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Elastic Observability vs Prometheus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 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
7.1
Elastic Observability enhances cost-effectiveness, reduces incidents, and improves efficiency, yielding significant time savings and operational benefits.
Sentiment score
8.5
Prometheus is a cost-effective, open-source monitoring tool offering significant financial and time-saving benefits over AWS native services.
Using open-source Prometheus saves me money compared to AWS native services.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.7
Elastic Observability's support is praised for prompt, efficient service and effective community-driven insights, enhancing overall user experience.
Sentiment score
4.0
Prometheus users benefit from extensive documentation, open-source community support, and forums, eliminating the need for traditional support.
Prometheus does not offer traditional technical support.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Elastic Observability is efficiently scalable, with performance stability across varying team sizes, influenced by subscription level and infrastructure.
Sentiment score
6.9
Prometheus is highly scalable and adaptable for diverse businesses, effectively handling demands in both cloud and on-premise environments.
Elastic Observability seems to have a good scale-out capability.
What is not scalable for us is not on Elastic's side.
Prometheus is scalable, with a rating of ten out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Elastic Observability is praised for its robust and stable performance, efficiently handling large data volumes across industries.
Sentiment score
8.9
Prometheus is deemed stable and dependable by users, despite minor issues, especially with proper configuration and resource management.
It is very stable, and I would rate it ten out of ten based on my interaction with it.
Elastic Observability is really stable.
Deploying it on multiple instances or using Kubernetes for automatic management has enhanced its stability.
 

Room For Improvement

Elastic Observability needs better licensing, visualization, automation, integration, pricing, AI features, customization, and support for observability and cost transparency.
Prometheus requires enhancements in usability, scalability, integration, and features to improve user experience and monitoring efficiency.
It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like network observability, package flow analysis, and device performance data on the infrastructure side.
One example is the inability to monitor very old databases with the newest version.
Elastic Observability could improve asset discovery as the current requirement to push the agent is not ideal.
 

Setup Cost

Elastic Observability offers competitive pricing with variable costs, favoring enterprises over startups, requiring premiums for advanced features.
Prometheus is cost-effective due to its open-source nature, with optional paid services considered reasonably priced by users.
Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing.
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.
Prometheus is cost-effective for me as it is free.
 

Valuable Features

Elastic Observability offers scalable logging, seamless integrations, real-time visualization, and enhances system performance with a user-friendly, open-source model.
Prometheus excels in scalability, integration, and flexibility, offering robust features like dynamic monitoring and Grafana compatibility for diverse environments.
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.
the most valued feature of Elastic is its log analytics capabilities.
All the features that we use, such as monitoring, dashboarding, reporting, the possibility of alerting, and the way we index the data, are important.
It allows me to save money by avoiding costs associated with AWS native services like CloudWatch or Amazon Prometheus.
 

Categories and Ranking

Elastic Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Log Management (14th), Container Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)
Prometheus
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 5.8%, up from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prometheus is 3.4%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

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.
MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Free to use and provides valuable monitoring capabilities
Prometheus is a scalable and flexible tool that I can deploy on any cloud platform. It is free to use and provides valuable monitoring capabilities. It allows me to save money by avoiding costs associated with AWS native services like CloudWatch or Amazon Prometheus. The ability to deploy on any cloud platform or environment, including Kubernetes, is a major advantage.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
 

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?
Of course, maintenance is necessary, as with any software, requiring updates with the latest features and security enhancements. It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like netw...
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 cost-effective for me as it is free. Using cloud-native alternatives like Amazon Prometheus would incur charges.
What is your primary use case for Prometheus?
I use Prometheus for monitoring purposes in IT infrastructure. It is particularly useful for environments using Kubernetes, as it monitors ports, containers, instances, and applications effectively.
 

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. Prometheus and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.