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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

"Enables monitoring of application performance and the ability to predict behaviors."
"I would advise others to use this solution as it is relatively low cost and the implementation is quick, giving you results faster."
"Elastic Security is very customizable, and the dashboards are very easy to build."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the machine learning capability."
"My advice to anybody who is considering this product is that it is a very competitive tool that is very new in the market and the vendor is doing their best to improve services."
"We chose the product based on the ability to scan for malware using a malware behavioral model as opposed to just a traditional hash-based antivirus. Therefore, it's not as intensive."
"I like the indexing of the logs."
"The most valuable feature of Security Onion for security monitoring is its ability to find infected ports."
"We use Security Onion for internal vulnerability assessment."
"Security Onion is the most mature solution in the market."
 

Cons

"The solution's query building is not that intuitive compared to other solutions."
"Sometimes, the solution isn't the easiest to use."
"I would like the process of retrieving archived data and viewing it in Kibana to be simplified."
"We had issues with scalability. Logstash was not scaling and aggregation was getting delayed."
"Elastic Security has a steep learning curve, so it takes some time to tune it and set it up for your environment. There are some costs associated with logging things that don't have value. So you need to be cautious to only log things that make sense and keep them around for as long as you need. You shouldn't hold onto things just because you think you might need them."
"I would say that right now the Linux feature set is a little limited."
"The setup process is complex. You need a solid working knowledge of networking, operating systems, and a little programming."
"The tool needs to integrate with legacy servers. Big companies can have legacy servers that may not always be updated."
"Security Onion's user interface could be improved."
"The product is not easy to learn."
"The initial setup of the solution is a little bit difficult."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is not expensive and costs around ten dollars a month."
"The solution is free."
"We use the open-source version, so there is no charge for 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."
"Affordable but with additional costs"
"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."
"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."
"Security Onion is an open-source solution."
"Security Onion is a free solution."
"It is an open-source solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
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 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 needs improvement with Elastic Security?
I do not have any specific recommendations for improvements in Elastic Security, but I feel that the AI module should get more mature. These machine learning algorithms become better with time; as ...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

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.
896,467 professionals have used our research since 2012.