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Elastic Observability vs InfluxDB 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Elastic Observability
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (7th), Log Management (16th), Container Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
InfluxDB
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
26th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Non-Relational Databases (2nd), Open Source Databases (9th), Network Monitoring Software (23rd), NoSQL Databases (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 3.1%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of InfluxDB is 0.6%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Elastic Observability3.1%
InfluxDB0.6%
Other96.3%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Adelina Craciun - PeerSpot reviewer
Customization enables tailored monitoring and alerting across departments
The possibility to customize it has been quite useful. Whatever the other departments want to dream up, we implement. Whatever they want to monitor, the granularity of it, the changes in the threshold, and the anomalies that they want reported all require some development. So far, every single request has been fulfilled.
DeepakR - PeerSpot reviewer
An open-source database that can be used to insert data
InfluxDB is generally stable, but we've encountered issues with the configuration file in our ticket stack. For instance, a mistake in one of the metrics out of a hundred KPIs can disrupt data collection for all KPIs. This happens because the agent stops working if there's an issue with any configuration part. To address this, it is essential to ensure that all configurations are part of the agent's EXE file when provided. This makes it easier to package the agent for server installation and ensures all KPIs are available from the server. Additionally, the agent cannot encrypt and decrypt passwords for authentication, which can be problematic when monitoring URLs or requiring authentication tokens. This requires additional scripting and can prolong service restart times.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Good design and easy to use once implemented."
"The solution is open-source and helps with back-end logging. It is also easy to handle."
"Elastic provides built-in features for queries and report generation. It's a very good tool for monitoring integration capabilities."
"For full stack observability, Elastic is the best tool compared with any other tool ."
"It has always been a stable solution."
"I found Elk to be excellent for log analytics, security analytics, application code-level analytics, collaboration with DevOps teams, CI/CD, microservices, and Kubernetes, specifically cloud-native or cloud-specific tasks."
"Machine learning is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"Elastic APM has plenty of features, such as the Elastic server for Kibana and many additional plugins. It's a comprehensive tool when used as a logging platform."
"InfluxDB is a database where you can insert data. However, it would be best if you had different components for alerting, data sending, and visualization. You need to install tools to collect data from servers. It must be installed on Windows or Linux servers. During installation, ensure that the configuration file is correct to prevent issues. Once data is collected, it can be sent to InfluxDB. For visualization, you can use open-source tools like Grafana."
"InfluxDB works as expected with excellent scalability and stability, which is critical for our application."
"While I would rate InfluxDB a ten on a scale of one to ten, users should be thoughtful about matching the engine to their specific needs."
"The user interface is well-designed and easy to use. It provides a clear overview of the data, making it simple to understand the information at hand."
"The most valuable features of InfluxDB are the documentation and performance, and the good plugins metrics in the ecosystem."
"InfluxDB's best feature is that it's a cloud offering. Other good features include its time-series DB, fast time-bulk queries, and window operations."
"In our case, it started with a necessity to fill the gap that we had in monitoring. We had very reactive monitoring without trend analysis and without some advanced features. We were able to implement them by using a time series database. We are able to have all the data from applications, logs, and systems, and we can use a simple query language to correlate all the data and make things happen, especially with monitoring. We could more proactively monitor our systems and our players' trends."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is we can use InfluxDB to integrate with and plug into any other tools."
 

Cons

"There's a steep learning curve if you've never used this solution before."
"The auto-discovery isn't nearly as good. That's a big portion of it. When you drop the agent onto the JVM and you're trying to figure things out, having to go through and manually do all that is cumbersome."
"Improving code insight related to infrastructure and network, particularly focusing on aspects such as firewalls, switches, routers, and testing would be beneficial."
"One example is the inability to monitor very old databases with the newest version."
"It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like network observability, package flow analysis, and device performance data on the infrastructure side."
"Elastic Observability is reactive rather than proactive. It should act as an ITSM tool and be able to create tickets and alerts on Jira."
"The interface could be improved."
"The solution needs to use more AI. Once the product onboards AI, users would more effectively be able to track endpoints for specific messages."
"InfluxDB cannot be used for high-cardinality data. It's also difficult and time-consuming to write queries, and there are some issues with bulk API."
"The error logging capability can be improved because the logs are not very informative."
"I've tried both on-premises and cloud-based deployments, and each has its limitations."
"InfluxDB can improve by including new metrics on other technologies. They had some changes recently to pool data from endpoints but the functionality is not good enough in the industry."
"InfluxDB is generally stable, but we've encountered issues with the configuration file in our ticket stack. For instance, a mistake in one of the metrics out of a hundred KPIs can disrupt data collection for all KPIs. This happens because the agent stops working if there's an issue with any configuration part. To address this, it is essential to ensure that all configurations are part of the agent's EXE file when provided. This makes it easier to package the agent for server installation and ensures all KPIs are available from the server. Additionally, the agent cannot encrypt and decrypt passwords for authentication, which can be problematic when monitoring URLs or requiring authentication tokens. This requires additional scripting and can prolong service restart times."
"The solution doesn't have much of a user interface."
"In terms of features that I would like to see or have, in the community version, some features are not available. I would like to have clustering and authentication in the community version."
"One area for improvement is the querying language. InfluxDB deprecated FluxQL, which was intuitive since developers are already familiar with standard querying."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are two types: cloud and SaaS. They charge based on data ingestion, ingest rate, hard retention, and warm retention. I believe it costs around $25,000 annually to ingest 30GB of data daily. That is the SaaS version. There is also a self-managed license where the customer manages their own infrastructure on-prem. In such cases, there are three license tiers that respectively cost $5,000 annually per node, $7,000 per node, and $12,500 per node."
"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."
"The price of Elastic Observability is expensive."
"Elastic Observability is cheaper than other similar solutions, such as Dynatrace. Its license calculation is based on various factors like data volume and physical infrastructure, particularly related to RAM capacity."
"So far, there are just the standard licensing fees. Several of the components are embedded in the license or are even open source. They're even free depending on what you use, which makes it even more appealing to someone that is discussing pricing of the solution."
"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."
"Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."
"We have been using the open-source version."
"InfluxDB recently increased its price. It is very expensive now."
"InfluxDB is open-source, but there are additional costs for scaling."
"We are using the open-source version of InfluxDB."
"The tool is an open-source product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

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 license for Elastic Observability is the same as for other uses; you pay for Elastic, and you can use it for various cases. Observability is actually cheaper compared to logs because you're not...
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
I think they are working on the AI-based features, which are currently in technical preview. The only challenging aspect for new users is often writing the query language. Basic searching is very e...
What do you like most about InfluxDB?
InfluxDB is a database where you can insert data. However, it would be best if you had different components for alerting, data sending, and visualization. You need to install tools to collect data ...
What needs improvement with InfluxDB?
It is challenging to get long-running backups while running InfluxDB in a Microsoft Azure Kubernetes cluster. Replicating data for on-prem development and testing is difficult. Having a SQL abstrac...
What is your primary use case for InfluxDB?
InfluxDB is the main component in our large enterprise-scale streaming data application for maritime vessels. We collect position data from vessels around the coast once per second, put it on a Kaf...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
ebay, AXA, Mozilla, DiDi, LeTV, Siminars, Cognito, ProcessOut, Recommend, CATS, Smarsh, Row 44, Clustree, Bleemeo
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Observability vs. InfluxDB and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.