diff --git a/CHANGELOG.next.asciidoc b/CHANGELOG.next.asciidoc
index d8aca419dda5..040b4ea51de2 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.next.asciidoc
+++ b/CHANGELOG.next.asciidoc
@@ -115,6 +115,7 @@ https://github.com/elastic/beats/compare/v8.8.1\...main[Check the HEAD diff]
 - Ensure Elasticsearch output can always recover from network errors {pull}40794[40794]
 - Add `translate_ldap_attribute` processor. {pull}41472[41472]
 - Remove unnecessary debug logs during idle connection teardown {issue}40824[40824]
+- Fix incorrect cloud provider identification in add_cloud_metadata processor using provider priority mechanism {pull}41636[41636]
 
 *Auditbeat*
 
diff --git a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/docs/add_cloud_metadata.asciidoc b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/docs/add_cloud_metadata.asciidoc
index 1e05e1d2c24a..852b3b187d1e 100644
--- a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/docs/add_cloud_metadata.asciidoc
+++ b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/docs/add_cloud_metadata.asciidoc
@@ -21,7 +21,10 @@ The following cloud providers are supported:
 - Openstack Nova
 - Hetzner Cloud
 
-NOTE: `huawei` is an alias for `openstack`. Huawei cloud runs on OpenStack platform, and when
+[float]
+==== Special notes
+
+`huawei` is an alias for `openstack`. Huawei cloud runs on OpenStack platform, and when
 viewed from a metadata API standpoint, it is impossible to differentiate it from OpenStack. If you know that your
 deployments run on Huawei Cloud exclusively, and you wish to have `cloud.provider` value as `huawei`, you can achieve
 this by overwriting the value using an `add_fields` processor.
@@ -30,6 +33,16 @@ The Alibaba Cloud and Tencent cloud providers are disabled by default, because
 they require to access a remote host. The `providers` setting allows users to
 select a list of default providers to query.
 
+Cloud providers tend to maintain metadata services compliant with other cloud providers.
+For example, Openstack supports https://docs.openstack.org/nova/latest/user/metadata.html#ec2-compatible-metadata[EC2 compliant metadat service].
+This makes it impossible to differentiate cloud provider (`cloud.provider` property) with auto discovery (when `providers` configuration is omitted).
+The processor implementation incorporates a priority mechanism where priority is given to some providers over others when there are multiple successful metadata results.
+Currently, `aws/ec2` and `azure` have priority over any other provider as their metadata retrival rely on SDKs.
+The expectation here is that SDK methods should fail if run in an environment not configured accordingly (ex:- missing configurations or credentials).
+
+[float]
+==== Configurations
+
 The simple configuration below enables the processor.
 
 [source,yaml]
@@ -71,6 +84,16 @@ List of names the `providers` setting supports:
 - "tencent", or "qcloud" for Tencent Cloud (disabled by default).
 - "hetzner" for Hetzner Cloud (enabled by default).
 
+For example, configuration below only utilize `aws` metadata retrival mechanism,
+
+[source,yaml]
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+processors:
+  - add_cloud_metadata:
+      providers:
+        aws
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
 The third optional configuration setting is `overwrite`. When `overwrite` is
 `true`, `add_cloud_metadata` overwrites existing `cloud.*` fields (`false` by
 default).
@@ -78,6 +101,9 @@ default).
 The `add_cloud_metadata` processor supports SSL options to configure the http
 client used to query cloud metadata. See <<configuration-ssl>> for more information.
 
+[float]
+==== Provided metadata
+
 The metadata that is added to events varies by hosting provider. Below are
 examples for each of the supported providers.
 
diff --git a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_alibaba_cloud.go b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_alibaba_cloud.go
index 9bdce314ba8e..754cf82007f8 100644
--- a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_alibaba_cloud.go
+++ b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_alibaba_cloud.go
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ import (
 var alibabaCloudMetadataFetcher = provider{
 	Name: "alibaba-ecs",
 
-	Local: false,
+	DefaultEnabled: false,
 
 	Create: func(_ string, c *conf.C) (metadataFetcher, error) {
 		ecsMetadataHost := "100.100.100.200"
diff --git a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_aws_ec2.go b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_aws_ec2.go
index ae7dfbf9865d..1c364f8e6a9a 100644
--- a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_aws_ec2.go
+++ b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_aws_ec2.go
@@ -65,7 +65,7 @@ var NewEC2Client func(cfg awssdk.Config) EC2Client = func(cfg awssdk.Config) EC2
 var ec2MetadataFetcher = provider{
 	Name: "aws-ec2",
 
-	Local: true,
+	DefaultEnabled: true,
 
 	Create: func(_ string, config *conf.C) (metadataFetcher, error) {
 		ec2Schema := func(m map[string]interface{}) mapstr.M {
diff --git a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_azure_vm.go b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_azure_vm.go
index 788519352a86..e39b97b7031d 100644
--- a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_azure_vm.go
+++ b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_azure_vm.go
@@ -62,7 +62,7 @@ var NewClusterClient func(clientFactory *armcontainerservice.ClientFactory) *arm
 var azureVMMetadataFetcher = provider{
 	Name: "azure-compute",
 
