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Elastic Stack vs Graylog 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
12th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Graylog
Ranking in Log Management
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Stack is 5.1%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Graylog is 6.6%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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.
Andrey Mostovykh - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time analysis, easy setup, and open source
We stopped using it for analytics because of its price, and at the moment, we are using it mostly for log centralization. If you use it with high traffic for analytical purposes, as well as for the logs, the infrastructure costs are unbelievable. Graylog is a great product backed by Elasticsearch as the storage and query engine. It is just an interface on top of Elasticsearch and some Elasticsearch management. The indexes that are kept in Elasticsearch are managed by Graylog software. Elasticsearch is a decent product, but it's very infrastructure-heavy. It requires lots of resources, and if you make a mistake with provisioning, you are likely to not get a cluster back. We had a couple of outages like that, and we hated that. So, we ended up over-provisioning resources just to avoid such situations from happening. If you have a whole team trying to fix the Graylog instance for two days, that's a bit too much. That may be my Norwegian take on it, but the engineering resources are expensive. It's better to just provision the infrastructure. Overall, the product is great, and the features are just fine, but the infrastructure cost is what is killing it. The infrastructure cost is the main issue. I like the rest. If the infrastructure costs could be lower, it would be fantastic. I'm not sure if they can improve the infrastructure cost with the way Elasticsearch is. If they keep using Elasticsearch, maybe there are some opportunities there, or they can support other backends with cheaper storage. They could have a different backend to replace Elasticsearch or do some tweaks to Elasticsearch to reduce the costs. There could be partial parsing of logs or parsing on demand so that when you write data through Graylog to Elasticsearch, it doesn't need to crunch in every detail requiring that much CPU.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Prior to the latest updates, data lake management was a standout feature. The hybrid capability for on-premise and cloud integration was also crucial. Now, with Elastic Defense, the agent simplifies security monitoring, making it a key asset."
"I have experienced a return on investment from the use of the solution."
"It is an excellent tool for monitoring purposes."
"The scripting model in Elastic Stack allows me to query logs and then put the data into Grafana."
"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."
"Elastic Stack has made a positive impact as we can now see our logs."
"It supports various integrations. It's open source and has excellent community support."
"Allowing us to set up alerts and integrate with platforms we already use, such as Slack and OpsGenie to alert users of these errors proactively, is also a very useful feature."
"The build is stable and requires little maintenance, even compared to some extremely expensive products."
"Real-time UDP/GELF logging and full text-based searching."
"Graylog is very handy."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its new interface."
"Open source and user friendly."
"We're using the Community edition, but I know that it has really good dashboarding and alerts."
"It has data adapters and lookup tables that utilize HTTP calls to APIs."
 

Cons

"The stability of the solution is rated as three or four out of ten as we frequently encounter issues."
"It should facilitate easier manual integration."
"Agent deployment is a little tough in the on-premise version."
"Support could be improved. The error code is not helpful. We have to ask for it or pass it on to community forums."
"The main issue related to Elastic Stack is in the area of its licensing."
"The implementation of dashboards in the solution needs to be made easier...I had some issues with the ports and configuration since it was kind of complex to implement with Docker."
"Elastic Stack should work on their dashboards and integration process."
"It lacks a clear NDR (Network Detection and Response) feature. If Elastic could enhance this aspect, it would significantly boost its capabilities."
"Graylog can improve the index rotation as it's quite a complex solution."
"Its scalability gets complicated when we have to update or edit multiple nodes."
"I hope to see improvements in Graylog for more interactivity, user-friendliness, and creating alerts. The initial setup is complex."
"Elasticsearch recommendations for tuning could be better. Graylog doesn't have direct support for running the system inside of Kubernetes, so it can be challenging to fill in the gaps and set up containers in a way that is both performant and stable."
"Graylog needs to improve their authentication. Also, the fact that Graylog displays logs from the top down is just ridiculous."
"It would be great if Graylog could provide a better Python package in order to make it easier to use for the Python community."
"Lacks sufficient documentation."
"I would like to see a default dashboard widget that shows the topology of the clusters defined for the graylog install."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Ultimately, the pricing depends upon the capacity planning that the enterprise architect does."
"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 used the open-source version of Elastic Stack, because of which I did not have to pay anything."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"It depends on the specifics, but generally, Elastic is economical for certain use cases."
"We are using the open-source community version of the product."
"If you want something that works and do not have the money for Splunk or QRadar, take Graylog.​​"
"It's an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."
"I use the free version of Graylog."
"Consider Enterprise support if you have atypical needs or setup requirements.​"
"Graylog is a free open-source solution. The free version has a capacity limitation of 2 GB daily, if you want to go above this you have to purchase a license."
"We're using the Community edition."
"Having paid official support is wise for projects."
"There is an open source version and an enterprise version. I wouldn't recommend the enterprise version, but as an open source solution, it is solid and works really well."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Government
8%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
I may not be able to answer as this is customer-paid Elastic Stack, and I didn't handle the payment.
What needs improvement with Elastic Stack?
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 sho...
What do you like most about Graylog?
The product is scalable. The solution is stable.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Graylog?
We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive.
What needs improvement with Graylog?
When it comes to configuring the processing pipeline, writing the rules can be very tedious, especially since the documentation isn't extensive on how the functions provided for these rules work. P...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Graylog2
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Blue Cross Blue Shield, eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn, SAP, King.com, Twilio, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Stack vs. Graylog and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.