted. Checked by hand on 30 September 2026.

How this list is ranked

Each active tool gets a score out of 100. Archived, end-of-sale and maintenance-only tools are left out.

  • Capabilities: up to 75 points for the share of the category checklist that the tool's own documentation confirms. A tool meeting 8 of 10 items gets 60.
  • Free to start: 15 points for a free plan or a free edition.
  • Open or self-hostable: 10 points if it is open source or can be self-hosted.

Each category has a fixed checklist of capabilities (shown in the table below and on every tool page). An item counts only when the tool's own documentation confirms it; anything we could not confirm counts as not met. How long a tool has existed is deliberately not scored, so a new tool is not ranked below an older one for being new. Tools with the same score share a rank (shown as =), are listed A to Z within it, and the list never cuts between them. Nobody pays for a position.

  1. =1

    Amazon CloudWatch

    AWS's native monitoring service: collects metrics and logs from AWS services and your apps, with alarms, dashboards, synthetic canaries and application signals.

    Free plan Free: 10 custom metrics, 10 alarms, 5 GB logs per month CloudMetricsLogsDashboards
    90 10 of 10 capabilities (75), free 15, open 0
  2. =1

    Azure Monitor

    Microsoft Azure's monitoring service for metrics, logs and traces from Azure resources and apps, including Application Insights, Log Analytics, alerts and managed Prometheus.

    Free plan CloudMetricsLogsAPM
    90 10 of 10 capabilities (75), free 15, open 0
  3. 3

    Google Cloud Observability

    Google Cloud's suite (formerly Stackdriver) of Cloud Monitoring, Logging and Trace for metrics, logs, uptime checks and alerting on Google Cloud and other environments.

    Free plan Free: 150 MiB metrics per billing account, 50 GiB logs/project CloudMetricsLogsTraces
    83 9 of 10 capabilities (68), free 15, open 0
  4. 4

    Alibaba Cloud CloudMonitor

    Alibaba Cloud's monitoring service for its cloud resources and hybrid environments, with metrics, event alerts and support for Prometheus, Grafana and OpenTelemetry data.

    Free plan CloudMetrics
    75 8 of 10 capabilities (60), free 15, open 0
  5. 5

    Scaleway Cockpit

    Scaleway's observability service built on Grafana, Mimir, Loki and Tempo, collecting metrics and logs from Scaleway products by default and accepting external data.

    Free plan CloudMetricsLogsDashboards
    68 7 of 10 capabilities (53), free 15, open 0

Side by side

Tool Pricing Free plan Open source Self-hosted Provider service metricsLogsTracesAlarmsDashboardsManaged Prometheus or PromQLSynthetic checksAnomaly detectionMulti-account viewsOpenTelemetry ingest
Amazon CloudWatch Free plan 10 custom metrics, 10 alarms, 5 GB logs per month No No YesYesYesYesYesYesYesYesYesYes
Azure Monitor Free plan Yes No No YesYesYesYesYesYesYesYesYesYes
Google Cloud Observability Free plan 150 MiB metrics per billing account, 50 GiB logs/project No No YesYesYesYesYesYesYes-YesYes
Alibaba Cloud CloudMonitor Free plan Yes No No YesYesYesYesYesYesYes--Yes
Scaleway Cockpit Free plan Yes No No YesYesYesYesYesYes---Yes

Yes: confirmed in the tool's documentation. No: documented as not offered. -: not confirmed. Plans and prices change; check each tool's own site before you decide.

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