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Elastic Stack vs Grafana Loki 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 Stack
Ranking in Log Management
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Grafana Loki
Ranking in Log Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Stack is 4.9%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana Loki is 7.9%, up from 6.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Grafana Loki7.9%
Elastic Stack4.9%
Other87.2%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Balamurali P - PeerSpot reviewer
Advanced query capabilities enhance monitoring effectiveness
Elastic Stack should be more simplified with ready-to-use widgets. Also, incorporating AI capabilities is essential as monitoring and observability tools are now adding AI features. Ideally, it should evolve into a full-stack observability tool, similar to AppDynamics or DynaTrace, which offers a solution that includes ISP provider, API monitoring, and infrastructure monitoring.
Volodymyr Bondarchuk - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrations enhance monitoring but problem-solving proves challenging
Different types of integrations with various sources are the most helpful and useful features of Grafana Loki that I found for myself. As part of Kubernetes technology, I noticed benefits from using this product such as availability, configuration balancing, high availability solutions for high performance, and failover clustering. It provides a clear picture about the state of the system and gives needed information for taking action and quickly fixing problems.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution's technical support is good...Elastic Stack offers good value for value for money based on the product's features and what they offer."
"It supports various integrations. It's open source and has excellent community support."
"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."
"Elastic Stack is mainly used to monitor servers and APIs. It helps ensure the software's availability and sends notifications at the right time so the system is not down for a long time. The tool's stability and advanced features, such as anomaly detection, are the most valuable features. The benefit of using it is real-time monitoring."
"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."
"The detection rules in Elastic Stack are the most valuable feature. The search capabilities are excellent and fast. As we collect logs from workstations and devices, the detection rules run on top of the logs and detect any suspicious activity, raising alerts accordingly. Integration with Elastic Stack depends on the specific integration. Elastic provides some bridging integrations that make it easy, but require custom integration. Most integrations are simple, but customization can be challenging because we need to do some parsing. There's something called Elastic Common Schema, and we need to parse the source logs to match this schema, which can be a bit challenging."
"Elastic Stack has made a positive impact as we can now see our logs."
"I think the ecosystem is well supported, and for logs, it was faster compared to our previous previous log management."
"The most valuable part of Loki is the ability to filter logs by keywords and devices."
"Loki also utilizes the same service discovery mechanism as used by Prometheus. So, whatever labeled metadata you see in Prometheus, you have the exact same metadata in the Loki system. Given this level of intricacy and the attempt to address these challenges, I firmly believe that Loki deserves praise for the work."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the tool's GUI. The solution's GUI is very user-friendly."
"The log collection feature is good and the solution is easily understandable. v"
"Loki significantly saves time in troubleshooting by quickly pinpointing network issues."
"I appreciate the capability to process logs from microservices and seamlessly integrate them into Grafana."
"There are new features like that pilot code and things like that for profiling."
"The best feature of Grafana Loki is that it integrates well with our other tool."
 

Cons

"There could be better documentation."
"Support could be improved. The error code is not helpful. We have to ask for it or pass it on to community forums."
"It lacks a clear NDR (Network Detection and Response) feature. If Elastic could enhance this aspect, it would significantly boost its capabilities."
"The solution is expensive, particularly the training and certification. If customers want to increase their use of Elastic Stack, they should consider reducing the cost of certification and training."
"The main issue related to Elastic Stack is in the area of its licensing."
"Elastic Stack should be more simplified with ready-to-use widgets. Also, incorporating AI capabilities is essential as monitoring and observability tools are now adding AI features."
"Elastic Stack's search capabilities can be challenging, especially when searching for precise data from past years, such as two or ten years ago. Its indexing performance for exact data retrieval may decrease as the data volume grows. Therefore, I believe there is room for improvement in the product's search functionality. It needs to improve its pricing as well."
"Elastic Stack should work on their dashboards and integration process."
"We had a well-structured dashboard with a functional query. However, an issue arose when the Kubernetes pod restarted. The statistics from our Grafana query would reset, dropping to zero and starting anew. This was particularly noticeable with linear graphs, which are expected to show consistent growth."
"The correlation of requests is not simple in Grafana Loki and can be improved."
"It's not intended for proprietary services, so you have to struggle with configuration a lot."
"The product must improve its UI."
"There is a need for some change in the alerting types of the product. In short, a few changes in the alert area are needed due to minor shortcomings."
"The solution has shortcomings regarding security monitoring-oriented features that need improvement."
"The solution's scalability depends on the team managing the Grafana instance."
"Visualization-wise, Grafana Loki's dashboard looks a little outdated compared to other open-source visualization tools like Chronograf."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I used the open-source version of Elastic Stack, because of which I did not have to pay anything."
"It depends on the specifics, but generally, Elastic is economical for certain use cases."
"Ultimately, the pricing depends upon the capacity planning that the enterprise architect does."
"We are using the open-source community version of the product."
"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."
"The product is expensive."
"I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"Grafana Loki is a free, open-source solution."
"My company doesn't need to pay for the licensing cost of the solution."
"I use the solution's open-source version. Grafana Loki is a completely free solution for me."
"I use the open-source version of the product."
"Since we are using the open-source version of Grafana Loki, we are not paying anything for the solution."
"The pricing structure varies based on the number of users; there might be specific taxes to pay for it."
"We use a free version."
"I find the licensing structure quite reasonable, as the free license effectively meets my requirements."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Elastic Stack?
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 per...
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?
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 a...
What do you like most about Grafana Loki?
We are using Grafana Loki as a database for real-time metrics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana Loki?
Since it is an open source tool, there are no charges or fees.
What needs improvement with Grafana Loki?
I have no ideas at this moment about what could be improved in Grafana Loki.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Stack vs. Grafana Loki and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
871,829 professionals have used our research since 2012.