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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
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)
Security Onion
Ranking in Log Management
21st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
AWS Marketplace (13th)
 

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 Security Onion is 5.0%, up from 4.4% 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.
Jörg Kippe - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"Its flexibility is most valuable. We can have a number of scenarios, and we can get logs from anything. If we know how to use Logstash, we can tweak it in many ways. This makes the logging search on Elastic very easy."
"It's not very complicated to install Elastic."
"It is scalable."
"It is very quick to react. I can set it to check anomalies or suspicious behavior every 30 seconds. It is very fast."
"The visualization is very good."
"It's simple and easy to use."
"I like that it's a SIEM platform. I like that I can sell Elastic Security quickly. Elastic Security has a large community that can support users."
"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."
"We use Security Onion for internal vulnerability assessment."
"Security Onion is the most mature solution in the market."
"The most valuable feature of Security Onion for security monitoring is its ability to find infected ports."
 

Cons

"It is difficult to anticipate and understand the space utilization, so more clarity there would be great."
"The setup process is complex. You need a solid working knowledge of networking, operating systems, and a little programming."
"One thing they could add is a quick step to enable users who don't have a solid background to build a dashboard and quickly search, without difficulty."
"I would like more ways to manage permissions and restrict access to certain users."
"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."
"We are paying dearly for the guy who is working on the ELK Stack. That knowledge is quite rare and hard to come by. For difficulty and availability of resources, I would rate it a five out of 10."
"The training that is offered for Elastic is in need of improvement because there is no depth to it."
"There is room for improvement in the Kibana dashboard and in the asset management for the program."
"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."
"Compared to other tools, Elastic Security is a cheaper solution."
"Affordable but with additional costs"
"The product offers an amazing pricing structure. Price-wise, the product is very competitive."
"This is an open-source product, so there are no costs."
"The solution is free."
"I can say that the product is cheaply priced."
"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
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
11%
University
11%
Government
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
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?
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 Security Onion?
The most valuable feature of Security Onion for security monitoring is its ability to find infected ports.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Security Onion?
Security Onion is an open-source solution. On a scale from one to ten, where ten is expensive and one is cheap, I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten.
What needs improvement with Security Onion?
The initial setup of the solution is a little bit difficult.
 

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: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.