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Elastic Observability vs Grafana Loki comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.5
Elastic Observability enhances cost-effectiveness by reducing incidents, automating fixes, and visualizing cloud operations, saving time and resources.
Sentiment score
1.0
Companies gain significant ROI with Grafana Loki's quick setup, cost-effectiveness, and efficiency in resolving issues, enhancing operational insights.
Elastic Observability has saved us time as it's much easier to find relevant pieces across the system in one screen compared to our own software, and it has saved resources too since the same resources can use less time.
Technology Consultant at Hybrid software
Loki leads to significant cost savings by reducing server downtime and aiding engineers in prompt issue resolution.
Manager Director at Earth
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.6
Elastic Observability customers appreciate their helpful support, quick responses, and valuable documentation, despite some challenges in complex issue resolution.
Sentiment score
7.2
Grafana Loki support is praised, but many prefer community resources and forums over official channels for problem-solving.
Elastic support really struggles in complex situations to resolve issues.
Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Their excellent documentation typically helps me solve any issues I encounter.
Technology Consultant at Hybrid software
We have not had to open any tickets yet, as we solve issues through forums and wikis.
Manager Director at Earth
I usually do not use official support; I typically rely on community blogs and forums for support of Grafana Loki.
Senior System Engineer at Novell
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Elastic Observability is praised for scalability and ease of deployment, despite potential complexities and internal process limitations.
Sentiment score
6.5
Grafana Loki is praised for its scalability, effectively managing diverse user bases and handling extensive log data seamlessly.
I rate the scalability of Elastic Observability as a ten, as we have never seen issues even with a lot of data coming in from more customers, provided we have the appropriate configuration.
Technology Consultant at Hybrid software
Elastic Observability seems to have a good scale-out capability.
Chief Cloud Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Elastic Observability is easy in deployment in general for small scale, but when you deploy it at a really large scale, the complexity comes with the customizations.
Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Loki offers great scalability, allowing us to manage and compress logs extensively.
Manager Director at Earth
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Elastic Observability is stable and reliable, with high user ratings, efficiently handling large data volumes with proper configuration.
Sentiment score
7.7
Grafana Loki is stable and reliable, though some report issues like outdated authentication and log retrieval difficulties.
There are some bugs that come with each release, but they are keen always to build major versions and minor versions on time, including the CVE vulnerabilities to fix it.
Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
It is very stable, and I would rate it ten out of ten based on my interaction with it.
Product Owner at Swisscom
I would rate the stability of Elastic Observability as a ten, as we don't experience any issues.
Technology Consultant at Hybrid software
 

Room For Improvement

Elastic Observability needs automation, AI, and customization improvements, addressing complex deployment, market presence, metrics, licensing, and usability issues.
Grafana Loki needs improved usability, integration, and features like customizable reports, better UI, security, and machine learning analytics.
For instance, if you have many error logs and want to create a rule with a custom query, such as triggering an alert for five errors in the last hour, all you need to do is open the AI bot, type this question, and it generates an Elastic query for you to use in your alert rules.
Senior Consultant at Skillfield
It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like network observability, package flow analysis, and device performance data on the infrastructure side.
Senior Technical Sales at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Some areas such as AI Ops still require data scientists to understand machine learning and AI, and it doesn't have a quick win with no-brainer use cases.
Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Improvements could be made in the enablement of the product, addressing the complexity of implementing these tools.
Regional Associate & Engineer at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
It would be beneficial if Loki could directly access Windows Server logs or events directly from the servers.
Manager Director at Earth
 

Setup Cost

Elastic Observability provides competitive pricing, benefiting large enterprises with comprehensive licensing, but may be costly for smaller users.
Grafana Loki's open-source and affordable cloud options make it appealing to cost-conscious enterprises seeking scalable logging solutions.
The license is reasonably priced, however, the VMs where we host the solution are extremely expensive, making the overall cost in the public cloud high.
Product Owner at Swisscom
Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing.
Chief Cloud Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Observability is actually cheaper compared to logs because you're not indexing huge blobs of text and trying to parse those.
Senior Consultant at Skillfield
The cloud version is competitively priced compared to other market solutions.
Manager Director at Earth
Since it is an open source tool, there are no charges or fees.
Senior System Engineer at Novell
 

Valuable Features

Elastic Observability excels with flexible integration, powerful search, scalability, real-time insights, affordability, and robust support, enhancing efficiency.
Grafana Loki offers cost-effective log management, strong integration, and user-friendly features, ideal for Kubernetes and real-time metrics.
The most valuable feature is the integrated platform that allows customers to start from observability and expand into other areas like security, EDR solutions, etc.
Chief Cloud Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
the most valued feature of Elastic is its log analytics capabilities.
Senior Technical Sales at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
All the features that we use, such as monitoring, dashboarding, reporting, the possibility of alerting, and the way we index the data, are important.
Product Owner at Swisscom
It provides a clear picture about the state of the system and gives needed information for taking action and quickly fixing problems.
Senior System Engineer at Novell
Grafana Loki is notably cost-effective.
Regional Associate & Engineer at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The most valuable part of Loki is the ability to filter logs by keywords and devices.
Manager Director at Earth
 

Categories and Ranking

Elastic Observability
Ranking in Log Management
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (6th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (9th), Container Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
Grafana Loki
Ranking in Log Management
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 1.2%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana Loki is 7.0%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Grafana Loki7.0%
Elastic Observability1.2%
Other91.8%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

MA
Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Has provided powerful customization for unique monitoring needs but needs more out-of-the-box capabilities
In my opinion, the best features of Elastic Observability are their flexibility to integrate with other existing systems and the ability to build a unified monitoring tool that can integrate with existing ones and end-to-end user journeys which require a lot of customizations. The greatest feature in Elastic is the ability to customize. This is similar to my comments about customizable dashboards in Elastic because it's visible to the analyst. However, it's very great. Customizing these dashboards can meet the customer's specific use cases and specific stories that they have in their environment, their special environment that doesn't look like other environments. The dashboarding in Elastic is highly customizable to the level of logos. If the customer wants his company logo in the dashboard, it can be done.
reviewer2350791 - PeerSpot reviewer
Regional Associate & Engineer at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Offers cost-effective log management with strong correlation features across observability tools
Grafana Loki's open-source capability is a significant benefit. Grafana has invested in making their enterprise tools competitive with other APM tools, facilitating cross-correlation with Mimir and Tempo for metrics and tracing. The tool offers good search functionality, and its on-premises capability is advantageous. The indexing performance is strong, making it a robust log management tool. Grafana Loki is notably cost-effective.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?
The problem is their licensing model, which is a bit confusing. Many customers struggle to understand their total cost of ownership because Elastic licensing is not dependent on easy, quantifiable ...
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
After careful consideration about areas for improvement in Elastic Observability, aspects such as pricing, customization, implementation, and scalability could be improved. As a user of the system,...
What do you like most about Grafana Loki?
We are using Grafana Loki as a database for real-time metrics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana Loki?
Since it is an open source tool, there are no charges or fees.
What needs improvement with Grafana Loki?
Improvements could be made in the enablement of the product, addressing the complexity of implementing these tools.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Observability vs. Grafana Loki and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,371 professionals have used our research since 2012.