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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
11th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (7th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (15th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (11th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (12th)
Security Onion
Ranking in Log Management
24th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Security is 3.5%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Security Onion is 1.8%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Security3.5%
Security Onion1.8%
Other94.7%
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.
Hiten Nandasana - PeerSpot reviewer
Angular developer at Flourish software
Centralized monitoring has strengthened threat detection and supports faster incident investigations
Security Onion is a completely open-source and free platform, making it a cost-effective solution that works smoothly and effectively for our organization. Security Onion integrates well with our existing tools, primarily using Linux systems in our organization, allowing us to monitor logs and manage threat detection and operations in the public cloud effectively. Security Onion is very helpful in meeting compliance requirements and supports regular standards for our environment. I advise organizations that use Linux or have network security knowledge to consider Security Onion, as it satisfies requirements such as threat detection and log management systems. I would rate this review eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"It's quite stable; we have not seen it going down at all for the last three years and it's working well consistently."
"The most valuable feature is the scalability. We are in Indonesia, more engineers understand Elastic Security here. So it is easier to scale and also develop. In features, the discovery to query all the logs is very important to us. It is very easy, especially with the query function and the feature to generate alerts and create tools. Sometimes we use the alert security dashboard to monitor our clients."
"Overall, the solution is good."
"Anyone who wants to do IT log monitoring, realtime and who wants to do the anomaly detection, should go with this solution."
"We like Elastic Security because it's a REST API-based solution. That's the primary reason we use it."
"All of the features on the solution are useful due to the fact that I have the full Stack, therefore I can collect and then visualize."
"Based on my experience, it's quite easy and manageable with small scale implementations, and the time to market is quite fast."
"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."
"Security Onion is a completely open-source and free platform, making it a cost-effective solution that works smoothly and effectively for our organization."
 

Cons

"We'd like better premium support."
"It's a little bit of a learning curve to understand the logic of searching for things and trying to find what you're looking for in Elastic Security."
"This solution is very hard to implement."
"Authentication is not a default in Kibana. We need to have another tool to have authentication and authorization. These two should be part of Kibana."
"If you compare this with CrowdStrike or Carbon Black, they can improve."
"Continuous upgrades can be quite inconvenient. My security testing team continuously reports vulnerabilities, and we have to fix and update the versions frequently."
"The process of designing dashboards is a little cumbersome in Kibana. Unless you are an expert, you will not be able to use it. The process should be pretty straightforward. The authentication feature is what we are looking for. We would love to have a central authentication system in the open-source edition without the need for a license or an enterprise license. If they can give at least a simple authentication system within a company. In a large organization, authentication is very essential for security because logs can contain a lot of confidential data. Therefore, an authentication feature for who accesses it should be there."
"Sometimes, the solution isn't the easiest to use."
"Security Onion can be made easier to set up initially, as it is somewhat difficult at the start, but once configured, it becomes a great tool to use."
"The product is not easy to learn."
"Security Onion's user interface could be improved."
"The initial setup of the solution is a little bit difficult."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Elastic Security is free to use."
"Elastic Stack is an open-source tool. You don't have to pay anything for the components."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Affordable but with additional costs"
"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."
"We are using the free, open-source version of this solution."
"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
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Government
9%
Construction 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 ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Security Onion?
Security Onion does not require any cost, as it is open-source and free.
What needs improvement with Security Onion?
Security Onion can be made easier to set up initially, as it is somewhat difficult at the start, but once configured, it becomes a great tool to use. I assigned a rating of eight out of ten because...
What advice do you have for others considering Security Onion?
Security Onion is a completely open-source and free platform, making it a cost-effective solution that works smoothly and effectively for our organization. Security Onion integrates well with our e...
 

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: August 2026.
910,454 professionals have used our research since 2012.