What is the difference between CloudTrail and CloudWatch?

The biggest difference is that CloudTrail logs API and user activity across your AWS accounts for governance, security, and compliance purposes. Meanwhile, CloudWatch collects and monitors metrics, logs, traces, and events from your AWS environment components for tracking the health, performance, and utilization of your resources. Together, they provide a full picture of what happened and how your systems responded.

Can CloudWatch replace CloudTrail?

CloudTrail and CloudWatch are complementary services, not alternatives. Combining them gives you deeper troubleshooting and monitoring capabilities. Think of understanding how a configuration change (logged in CloudTrail) impacted system performance (monitored in CloudWatch) and exactly how much that change is costing you per hour (insights you’ll uncover with CloudZero).

Does CloudZero integrate with CloudTrail and CloudWatch?

Yes. CloudZero ingests and enriches data from both services, then breaks it down into actionable, context-rich cost insights. You’ll be able to see which services, teams, environments, or features are driving CloudTrail and CloudWatch costs — and take action before those costs spiral out of control.

When Should I Use CloudTrail vs. CloudWatch?

Use CloudTrail when you need to answer "who did what and when" — for security investigations, compliance audits, or change tracking. Use CloudWatch when you need to answer "how is my system performing" — for operational monitoring, alerting, and performance optimization. Most production AWS environments need both running simultaneously.

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