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)
12th
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
375
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (2nd), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 1.9%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 7.4%, down from 10.0% 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 Security7.4%
AlienVault OSSIM1.9%
Other90.7%
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 open vault component and the checking of vulnerabilities are the most valuable features. The page management helps with this. If you know how your device is vulnerable at least you can do something about it."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the data correlation and vulnerability assessment."
"The threat policies of the solution are always very advanced and the best in the market. They are very persistent in terms of keeping up with security protocols."
"The solution is very stable. Compared to Qradar and Splunk, it's very stable."
"AlienVault OSSIM's GUI is very user-friendly."
"Its user-friendliness is the most valuable. It is very easy to use and explore. The dashboard is very well packaged and integrated. You don't have to spend a lot of time in configuring it and checking out the RPM etc. It is also free and very powerful."
"The most valuable features of AlienVault OSSIM are case management, ease of configuration, and investigation."
"The most valuable feature is the logging capability."
"The varied prebuilt feature is the most valuable because it ensures that we have complete coverage over all of the key questions."
"The technical support is among the best in the market."
"Splunk setup is easy and straightforward. ​"
"If you want to understand how it can analyze or find out incidents, the visibility is good."
"The ability to rapidly diagnose problems in production and non-production, across hundreds of log files, is the most valuable feature."
"Splunk incorporates a lot of elements that help to reduce security risks. For it to reach certain compliance, we need to have some security insight. Splunk is a very good SIEM, it’s a top solution, but the best feature is its cost of visibility. We have all the most important features to detect vulnerabilities or risks."
"Splunk has been recognized by Gartner as a leader in providing visibility for observability and monitoring across various platforms, including physical, virtual, and container environments, for several years."
"The benefits include the easy integration with other Splunk tools including Splunk UEBA, Splunk ITSI, and Splunk Core. The ease of integration and the organization's experience and familiarity with searching and passing logs through Splunk are the main benefits."
 

Cons

"GUI could be improved."
"When comparing AlienVault OSSIM to other solutions it looks a bit outdated. Additionally, they need to improve their integration."
"They can add more compliance templates."
"The user interface could be improved."
"The documentation could be improved."
"Lacking in depth of reporting."
"AlienVault OSSIM on-premise version is more difficult to implement than the cloud version. Additionally, they should add integration between several different environments at once and improve their online knowledge base."
"Sometimes technical issues take very long to get resolved."
"I'm not as familiar as I should be to answer how Splunk Enterprise Security can be improved, however, one of the improvement points that Enterprise Security could offer is on-prem training."
"Both quality and speed are lacking. Quality-wise, tickets sometimes go in circles, with unnecessary complications and escalations requiring repeated explanations."
"When files are absent, troubleshooting becomes difficult, and performance issues inevitably arise."
"Regarding room for improvement, I expect Splunk to provide information about new features on a regular basis, such as notifications about enhancements that may improve security posture."
"It would be nice if Splunk reduced the cost of training. Their training sessions are way too costly."
"If you monitor too much, you can lose performance on your systems."
"Splunk could enhance its offerings by incorporating modules for network detection and response and fraud management, along with improving its threat intelligence management capabilities."
"Regarding customer service and technical support, their support is the worst I have ever run into in any industry."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"When comparing AlienVault OSSIM to Microsoft Sentinel, AlienVault OSSIM incurs additional costs due to its licensing price structure. If you are using AlienVault for security purposes at a certain level it can have a higher price point than the current pricing of Microsoft Sentinel."
"We are using the community version, which can be used for free."
"AlienVault OSSIM is free."
"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."
"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."
"The licensing fees for the non-community edition are paid on an annual basis, and there are no costs in addition to this."
"I assume that the pricing is reasonable, because if it was too costly, there are other alternatives."
"This product could use better pricing in general."
"Pricing can be a limiting factor. You have to continuously tune what you are bringing in and make sure what you bring in is of value."
"The pricing is based on the volume of data fed into it, which can lead to substantial costs. This pricing model is complex and unpredictable, making cost management difficult."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is cheaper than competitors, but I do not know whether it is just our contract."
"It's definitely worth it."
"My experience with the solution's setup cost, pricing, and licensing was really good."
"Splunk Enterprise Security's pricing is pretty competitive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions are best for your needs.
881,282 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
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

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 Business109
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise264
 

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: December 2025.
881,282 professionals have used our research since 2012.