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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
12th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (8th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (20th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (10th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (12th)
Elastic Stack
Ranking in Log Management
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Security is 3.2%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Stack is 2.5%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Security3.2%
Elastic Stack2.5%
Other94.3%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Laurentiu Popescu - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Product Officer at ClusterPower
Has improved threat detection with deep log analysis and streamlined investigation workflows
The most useful features I find in Elastic Security are the forensic ones that allow us to carry deeper analysis into the logs for in-depth investigations, and the dashboards, with the reporting dashboard being quite user-friendly. Elastic Security is quite good at identifying threats, as it is part of the deep investigation tool that I mentioned before. Unless we need to look further into a certain log, we can carry out a deeper analysis and forensics on those particular logs. I can assess the impact of Elastic Security's real-time data analysis on our threat response efficiency as working pretty good. We are looking for real-time analysis because we have a continuous inflow of logs from different sources: from our cloud, from Active Directory, from our network. So it works pretty well.
LB
Senior Consultant at Skillfield
Offers robust out-of-the-box integrations and streamlines logging processes effortlessly
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 add-on, and that includes vector databases. Elastic Stack can store vector embeddings as well and perform AI and machine learning tasks out of the box without excessive configuration. The main improvements involve increasing speed and compression capabilities; I have seen databases that claim to achieve significantly better compression. While Elastic Stack can manage vast amounts of data, if the mapping is not specified correctly, the indexing time can be slow, especially with many events per second. Improper mapping usually means that every document received gets indexed for all fields, which is not desired. Elastic consultants typically optimize this, but out of the box, as data volume increases, scaling becomes necessary. They are working on these improvements in new versions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's simple and easy to use."
"The solution is quite stable. The performance has been good."
"It's very customizable, which is quite helpful."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the prevention methods and the incident alerts."
"I can look at events from more than one source across multiple different locations and find patterns or anomalies. The machine learning capabilities are helpful, and I can create rules for notifications to be more proactive rather than responding after something has gone wrong."
"Elastic Security helps improve the security posture of Pakistan through centralized visibility and real-time processing."
"The tool's functionality is good for overall security and incident response times."
"Elastic Security offers advanced features such as machine learning and integration with ChatGPT."
"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."
"I have experienced a return on investment from the use of the solution."
"I think the ecosystem is well supported, and for logs, it was faster compared to our previous previous log management."
"It is an excellent tool for monitoring purposes."
"The scripting model in Elastic Stack allows me to query logs and then put the data into Grafana."
"The biggest strength of Elastic Stack is its brilliant archiving capabilities."
"It is a very scalable solution...I didn't face any problem with this scalability part of the solution since we only have a few pieces of equipment in our company."
"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."
 

Cons

"The solution's query building is not that intuitive compared to other solutions."
"I would like the process of retrieving archived data and viewing it in Kibana to be simplified."
"There isn't really a very good user experience. You need a lot of training."
"The problem with ELK is it's difficult to administer. When you have a problem, it can be very, very difficult to rebuild indexes."
"Elastic sometimes does not correctly identify threats or anomalies. It might not classify an issue as malicious or critical accurately."
"The Integration module could be improved. It is a pain to build integration with any product."
"Technical support could respond faster."
"This solution cannot do predictive maintenance, so we have to build our own modules for doing it."
"AI-enablement would be a big improvement in Elastic Stack...If there is room for an ML model in Elastic Stack, then it would be good."
"The tool's pricing can be improved."
"Support could be improved. The error code is not helpful. We have to ask for it or pass it on to community forums."
"There could be better documentation."
"Elastic Stack should be more simplified with ready-to-use widgets."
"The implementation of dashboards in the solution needs to be made easier...I had some issues with the ports and configuration since it was kind of complex to implement with Docker."
"Elastic Stack should work on their dashboards and integration process."
"The stability of the solution is rated as three or four out of ten as we frequently encounter issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is easy to deploy, easy to use, and you get everything you need to become operational with it, and have nothing further to pay unless you want the OLED plugin."
"The tool's pricing is flexible and comes at unit cost. You don't have to pay for everything."
"It's a monthly cost with Elastic SIEM, but I am not sure of the exact cost."
"The product offers an amazing pricing structure. Price-wise, the product is very competitive."
"The solution is free."
"The solution is not expensive and costs around ten dollars a month."
"The base product is open-source but if you need advanced security features then you need to pay for the subscription. Elastic Security's price is reasonable in some cases and in other cases it's not."
"The pricing is in the middle. I think it is not an expensive experience if we compare it with big names, for example, QRadar, and also Oxide. I think Elastic Security is quite cheap. I would rate the pricing of this solution a five out of ten."
"We are using the open-source community version of the product."
"It depends on the specifics, but generally, Elastic is economical for certain use cases."
"The product is expensive."
"I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"Ultimately, the pricing depends upon the capacity planning that the enterprise architect does."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"If I compare Elastic Stack to the other products in the market, I would say that the tool is available at a competitive price."
"I used the open-source version of Elastic Stack, because of which I did not have to pay anything."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
 

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?
I am satisfied with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing cost. It is a pure 10.
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?
I would like to improve Elastic Stack by addressing the current big problem we face with importing logs and log files, such as syslogs. To import these log files, we need to design the ingest pipel...
What is your primary use case for Elastic Stack?
Elastic Stack is primarily used for everything related to security, including security systems, checking the security system, and also servers and networks.
 

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: April 2026.
892,487 professionals have used our research since 2012.