-	Local: true,
+	DefaultEnabled: true,
 
 	Create: func(_ string, config *conf.C) (metadataFetcher, error) {
 		azMetadataURI := "/metadata/instance/compute?api-version=2021-02-01"
diff --git a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_digital_ocean.go b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_digital_ocean.go
index bfe282f70744..afc8cd3020dc 100644
--- a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_digital_ocean.go
+++ b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_digital_ocean.go
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ import (
 var doMetadataFetcher = provider{
 	Name: "digitalocean",
 
-	Local: true,
+	DefaultEnabled: true,
 
 	Create: func(provider string, config *conf.C) (metadataFetcher, error) {
 		doSchema := func(m map[string]interface{}) mapstr.M {
diff --git a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_google_gce.go b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_google_gce.go
index 1eb8525b2f3e..cebfb747bfe5 100644
--- a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_google_gce.go
+++ b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_google_gce.go
@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ type Server struct {
 var gceMetadataFetcher = provider{
 	Name: "google-gce",
 
-	Local: true,
+	DefaultEnabled: true,
 
 	Create: func(provider string, config *conf.C) (metadataFetcher, error) {
 		gceMetadataURI := "/computeMetadata/v1/?recursive=true&alt=json"
diff --git a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_hetzner_cloud.go b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_hetzner_cloud.go
index 4c231174c001..3bfea2c119a8 100644
--- a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_hetzner_cloud.go
+++ b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_hetzner_cloud.go
@@ -32,8 +32,8 @@ const (
 // Hetzner Cloud Metadata Service
 // Document https://docs.hetzner.cloud/#server-metadata
 var hetznerMetadataFetcher = provider{
-	Name:  "hetzner-cloud",
-	Local: true,
+	Name:           "hetzner-cloud",
+	DefaultEnabled: true,
 	Create: func(_ string, c *conf.C) (metadataFetcher, error) {
 		hetznerSchema := func(m map[string]interface{}) mapstr.M {
 			m["service"] = mapstr.M{
diff --git a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_openstack_nova.go b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_openstack_nova.go
index 824d2651c3a4..40f91be43231 100644
--- a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_openstack_nova.go
+++ b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_openstack_nova.go
@@ -33,15 +33,15 @@ const (
 // OpenStack Nova Metadata Service
 // Document https://docs.openstack.org/nova/latest/user/metadata-service.html
 var openstackNovaMetadataFetcher = provider{
-	Name:   "openstack-nova",
-	Local:  true,
-	Create: buildOpenstackNovaCreate("http"),
+	Name:           "openstack-nova",
+	DefaultEnabled: true,
+	Create:         buildOpenstackNovaCreate("http"),
 }
 
 var openstackNovaSSLMetadataFetcher = provider{
-	Name:   "openstack-nova-ssl",
-	Local:  true,
-	Create: buildOpenstackNovaCreate("https"),
+	Name:           "openstack-nova-ssl",
+	DefaultEnabled: true,
+	Create:         buildOpenstackNovaCreate("https"),
 }
 
 func buildOpenstackNovaCreate(scheme string) func(provider string, c *conf.C) (metadataFetcher, error) {
diff --git a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_tencent_cloud.go b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_tencent_cloud.go
index e805ff1bf95c..ca4733edc60d 100644
--- a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_tencent_cloud.go
+++ b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/provider_tencent_cloud.go
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ import (
 var qcloudMetadataFetcher = provider{
 	Name: "tencent-qcloud",
 
-	Local: false,
+	DefaultEnabled: false,
 
 	Create: func(_ string, c *conf.C) (metadataFetcher, error) {
 		qcloudMetadataHost := "metadata.tencentyun.com"
diff --git a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/providers.go b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/providers.go
index ea56a5e669b3..5d6d64047c44 100644
--- a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/providers.go
+++ b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/providers.go
@@ -23,10 +23,12 @@ import (
 	"net"
 	"net/http"
 	"os"
+	"slices"
 	"strings"
 	"time"
 
 	conf "github.com/elastic/elastic-agent-libs/config"
+	"github.com/elastic/elastic-agent-libs/logp"
 	"github.com/elastic/elastic-agent-libs/mapstr"
 )
 
@@ -34,8 +36,9 @@ type provider struct {
 	// Name contains a long name of provider and service metadata is fetched from.
 	Name string
 
-	// Local Set to true if local IP is accessed only
-	Local bool
+	// DefaultEnabled allows to control whether metadata provider should be enabled by default
+	// Set to true if metadata access is enabled by default for the provider
+	DefaultEnabled bool
 
 	// Create returns an actual metadataFetcher
 	Create func(string, *conf.C) (metadataFetcher, error)
@@ -70,6 +73,14 @@ var cloudMetaProviders = map[string]provider{
 	"hetzner":       hetznerMetadataFetcher,
 }
 
