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Elastic Security vs Security Onion 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)
Security Onion
Ranking in Log Management
29th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
3
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 Security Onion is 2.3%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Security3.2%
Security Onion2.3%
Other94.5%
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.
Jörg Kippe - PeerSpot reviewer
Scientist at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees
A mature and affordable solution that is easy to install and easy to update
The product takes time to learn, it's not that easy. In the beginning we had a lot of questions. If you want to use such a tool in an real (industrial) environment, you have to ask how to get the network data. Can we do a full packet capture? Can we provide agents to our end systems? There are no simple solutions to these questions. It's a general problem when running such systems in an industrial environment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"You just deploy and start using, and it's quite stable and hasn't broken down on us at all."
"Overall, the product is very stable and it is well-liked."
"It's not very complicated to install Elastic."
"The intelligence of the system has been very impressive. It's not quite AI, but the technical bit where it correlates information, based on the seen attacks within an organization is good."
"The most valuable feature of Elastic Security is that you can install agents, and they are not separately licensed."
"Elastic Security helps improve the security posture of Pakistan through centralized visibility and real-time processing."
"ELK documentation is very good, so never needed to contact technical support."
"ELK is open-source, and it will give you the framework you need to build everything from scratch."
"Security Onion is the most mature solution in the market."
"We use Security Onion for internal vulnerability assessment."
"The most valuable feature of Security Onion for security monitoring is its ability to find infected ports."
 

Cons

"The solution does not have a UI and this is one of the reasons we are looking for another solution."
"There should be a simulation environment to check whether my Elastic implementation is functioning perfectly fine. Other solutions have their own Android and iOS applications that I can install on my mobile so that I am continuously connected to the SIEM."
"The interface could be more user friendly because it is sometimes hard to deal with."
"There isn't really a very good user experience. You need a lot of training."
"We find that solutions such as Dynatrace and Datadog offer much more functionality, perhaps due to the fact that they are more mature."
"The tool should improve its scalability."
"An area for improvement in Elastic Security is the pricing. It could be better. Right now, when you increase the volume of logs to be collected, the price also increases a lot."
"With Elastic, you have to build the use cases for the specific requirement. Other products have a simple integration and more use cases to integrate out-of-the-box solutions for SIEM."
"The initial setup of the solution is a little bit difficult."
"The product is not easy to learn."
"Security Onion's user interface could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I can say that the product is cheaply priced."
"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."
"I find it better than Splunk in terms of cost-effectiveness. For cost-effectiveness, I would rate it a nine out of 10."
"It's a monthly cost with Elastic SIEM, but I am not sure of the exact cost."
"This is an open-source product, so there are no costs."
"The price is reasonable. It probably costs the same as ArcSight and LogRhythm SIEM. FortiSIEM might cost less than Elastic Security. There are no hidden or additional costs."
"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."
"Security Onion is a free solution."
"Security Onion is an open-source solution."
"It is an open-source solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
12%
Government
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise15
No data available
 

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.
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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. Security Onion and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.