About
AWS X-Ray is a distributed tracing and application observability service that helps teams analyze requests as they move through microservices and other components. It provides trace collection, service maps, transaction analysis, and insights that help identify performance bottlenecks, errors, and dependencies across complex applications.
Within Amazon CloudWatch Application Observability, AWS X-Ray supports trace storage, retrieval, scanning, and insights processing for end-to-end visibility into application behavior. It is designed to work alongside CloudWatch signals, logs, metrics, and related observability features to help teams troubleshoot production issues faster.
- Distributed tracing across services and dependencies
- Trace storage, retrieval, and scanning for analysis
- Service maps and transaction-level visibility
- Insights for identifying anomalies and performance issues
- Integration with CloudWatch Application Observability
Free Tier Value
The page’s free-tier section explicitly lists AWS X-Ray benefits: the first 100,000 traces recorded each month are free, and the first 1,000,000 traces retrieved or scanned each month are free. Because this is a recurring capped free tier rather than a credit or trial, the conservative monthly free-tier value is $0 for the baseline signals, since the page does not provide a concrete paid-rate estimate to convert the cap into a single dollar amount. The paid offering is usage-based with no upfront commitment or minimum fee.
What's included in the free tier
- Access to AWS X-Ray traces: The first 100,000 traces recorded each month are free.
- Access to AWS X-Ray trace retrieval and scanning: The first 1,000,000 traces retrieved or scanned each month are free.
See AWS X-Ray pricing for current limits.
Paid plans
AWS X-Ray
- traces recorded
- first 100,000 per month free
- traces retrieved or scanned
- first 1,000,000 per month free
- Traces recorded are billed after the free monthly cap
- Trace retrieval and scanning are billed after the free monthly cap
- Cross-account trace copies to a monitoring account have no extra cost for the first copy
- Pricing varies by region
Pricing extracted from AWS X-Ray's pricing page. Always verify current pricing before committing.