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Grafana Loki vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 29, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.9
Grafana Loki's support combines community aid and resources with varying user satisfaction, requiring effort for integration and documentation navigation.
Sentiment score
7.2
Splunk Enterprise Security's support is generally praised for responsiveness and knowledge but criticized for delays and inconsistent quality.
We have not had to open any tickets yet, as we solve issues through forums and wikis.
 

Room For Improvement

Sentiment score
8.0
Grafana Loki needs better flow visibility, request correlation, stability, Docker integration, and enhanced scalability, security, and reporting features.
Sentiment score
6.2
Splunk Enterprise Security is costly and complex, with users seeking better integration, usability, support, and enhanced features like AI.
It would be beneficial if Loki could directly access Windows Server logs or events directly from the servers.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Grafana Loki is praised for its scalability, reliable operations, and ability to handle large systems and data efficiently.
Sentiment score
6.0
Splunk Enterprise Security is scalable and adaptable, handling large data volumes and multiple users easily but can be costly.
Loki offers great scalability, allowing us to manage and compress logs extensively.
 

Setup Cost

No sentiment score available
Grafana Loki provides cost-effective pricing options with a popular free open-source version and a competitively priced cloud version.
Sentiment score
7.7
Splunk Enterprise Security's pricing is perceived as high due to its licensing model and extensive features, often deterring SMEs.
The cloud version is competitively priced compared to other market solutions.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Grafana Loki is generally stable, but some users encounter issues with log retrieval and outdated methods affecting stability.
Sentiment score
4.8
Splunk Enterprise Security is praised for stability, reliability, low maintenance, and high performance, with minor issues quickly resolved.
 

Valuable Features

No sentiment score available
Grafana Loki offers easy deployment, cost-effectiveness, and robust log monitoring with seamless Grafana integration and Kubernetes compatibility.
Sentiment score
8.7
Splunk Enterprise Security excels in dashboards, reporting, flexibility, scalability, support, log aggregation, alerting, integration, and efficient large data handling.
The most valuable part of Loki is the ability to filter logs by keywords and devices.
 

Categories and Ranking

Grafana Loki
Ranking in Log Management
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Log Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
301
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Grafana Loki is 6.4%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 9.4%, down from 13.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Arjun Pandey - PeerSpot reviewer
Effective for Logging, recovery from node failures is fast and single UI supports metrics, logs, and even tracing
If it is HelloGuard setup or doing some setup on the dev cluster, it's pretty straightforward. But when we're dealing with a heavy cluster, like 15 to 20 terabytes of data per day, we need a production-grade cluster. For that kind of scenario, we must invest time and understand the process. We could have integrated these features within their health check, but they're using processes like Tanka and Jsonnet to implement a production service. I feel this could have been better. If I use a metric solution for metrics, I'd use Grafana for metrics monitoring. For logging, I'd use a different tool, like ELK. And for tracing another tool. So, to troubleshoot a specific issue, I have to switch between three different consoles. What I see in metrics isn't the same as in logs because the metadata and collection methods differ. That's where Loki comes in. Within Grafana, you can see metrics, logs, correlations, generate metrics from logs, and also set alerts. Alerting from logs is something many companies desire. With Loki, if there's a pattern in the log, we can filter it out without altering the entire pipeline. For instance, if I had to add fields in ELK, it would require a lot of configuration changes. Loki, however, is more flexible. It uses a grep-like pattern and the metadata model from Prometheus. It's highly efficient, with compressed data and block storage like GCS bucket or AWS S3, making log storage cost-effective. Compared to other solutions, it's more economical. Loki also has a Log CLI, which is very effective. It's all on-premises. Like, it's on the cloud, but it's self-managed, not a managed service.
Avinash Gopu. - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good visibility into multiple environments, significantly reduces our alert volume, and speeds up our security investigations
There are limitations with Splunk not detecting all user activity, especially on mainframes and network devices. This is because Splunk relies on agents, which cannot access certain workstations. In these cases, we have to rely on application data. For example, with mainframes, manual reports are generated and sent to Splunk, limiting visibility to what's manually reported. This lack of automation for specific platforms needs improvement from Splunk. Additionally, API access is limited for other applications that rely on API calls and requests. This requires heavy customization on Splunk's end. These are the main challenges we've encountered. Monitoring multiple cloud platforms, like Azure, GCP, and AWS, with Splunk Enterprise Security presents some challenges. While Splunk provides different connectors for each provider, consolidating data from two domains across distinct cloud environments can be complex. However, leveraging pre-built templates and Splunk's data collation capabilities can help overcome these hurdles. Despite initial difficulties, I believe Splunk can effectively address this task, earning it an eight out of ten rating for its multi-cloud monitoring capabilities. While Splunk Enterprise Security offers insider threat detection capabilities, its effectiveness could be enhanced by integrating with additional tools, such as endpoint security solutions. This integrated approach is particularly crucial for financial institutions, which often require dedicated endpoint security teams. While using multiple tools is valuable, further improvements within Splunk itself are also necessary. Considering both external integration and internal development, I would rate its current insider threat detection capabilities as three out of ten. Threat detection is where Splunk falls behind. While it offers tools, other use cases require additional work. PAM is an enterprise tool that centralizes information about users, servers, and everything else. It needs real-time monitoring, which I haven't seen in any of the companies I've worked for. They only rely on Splunk for alerting, but real-time monitoring should be handled by the endpoint security team's tools. This means there's no detection or analysis at the machine or endpoint level. Additionally, threat analysis reporting is also absent.
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Comparison Review

VS
Feb 26, 2015
HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. ​McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm
We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Grafana Loki?
We are using Grafana Loki as a database for real-time metrics.
What needs improvement with Grafana Loki?
I do not see any areas for improvement at the moment. The solution is very stable, and further improvements might result in it becoming resource-intensive like other solutions.
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Find out what your peers are saying about Grafana Loki vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.