Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

AlienVault OSSIM vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

AlienVault OSSIM
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
13th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
378
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (2nd), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 1.7%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 7.1%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security7.1%
AlienVault OSSIM1.7%
Other91.2%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

BP
Independent Contractor at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees
Enables cost-effective security management for small businesses
Scaling for USM is always challenging for any product unless it is purpose-built or overbuilt at the front end. They will use Palo Alto and its competitors, and LevelBlue will manage that implementation. The main area where the AlienVault product was lacking around the 2018 timeframe was in its ability to scale. By pushing it to a cloud-based system, they've largely alleviated scale issues. It's native in Amazon but will also run in Azure. They have worked with cloud service providers to offer enough throughput at a cost reasonable for a corporation. Scaling was their biggest problem, and they've largely conquered those issues.
reviewer1469784 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Helps us detect cyber threats quickly and integrate multiple feeds effectively
Overall, the product is good, but when it comes to some infrastructure issues, we have to dig into more logs. There is no straightforward indication of an issue. Health check kind of dashboards are not available. More AI would help us, and more optimization, since security products run more queries. The AI module could suggest solutions, optimizing queries or workload balancing. If the product itself advises on running queries during peak times, it would be similar to what ChatGPT currently offers. We see quite a few issues on stability. Even last week, we faced something, and identifying bottlenecks is not easy. We need more SMEs, and there is no mechanism to tell us about indexer or search head issues. Self-monitoring dashboards could be beneficial. The technical support still requires more improvement. Often, primary support takes a lot of time and forwards most solutions to the engineering side. The primary support team has very limited knowledge to provide.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the logging capability."
"The solution is very stable. Compared to Qradar and Splunk, it's very stable."
"Network traffic analysis is highly efficient."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the data correlation and vulnerability assessment."
"The most valuable features of AlienVault OSSIM are case management, ease of configuration, and investigation."
"You can customize the dashboards as well as the reporting."
"AlienVault OSSIM's GUI is very user-friendly."
"The tool's security detection is good. It helps us with login tracking and generating reports. We aim to identify potential issues, such as brute-force attacks on user accounts or server-level anomalies. For instance, if I receive a report indicating a server is at an abnormal level, I investigate and address the issue."
"The data analysis part is good in Splunk, which is something that I like the most. It is also quite easy to use. Its dashboards, visualizations, and analytics are good."
"The solution's most valuable features are its ability to transact in the cloud and its ability to onboard data easily with minimum connectors."
"You can integrate Splunk with third-party security automation solutions and set rules for automatic response."
"I like the ease of setting up dashboards on Splunk. They're easy to create, manage, alter, and share. You can fine-tune them any way you see fit."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to look at threats and link them to the MITRE ATT&CK framework."
"It is lovely to have everything we need in one tool. Everything is quite centralized."
"It allows us to digest the information, the data, the different data streams, so we can make decisions based upon information that we receive, and it is pretty robust."
"Splunk Enterprise Security has helped greatly improve the organization's business resilience."
 

Cons

"The documentation could be improved."
"The main area where the AlienVault product was lacking around the 2018 timeframe was in its ability to scale."
"I would like the solution to be able to integrate with my firewall, my IDS and my Honeypot solutions so that it can provide real-time reporting as things occur and then have alert sent to me on my phone when suspicious activity is happening."
"AlienVault OSSIM’s configuration and integration could be a little easier."
"The user interface could be improved."
"I don't like to work on OSSIM because it is unpredictable."
"Lacking in depth of reporting."
"The user interface needs to be friendlier across the board."
"The correlation of events is the most significant challenge I face when using Splunk Enterprise Security for advanced threat detection."
"Licensing costs can be a barrier for those with limited budgets."
"I'd say I am happy with the technical support, not elated. They provide great support, but sometimes they don't have the answers that I need."
"For instance, if a DLP operations analyst accesses the platform, it should guide them to navigate predefined content for their role. That's something I've already mentioned to them, and I'm eager to see what happens next."
"I find the process for customizing, developing, testing, deploying, and refining detections in Splunk Enterprise Security to be challenging at times. It takes some of our more advanced engineers to be able to work through a lot of those processes."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is complicated in terms of developing specific cybersecurity use cases."
"Stability is there, but every release has some bugs."
"More training on PetaData using artificial intelligence techniques to identify the events which are not normal and exceptions that would help the organization identify threats and malware on the go with results."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AlienVault OSSIM is an open-source solution."
"AlienVault OSSIM is expensive compared to its competitors."
"I used the paid version of the tool and found it to be expensive. It has been a while since I changed to Securonix. I will have to check whether AlienVault charges per device, user, or log."
"The licensing fees for the non-community edition are paid on an annual basis, and there are no costs in addition to this."
"The price of AlienVault OSSIM is too high sometimes for us to present to our customers. The price should be lower. We are on a three-year license to use the solution. We had to pay extra for the support."
"OSSIM is free."
"AlienVault pricing is the best. Whatever cost you are paying, you are getting a return on every penny... It's not like your IBM, your QRadar, or Splunk, where the cost is too high."
"We are using a free version of the solution. If you purchase a license there are more features available but the price is a little high. The solution should be cheaper to allow more customers to be able to afford it."
"Splunk is not a cheap solution and the license is billed annually."
"Personnel costs are saved by not having to involve the domain developers from multiple teams when tracing a problem that spans multiple platforms."
"From what I have seen so far, Splunk has multiple cost models. The one that we are using is pretty good when it comes to ingesting data into the environment. It has worked out pretty well."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is not at all cost-friendly to be deployed in very small enterprises like start-ups."
"We have had a reduction in the time it takes to resolve issues and correlate what has failed."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is priced lower than competitors."
"The pricing of Splunk Enterprise Security is high."
"While Splunk is more expensive than other solutions, we would still choose it because of its capabilities."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions are best for your needs.
882,606 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Feb 26, 2015
HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. ​McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm
We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business110
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise266
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AlienVault OSSIM?
It depends. I would need to review their cost models, but generally, they are on a scaled basis based on throughput usage. Because it's a software as a service solution for their core product for U...
What needs improvement with AlienVault OSSIM?
Scaling for USM is always challenging for any product unless it is purpose-built or overbuilt at the front end. They will use Palo Alto and its competitors, and LevelBlue will manage that implement...
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
 

Also Known As

OSSIM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Council Rock School District
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Find out what your peers are saying about AlienVault OSSIM vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
882,606 professionals have used our research since 2012.