Elastic Observability vs Prometheus comparison

Read 33 Prometheus reviews

6,761 Views
5,996 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Elastic Observability

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

Elastic Observability and Prometheus compete in software operations monitoring and observability. Prometheus seems to have the upper hand due to its efficient metrics collection, alerting features, and scalability in large-scale environments.

Features: Elastic Observability users highlight its data indexing, search capabilities, and Kibana integration for visualizing large datasets. Prometheus is praised for its lightweight nature, efficient metrics collection, and powerful query language for handling time-series data.

Room for Improvement: Elastic Observability could enhance real-time data monitoring, streamline its setup process, and improve long-term data storage options. Prometheus could reduce the complexity of its configuration files, enhance its configuration ease, and improve long-term data storage options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Elastic Observability benefits from comprehensive documentation and strong customer support, simplifying the onboarding process. Prometheus has a manual setup complexity but benefits from an active, supportive community and extensive plugins.

Pricing and ROI: Elastic Observability's pricing reflects its broad-feature set, with users generally reporting a favorable ROI. Prometheus, being open-source, offers a cost-effective solution with lower ongoing costs, making it appealing for budget-conscious users.

To learn more, read our detailed Elastic Observability vs. Prometheus Report (Updated: December 2024).

Elastic Observability vs. Prometheus

Download the complete report

Helped 824,053 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

Elastic Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Log Management (11th), Container Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)

Prometheus

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

8th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 6.4%, up from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prometheus is 3.3%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Adelina Craciun

Product Owner at Swisscom

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.

Read full review

Noam Blidstein

Head of Global IT Operations at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

A very flexible open box that can be used vastly to do anything you need

Make sure that you have dedicated manpower to configure and manage the solution. It requires handling, not necessarily on a daily basis, but it definitely requires someone who is focused and has expertise with the solution. Know in advance what you want to gain from the solution. Don't jump in to configuring or deploying before knowing what you expect from it. I like the solution very much. I think it is a major tool, especially in advanced environments. The open box provides a lot of flexibility and gives a very holistic view of the entire Kubernetes environment. Integrating with the Rancher management tool gives the solution even more abilities. There are several tools that we use behind the scenes to ease the process but the solution on its own is a very good tool. I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Elastic User Interface framework lets us do custom development when needed. You need to have some Javascript knowledge. We need that knowledge to develop new custom tests."

"The solution has been stable in our usage."

"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."

"It is scalable and supports multitenancy, which is beneficial for MSPs."

"Its diverse set of features available on the cloud is of significant importance."

"Good design and easy to use once implemented."

"I recommend Elastic Observability for its completeness of vision and wide ecosystem."

More Elastic Observability pros

"Prometheus is a great solution for monitoring."

"It lets me proactively identify and resolve system issues. This, in terms of, most of the time, really reduces downtime. Because when there are notifications on time when we engage it quickly on time, our downtime is highly reduced. So basically, Prometheus is for monitoring and alerting."

"It is a stable solution...Based on the feedback I have received from my colleagues in our company's IT department, the setup phase of the solution is relatively easy."

"The solution is useful to collect huge metrics."

"It is highly valuable as it serves as the foundation for our infrastructure monitoring tools."

"It has lots of APIs and libraries to integrate with any kind of language."

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"The most valuable feature of Prometheus is the ease of pulling the metrics."

More Prometheus pros

Cons

"The tool's scalability involves a more complex implementation process. It requires careful calculations to determine the number of nodes needed, the specifications of each node, and the configuration of hot, warm, and cold zones for data storage. Additionally, managing log retention policies adds further complexity. The solution's pricing also needs to be cheaper."

"There's a steep learning curve if you've never used this solution before."

"Elastic Observability needs to have better standardization, logging, and schema."

"I am familiar with Azure Monitor, which I find more user-friendly compared to Elastic, which is a very technical tool."

"Improving code insight related to infrastructure and network, particularly focusing on aspects such as firewalls, switches, routers, and testing would be beneficial."

"Elastic Observability is difficult to use. There are only three options for customization but this can be difficult for our use case. We do not have other options to choose the metrics shown, such as CPU or memory usage."

"Elastic Observability is an excellent product for monitoring and visibility, but it lacks predictive analytics. Most solutions are aligned with the AIOps requirements, but this piece is missing in Elastic and should be included."

"Simplifying the parsing of logs and manual efforts would also be beneficial."

More Elastic Observability cons

"The solution has shortcomings regarding security monitoring-oriented features to support custom use cases, like out-of-the-box test scenarios and threat-related use cases of its users."

"There is a need for a more comprehensive overview of exporters, especially when dealing with many of them."

"The setup process could be more straightforward."

"I would like to see improvement in the analysis tools and customization features."

"The setup could be made easier for new users because it requires a bit of advance knowledge or experience."

"The interface is not particularly user-friendly and that could be improved."

"The product must improve its documentation."

"There is a tool called Prometheus Exporter that doesn't work well."

More Prometheus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"It is expensive. It is not cheap."

"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."

"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."

"Elastic Observability's pricing could be better for small-scale users."

"We have been using the open-source version."

"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."

"The product’s pricing needs improvement."