+// priorityProviders contains providers which has priority over others.
+// Metadata of these are derived using cloud provider SDKs, making them valid over metadata derived over well-known IP
+// or other common endpoints. For example, Openstack supports EC2 compliant metadata endpoint. Thus adding possibility to
+// conflict metadata between EC2/AWS and Openstack.
+var priorityProviders = []string{
+	"aws", "ec2", "azure",
+}
+
 func selectProviders(configList providerList, providers map[string]provider) map[string]provider {
 	return filterMetaProviders(providersFilter(configList, providers), providers)
 }
@@ -93,7 +104,7 @@ func providersFilter(configList providerList, allProviders map[string]provider)
 	if len(configList) == 0 {
 		return func(name string) bool {
 			ff, ok := allProviders[name]
-			return ok && ff.Local
+			return ok && ff.DefaultEnabled
 		}
 	}
 	return func(name string) (ok bool) {
@@ -178,22 +189,54 @@ func (p *addCloudMetadata) fetchMetadata() *result {
 		}()
 	}
 
-	for i := 0; i < len(p.initData.fetchers); i++ {
+	var responses []result
+
+	for ctx.Err() == nil {
 		select {
 		case result := <-results:
 			p.logger.Debugf("add_cloud_metadata: received disposition for %v after %v. %v",
 				result.provider, time.Since(start), result)
-			// Bail out on first success.
+
 			if result.err == nil && result.metadata != nil {
-				return &result
-			} else if result.err != nil {
-				p.logger.Errorf("add_cloud_metadata: received error for provider %s: %v", result.provider, result.err)
+				responses = append(responses, result)
+			}
+
+			if result.err != nil {
+				p.logger.Debugf("add_cloud_metadata: received error for provider %s: %v", result.provider, result.err)
 			}
 		case <-ctx.Done():
-			p.logger.Debugf("add_cloud_metadata: timed-out waiting for all responses")
-			return nil
+			p.logger.Debugf("add_cloud_metadata: timed-out waiting for responses")
 		}
 	}
 
-	return nil
+	return priorityResult(responses, p.logger)
+}
+
+// priorityResult is a helper to extract correct result (if multiple exist) based on priorityProviders
+func priorityResult(responses []result, logger *logp.Logger) *result {
+	if len(responses) == 0 {
+		return nil
+	}
+
+	if len(responses) == 1 {
+		return &responses[0]
+	}
+
+	logger.Debugf("add_cloud_metadata: multiple responses were received, filtering based on priority")
+	var prioritizedResponses []result
+	for _, r := range responses {
+		if slices.Contains(priorityProviders, r.provider) {
+			prioritizedResponses = append(prioritizedResponses, r)
+		}
+	}
+
+	// simply send the first entry of prioritized response
+	if len(prioritizedResponses) != 0 {
+		pr := prioritizedResponses[0]
+		logger.Debugf("add_cloud_metadata: using provider %s metadata based on priority", pr.provider)
+		return &pr
+	}
+
+	// else send the first from bulk of response
+	return &responses[0]
 }
diff --git a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/providers_test.go b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/providers_test.go
index 85336a4c2b3f..0f39dcf56769 100644
--- a/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/providers_test.go
+++ b/libbeat/processors/add_cloud_metadata/providers_test.go
@@ -25,6 +25,7 @@ import (
 	"github.com/stretchr/testify/assert"
 
 	conf "github.com/elastic/elastic-agent-libs/config"
+	"github.com/elastic/elastic-agent-libs/logp"
 )
 
 func init() {
@@ -34,7 +35,7 @@ func init() {
 func TestProvidersFilter(t *testing.T) {
 	var allLocal []string
 	for name, ff := range cloudMetaProviders {
-		if ff.Local {
+		if ff.DefaultEnabled {
 			allLocal = append(allLocal, name)
 		}
 	}
@@ -119,3 +120,59 @@ func TestProvidersFilter(t *testing.T) {
 		})
 	}
 }
+
+func Test_priorityResult(t *testing.T) {
+	tLogger := logp.NewLogger("add_cloud_metadata testing")
+	awsRsp := result{
+		provider: "aws",
+		metadata: map[string]interface{}{
+			"id": "a-1",
+		},
+	}
+
+	openStackRsp := result{
+		provider: "openstack",
+		metadata: map[string]interface{}{
+			"id": "o-1",
+		},
+	}
+
+	digitaloceanRsp := result{
+		provider: "digitalocean",
+		metadata: map[string]interface{}{
+			"id": "d-1",
+		},
+	}
+
+	tests := []struct {
+		name      string
+		collected []result
+		want      *result
+	}{
+		{
+			name:      "Empty results returns nil",
+			collected: []result{},
+			want:      nil,
+		},
+		{
+			name:      "Single result returns the same",
+			collected: []result{awsRsp},
+			want:      &awsRsp,
+		},
+		{
+			name:      "Priority result wins",
+			collected: []result{openStackRsp, awsRsp},
+			want:      &awsRsp,
+		},
+		{
+			name:      "For non-priority result, response order wins",
+			collected: []result{openStackRsp, digitaloceanRsp},
+			want:      &openStackRsp,
+		},
+	}
+	for _, tt := range tests {
+		t.Run(tt.name, func(t *testing.T) {
+			assert.Equal(t, tt.want, priorityResult(tt.collected, tLogger))
+		})
+	}
+}