Epok vs AWS CloudWatch Logs
CloudWatch Logs is where your AWS logs go by default. It's convenient, native to AWS, and impossible to escape. Then the bill arrives. If your CloudWatch line item is creeping past four figures and you're spending engineering time tuning subscription filters and Lambdas to make alerting actually work, read on.
Pricing
| Volume | CloudWatch | Epok |
|---|---|---|
| 1.5 TB/mo (~50 GB/day) | $780–$1,350/mo * | $500/mo (Team) |
| 5 TB/mo (~150 GB/day) | $2,600–$4,500/mo * | $1,800/mo (Growth) |
| Ingest cost | $0.50/GB ingested (Standard) | Included in plan |
| Storage cost | $0.03/GB-month, indefinite retention | Included (14d Trial, 30d Team, 30d Growth) |
| Query / Insights cost | $0.005 per GB of data scanned (per query) | Unlimited queries, no per-scan charge |
| Dashboard cost | $3/dashboard/mo after the first 3 | Included (5 Trial, 25 Team, unlimited Growth) |
| Alarm cost | $0.10–$0.30/alarm/mo | Included; no per-alarm fee |
* Based on AWS CloudWatch list pricing for US East as of April 2026 (Standard ingest + storage + a conservative Logs Insights scan budget). Actual bills run higher with active dashboards, alarm volume, Live Tail usage, and DevOps Guru. Verify current pricing at aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/pricing.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | CloudWatch | Epok |
|---|---|---|
| Log search | Logs Insights (metered per GB scanned) | Full-text + structured search, sub-second, unmetered |
| Anomaly detection | Anomaly Detector for metrics; logs need custom rules | 20+ detectors on every log line, every tier |
| New error detection | Manual subscription filter + Lambda + alarm | Automatic fingerprinting, alerts within minutes of first occurrence |
| Silence detection | No-data alarm with manual configuration per log group | Automatic across every service, no setup |
| Pattern clustering | Patterns view in Logs Insights (per-query, manual) | Automatic across every stream, persistent |
| Root cause analysis | DevOps Guru (separate paid service, $0.0028/resource/hr) | Included; AI-enhanced on Team |
| Alerting | Metric Alarms + Composite Alarms (manual setup) | Automatic + threshold rules + AI-driven incident grouping |
| Live tail | Live Tail ($0.01/min, $1.50 limit, 5 sessions cap) | Live tail across every service, no per-minute fee |
| AWS service integration | Native (VPC Flow, Route 53, Lambda, etc.) | CloudWatch subscription filter forwards in 1 step |
| IAM / SSO | Native AWS IAM | Google OAuth (SSO on enterprise plans) |
| Data residency | Stays in your AWS account | EU data residency (Helsinki) |
| Cross-account logs | Cross-account subscription required, complex setup | Multi-tenant by design — one place for all accounts |
| Setup time | IAM policies + subscription filters + Lambda for advanced routing | Subscription filter to one endpoint, done in 5 minutes |
The CloudWatch math problem
CloudWatch's headline price — $0.50/GB ingested— reads cheap until you do the rest of the math. Every query against Logs Insights scans data and bills $0.005 per GB scanned. Every dashboard widget runs queries on a refresh interval. Every alarm threshold runs queries on its evaluation interval. The bill you actually receive is ingest + storage + every query you and your alarms ever ran.
This is why teams talk about “CloudWatch sticker shock.” The line item is small at the start, then doubles after the team gets serious about alerting, then doubles again after someone builds dashboards. Worst, the cost scales with how much you use your own logs — the same logs you already paid to ingest.
Epok charges one number per month. Query as much as you want. Build as many dashboards as you want. Add as many alarm rules as you want. The $500/mo for Team is the whole bill, not the floor of it.
Where CloudWatch wins
CloudWatch is the default destination for everything AWS emits — Lambda execution logs, VPC Flow Logs, Route 53 query logs, CloudTrail audit events, RDS slow query logs. If your security and compliance posture requires logs stay inside your own AWS account, CloudWatch is the obvious choice. There is no third-party trust boundary to cross.
CloudWatch's native IAM authorization, cross-service hooks (subscription filters into Kinesis, Lambda, Firehose), and integration with the rest of the AWS toolchain — X-Ray, CloudTrail, Config, Security Hub — are genuinely valuable when AWS is your whole world.
Choose CloudWatch when:
- ·Compliance or contractual requirements mandate logs stay within your AWS account
- ·You need deep integration with AWS-native event routing (Lambda, Kinesis, EventBridge) for log processing
- ·Your team has the bandwidth to build dashboards, write alarm logic, and tune Insights queries by hand
- ·Your log volume is low enough that the per-GB ingest plus per-query model stays predictable
When to choose Epok
Choose Epok when:
- ·Your CloudWatch line item has crossed $500/mo and you're still building alerting by hand
- ·You want anomaly detection, new error detection, and root cause analysis without buying DevOps Guru on top
- ·Per-query and per-dashboard charges are making your team afraid to actually use the logs they pay for
- ·You run multiple AWS accounts and want one place to investigate instead of cross-account subscription gymnastics
- ·You want a flat monthly bill that doesn't scale with how hard you debug
Migration
CloudWatch Logs to Epok is one of the cleaner migrations because you don't have to touch your applications. Subscription filters are CloudWatch's built-in mechanism for streaming logs to another destination — point one at an Epok ingestion endpoint and your existing log groups start flowing in minutes.
You can also keep CloudWatch as the system of record (compliance, raw retention) and use Epok purely as the intelligence layer on top. Both run in parallel during evaluation. No agents to install. No application code to change.
Alternatively, send logs directly via the Elasticsearch bulk API, Loki push, OTLP, FluentBit, or raw JSON over HTTP — useful if you're already using one of these formats elsewhere in your stack.
See the difference on your own logs.
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