More Elastic Observability pricing and cost advice

"We use the solution's open-source version."

"This is an open-source solution."

"The product is expensive compared to Datadog."

"The solution is not expensive."

"The price of Prometheus is good, it is affordable because it is open source and there is no cost to it. You put it on your own server and the costs incurred completely depend on how you set it up."

"The product is free."

"It is an open-source tool."

"Prometheus is an open-source tool."

More Prometheus pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

26%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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?

Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing. However, sizing and licensing information could be clearer.

What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?

Elastic Observability could improve asset discovery as the current requirement to push the agent is not ideal. Simplifying the parsing of logs and manual efforts would also be beneficial.

What do you like most about Prometheus?

The most valuable feature of Prometheus is its ability to collect metrics.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Prometheus?

Prometheus is an open-source tool.

What is your primary use case for Prometheus?

We use Prometheus for observability and analyzing data for business metrics and system metrics. It helps us with messaging services observability. It also helps a lot with the architecture and scal...

New Relic vs Elastic Observability

Comparisons

Compared 16% of the time

Dynatrace vs Elastic Observability

Compared 15% of the time

Sentry vs Elastic Observability

Compared 11% of the time

Grafana vs Elastic Observability

Compared 10% of the time

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Elastic Observability

Compared 1% of the time

More Elastic Observability Competitors

Azure Monitor vs Prometheus

Compared 16% of the time

Zabbix vs Prometheus

Compared 11% of the time

Dynatrace vs Prometheus

Compared 9% of the time

New Relic vs Prometheus

Compared 9% of the time

Apache SkyWalking vs Prometheus

Compared 7% of the time

More Prometheus Competitors

Product Reports

Elastic Observability

Download Elastic Observability product report

Download Prometheus product report

Learn More

Elastic

Overview

Elastic Observability is primarily used for monitoring login events, application performance, and infrastructure, supporting significant data volumes through features like log aggregation, centralized logging, and system metric analysis.

Elastic Observability employs Elastic APM for performance and latency analysis, significantly aiding business KPIs and technical stability. It is popular among users for system and server monitoring, capacity planning, cyber security, and managing data pipelines. With the integration of Kibana, it offers robust visualization, reporting, and incident response capabilities through rapid log searches while supporting machine learning and hybrid cloud environments.

What are Elastic Observability's key features?

Economic licensing: Offers cost-effective plans.
Extensive metrics tracking: Helps in comprehensive system monitoring.
Comprehensive logging: Centralizes log data efficiently.
Performance Monitoring: Provides robust APM capabilities.
Integration: Seamlessly integrates with other solutions.
Kibana visualization: Facilitates data visualization and reporting.
Machine learning support: Enables advanced data analysis.
Flexible deployment: Supports various deployment environments.
Rapid log searches: Enhances quick incident response.
Accessibility: Offers extensive online documentation and connector support.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in Elastic Observability reviews?

Stability: Look for consistent performance and reliability.
Compliance: Effective monitoring aids in regulation adherence.
System Security: Enhanced system monitoring and alert management.
Cost-Effectiveness: Evaluate the economic pricing models.
Scalability: Adequate scalability options for growing needs.

Companies in technology, finance, healthcare, and other industries implement Elastic Observability for tailored monitoring solutions. They find its integration with existing systems useful for maintaining operation efficiency and security, particularly valuing the visualization capabilities through Kibana to monitor KPIs and improve incident response times.

Prometheus specializes in gathering, monitoring, and analyzing logs and metrics. Utilized for data visualization in Grafana, cloud deployments, Kubernetes monitoring, and financial transactions, it provides a comprehensive view of application performance.

Prometheus is widely adopted for its robust metrics collection and scraping capabilities. It integrates seamlessly with Grafana for detailed visualizations and supports installations in cloud environments like Azure and Amazon. Prometheus is especially valued for monitoring Kubernetes deployments and ensuring efficient operation of servers, databases, and microservices. Its open-source nature provides reliability, flexibility, and scalability. Users appreciate its extensive integrations, APIs, and libraries, supporting multiple languages. Prometheus also offers remote writing, dynamic conflict resolution, high availability, and lightweight configuration with detailed documentation.

What are the key features of Prometheus?

Extensive Integrations: Supports APIs and libraries across multiple languages
Metrics Collection: Efficiently handles large amounts of metrics
Scraping Capabilities: Effective data gathering from applications
HTTP Monitoring: Reliable and detailed tracking
Grafana Integration: Seamless dashboards and visualizations
High Availability: Ensures system reliability
Lightweight Configuration: User-friendly setup process
Robust Querying: Advanced data querying and long-term storage integration

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Holistic Application Performance: Provides a comprehensive view
Scalability: Handles growing amounts of metrics
Flexibility: Adapts to various cloud and on-premises environments
Reliability: Ensures consistent performance
Detailed Documentation: Offers clear guidance for users

Prometheus is extensively used in industries requiring robust monitoring and alerting systems. Financial services leverage it for tracking transactions, while tech companies deploy it for Kubernetes and microservices monitoring. Its scalable and flexible nature makes it a preferred choice for cloud environments, supporting the efficient operation of infrastructure and applications.

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank

Information Not Available

Elastic Observability vs. Prometheus