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Elastic Search vs Grafana comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Search
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (9th), Search as a Service (1st), Vector Databases (2nd)
Grafana
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Elastic Search and Grafana aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Elastic Search is designed for Indexing and Search and holds a mindshare of 25.4%, down 26.6% compared to last year.
Grafana, on the other hand, focuses on Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability, holds 6.4% mindshare, up 5.8% since last year.
Indexing and Search
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Anand_Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Captures data from all other sources and becomes a MOM aka monitoring of monitors
Scalability and ROI are the areas they have to improve. Their license terms are based on the number of cores. If you increase the number of cores, it becomes very difficult to manage at a large scale. For example, if I have a $3 million project, I won't sell it because if we're dealing with a 10 TB or 50 TB system, there are a lot of systems and applications to monitor, and I have to make an MOM (Mean of Max) for everything. This is because of the cost impact. Also, when you have horizontal scaling, it's like a multi-story building with only one elevator. You have to run around, and it's not efficient. Even the smallest task becomes difficult. That's the problem with horizontal scaling. They need to improve this because if they increase the cores and adjust the licensing accordingly, it would make more sense.
Vikash-Agarwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Displays data visually from multiple sources while integrating seamlessly with existing systems
Grafana provides a user-friendly interface for viewing infrastructure metrics through dashboards. It integrates with Prometheus to pull data and offers a straightforward setup process. Users can monitor metrics with greater ease, and the tool aids in quickly identifying issues by providing a visual representation of data. Grafana's integration capability is straightforward, which facilitates building dashboards as needed.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There's lots of processing power. You can actually just add machines to get more performance if you need to. It's pretty flexible and very easy to add another log. It's not like 'oh, no, it's going to be so much extra data'. That's not a problem for the machine. It can handle it."
"The observability is the best available because it provides granular insights that identify reasons for defects."
"Elasticsearch includes a graphical user interface (GUI) called Kibana. The GUI features are extremely beneficial to us."
"The solution has good security features. I have been happy with the dashboards and interface."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"The most valuable feature is the out of the box Kibana."
"The solution offers good stability."
"You have dashboards, it is visual, there are maps, you can create canvases. It's more visual than anything that I've ever used."
"The dashboards are the most valuable features."
"​Grafana has improved our analysis capability to solve an issue, increasing the co-working between IT services and business services.​"
"The comparison feature is very good."
"The most valuable thing was that it had a good visualization tool."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the UI dashboard because we need to create a dashboard on Grafana to monitor our data."
"The installation process is easy. We have deployed it on the cloud. I have around 20 to 30 people using the solution in my company."
"I find Grafana beneficial due to its numerous plugins."
"It excels in providing comprehensive details when there are downtimes or fluctuations, offering thorough reports."
 

Cons

"New Relic could be more flexible, similar to Elasticsearch."
"Kibana should be more friendly, especially when building dashboards."
"The one area that can use improvement is the automapping of fields."
"I have not been using the solution for many years to know exactly the improvements needed. However, they could simplify how the YML files have to be structured properly."
"Something that could be improved is better integrations with Cortex and QRadar, for example."
"Technical support should be faster."
"Elastic Enterprise Search's tech support is good but it could be improved."
"We see the need for some improvements with Elasticsearch. We would like the Elasticsearch package to include training lessons for our staff."
"​The security needs to be improved, such as the capacity to add permissions on dashboards.​"
"Lacks in-depth graphs and sufficient AI."
"The features are complicated and not intuitive."
"If there was an issue on one node, we couldn't drill down and see all the issues on other nodes."
"All the features are complicated."
"They should improve the functioning of its editing tool."
"Lacks event management which affects our DevOps people."
"It would be helpful if Grafana provided more information and training on how to use Prometheus."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The version of Elastic Enterprise Search I am using is open source which is free. The pricing model should improve for the enterprise version because it is very expensive."
"​The pricing and license model are clear: node-based model."
"I rate Elastic Search's pricing an eight out of ten."
"we are using a licensed version of the product."
"Elastic Search is open-source, but you need to pay for support, which is expensive."
"We are using the free open-sourced version of this solution."
"The pricing model is questionable and needs to be addressed because when you would like to have the security they charge per machine."
"We are paying $1,500 a month to use the solution. If you want to have endpoint protection you need to pay more."
"Since Grafana is an open-source solution, it is free of cost."
"You need to purchase the solution's license for its commercial use."
"I am using an open-source version"
"We are using the open-source license."
"The solution is expensive."
"It's free of cost; it operates as an open-source tool."
"I give the price an eight out of ten."
"My company uses the open-source version of Grafana, so it's free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ELK Elasticsearch?
Logsign provides us with the capability to execute multiple queries according to our requirements. The indexing is very high, making it effective for storing and retrieving logs. The real-time anal...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?
I don't know about pricing. That is dealt with by the sales team and our account team. I was not involved with that.
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
I found an issue with Elasticsearch in terms of aggregation. They are good, yet the rules written for this are not really good. There is a maximum of 10,000 entries, so the limitation means that if...
What do you like most about Grafana?
The product's initial setup phase was very easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana?
I used the open-source version for my learning, which was free. In an enterprise setting, pricing is reasonable, as many customers use it.
What needs improvement with Grafana?
The interface is not well-liked by my customers. Grafana cannot be easily embedded into certain applications and offers limited customization options for graphs. I think predictive capabilities in ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

T-Mobile, Adobe, Booking.com, BMW, Telegraph Media Group, Cisco, Karbon, Deezer, NORBr, Labelbox, Fingerprint, Relativity, NHS Hospital, Met Office, Proximus, Go1, Mentat, Bluestone Analytics, Humanz, Hutch, Auchan, Sitecore, Linklaters, Socren, Infotrack, Pfizer, Engadget, Airbus, Grab, Vimeo, Ticketmaster, Asana, Twilio, Blizzard, Comcast, RWE and many others.
Microsoft, Adobe, Optum, Sky, Nvidia, Roblox, Wells Fargo, BlackRock, Informatica, Maersk, Daimler Truck, SNCF, Atlassian, DHL, SAP, JPMorgan Chase, Cisco, Citi and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic, Luigi's Box, OpenText and others in Indexing and Search. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.