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Elastic Security vs Elastic Stack 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 Security
Ranking in Log Management
11th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (5th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (17th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (8th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (10th)
Elastic Stack
Ranking in Log Management
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Security is 3.0%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Stack is 5.4%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

SyedAli17 - PeerSpot reviewer
Centralized monitoring improves security posture through rapid data processing
The processing part of Elastic Security ( /products/elastic-security-reviews ) is very interesting for us since we handle almost 7,000 to 8,000 alerts per minute. We require rapid processing speed for alerts and event data, and Elastic Security is very efficient at handling this level of data. Additionally, Elastic Security helps improve the security posture of Pakistan through centralized visibility and real-time processing.
Balamurali P - PeerSpot reviewer
Advanced query capabilities enhance monitoring effectiveness
Elastic Stack should be more simplified with ready-to-use widgets. Also, incorporating AI capabilities is essential as monitoring and observability tools are now adding AI features. Ideally, it should evolve into a full-stack observability tool, similar to AppDynamics or DynaTrace, which offers a solution that includes ISP provider, API monitoring, and infrastructure monitoring.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Elastic is straightforward, easy to integrate, and highly customizable."
"It is scalable."
"The tool's functionality is good for overall security and incident response times."
"ELK is open-source, and it will give you the framework you need to build everything from scratch."
"The visualization is very good."
"I use the stack every morning to check the errors and it's just so clear. I don't see any disadvantage to using Logstash."
"It's open-source and free to use."
"The product has huge integration varieties available."
"The biggest strength of Elastic Stack is its brilliant archiving capabilities."
"It is an excellent tool for monitoring purposes."
"The tool's most powerful aspect is its search engine capability. It's a highly effective and powerful solution for searching. We use it in professional and student projects at universities, and it delivers promising results."
"The tool is huge, and it performs brilliantly. I tested it for malware, and within two weeks of launching, the product alerted me about a network intrusion. This was a tough test for it, but it performed admirably. The alerting system is excellent, and searching through logs is incredibly efficient. What's impressive is that all three products or options are integrated into one solution. This means I don't need separate logging, monitoring, or antivirus solutions."
"The machine learning capabilities are valuable."
"Elastic Stack is mainly used to monitor servers and APIs. It helps ensure the software's availability and sends notifications at the right time so the system is not down for a long time. The tool's stability and advanced features, such as anomaly detection, are the most valuable features. The benefit of using it is real-time monitoring."
"The scripting model in Elastic Stack allows me to query logs and then put the data into Grafana."
"It supports various integrations. It's open source and has excellent community support."
 

Cons

"There is an area of improvement in the Logs list. The load list may need to be paginated as there are limits."
"If the documentation were improved and made more clear for beginners, or even professionals, then we would be more attracted to this solution."
"Technical support could respond faster."
"We'd like to see some more artificial intelligence capabilities."
"The biggest challenge has been related to the implementation."
"We had issues with scalability. Logstash was not scaling and aggregation was getting delayed. We moved to Fluentd making our stack from ELK to EFK."
"Installation is a little bit overwhelming, so improvements on the installation site could make it easier."
"The solution could offer better reporting features."
"It lacks a clear NDR (Network Detection and Response) feature. If Elastic could enhance this aspect, it would significantly boost its capabilities."
"Elastic Stack's search capabilities can be challenging, especially when searching for precise data from past years, such as two or ten years ago. Its indexing performance for exact data retrieval may decrease as the data volume grows. Therefore, I believe there is room for improvement in the product's search functionality. It needs to improve its pricing as well."
"Improvements are needed in the solution in areas like SOAR and TIP, where there are certain shortcomings."
"Support could be improved. The error code is not helpful. We have to ask for it or pass it on to community forums."
"Improving integration capabilities, especially with authentication systems, firewalls, and security controls, is a crucial area for improvement in Elastic Stack. Additionally, enhancing functionality to handle large Yara queries more efficiently would be beneficial, as many EDR solutions can run such queries faster than Elastic Stack's current limitations."
"The tool's pricing can be improved."
"It should facilitate easier manual integration."
"There could be better documentation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing is flexible and comes at unit cost. You don't have to pay for everything."
"We are using the free, open-source version of this solution."
"Its price is fine. Its licensing works on a yearly basis. We have to renew the license every year. I also have a good experience with Darktrace. When we buy Darktrace, we get training free of cost, which is not there in Elastic. We have to pay extra for training. There is certainly room for improvement."
"Elastic Stack is an open-source tool. You don't have to pay anything for the components."
"There is no charge for using the open-source version."
"It's a monthly cost with Elastic SIEM, but I am not sure of the exact cost."
"When compared to other products, the price is average or on the low side."
"The licensing cost of Elastic Security is based on the daily ingestion rate. I can't recall the exact figure, but for 10GB of log action daily, it would cost around $20,000."
"It depends on the specifics, but generally, Elastic is economical for certain use cases."
"I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"We are using the open-source community version of the product."
"I used the open-source version of Elastic Stack, because of which I did not have to pay anything."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Ultimately, the pricing depends upon the capacity planning that the enterprise architect does."
"If I compare Elastic Stack to the other products in the market, I would say that the tool is available at a competitive price."
"The product is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
What do you like most about Elastic Security?
Elastic provides the capability to index quickly due to the reverse indexes it offers. This data is crucial as it contains critical information. The reverse index allows fast data indexing because ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Security?
Since Elastic Security is community-based, it does not require significant costs. This is beneficial for SMEs as they do not need extensive budgets for security solutions.
What do you like most about Elastic Stack?
The tool is huge, and it performs brilliantly. I tested it for malware, and within two weeks of launching, the product alerted me about a network intrusion. This was a tough test for it, but it per...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Stack?
My experience with Elastic Stack pricing indicates that it is node-based. While I do not have complete pricing details, they are available online. If I choose Elastic Cloud, it includes licensing a...
What needs improvement with Elastic Stack?
There are improvements needed for Elastic Stack. It is mostly based on Lucene, and the heart of Elastic Stack is Lucene, which has some limitations. Anything built on top of Lucene often feels an a...
 

Also Known As

Elastic SIEM, ELK Logstash
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Texas A&M, U.S. Air Force, NuScale Power, Martin's Point Health Care
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Security vs. Elastic Stack and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.