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Grafana Loki vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

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

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
7.6
Number of Reviews
303
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Grafana Loki is 7.0%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 8.7%, down from 12.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

CarlosPimentel - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient log filtering enhances quick network troubleshooting
We use Grafana Loki for various verticals including manufacturing, finance, health, and aerospatial sectors. It primarily helps in monitoring security and access to devices. Grafana dashboards are used to track access success and failure and audit commands issued on devices Loki significantly…
ROBERT-CHRISTIAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Has many predefined correlation rules and is brilliant for investigation and log analysis
It is very complicated to write your own correlation rules without the help of Splunk support. What Splunk could do better is to create an API to the standard SIEM tools, such as Microsoft Sentinel. The idea would be to make it less painful. In ELK Stack, Kibana is the query language with which you can search log files. I believe Splunk has also a query language in which they search their log files, but once you have identified the log file that you want to use for further security correlation, you want to very quickly transport that into your SIEM tool, such as Microsoft Sentinel. That is something that Splunk could make a little bit less painful because it is a lot of effort to find that log file and forward it. An API with Microsoft Sentinel or a similar SIEM tool would be a good idea.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The log collection feature is good and the solution is easily understandable. v"
"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."
"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."
"We are using Grafana Loki as a database for real-time metrics."
"The product's most valuable features are ease of installation, management, and reporting. It has an efficient ability to set thresholds for alerts, as well."
"The most valuable part of Loki is the ability to filter logs by keywords and devices."
"Grafana Loki is easy to monitor and detect errors."
"The solution has proven to be quite stable."
"It definitely does help with both auditing and as well as regular monitoring. SOC does more monitoring, but ES also gives you other features that are auditing-related. The dashboards are also beneficial."
"Splunk has give us the capability to easily track problems and their status."
"Splunk's visualizations make it easy for users to understand the data."
"It has a rapid response search environment in the event of an incident."
"The initial deployment was straightforward."
"The ability to analyze huge amounts of sales data and accurate prediction of sales forecasting is the most valuable feature."
"Splunk gives my clients the ability to bring multiple, disparate types of data together, then correlate and report on them."
 

Cons

"I do not see any areas for improvement at the moment."
"In Grafana Loki, the creation of metrics is not so easy, making it an area that could be made easier."
"Enhancing speed could be a game-changer, and while it might vary depending on the application, it's a factor worth exploring."
"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."
"We encountered certain limitations when it came to alerting, particularly when dealing with specific data sources."
"Visualization-wise, Grafana Loki's dashboard looks a little outdated compared to other open-source visualization tools like Chronograf."
"The product must improve its UI."
"It would be beneficial if Loki could directly access Windows Server logs or events directly from the servers."
"I'd say I am happy with the technical support, not elated. They provide great support, but sometimes they don't have the answers that I need."
"There is a learning curve in order to start using machine learning. We have been trying to do it for three years, and we have not managed anything. It is too complex."
"Technical support needs to be more responsive."
"I find the graphical options really limited and you don't have enough control over how to display the data that you want to see."
"The security can be improved."
"Integrating tools and creating use cases could be easier. It's hard for a junior security engineer with only a couple of years of experience to write use cases. They can do it, but it's much easier in a solution like IBM QRadar. Setting conditions is like a multiple-choice type of thing. It's a more user-friendly process."
"Splunk needs to be able to hold more days of data. At the moment it only holds three months of data."
"They could offer pre-built search queries for everyday use cases like brute force attacks, DDoS attacks, and other security threats."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I find the licensing structure quite reasonable, as the free license effectively meets my requirements."
"The solution is open source."
"The pricing structure varies based on the number of users; there might be specific taxes to pay for it."
"Grafana Loki is a free, open-source solution."
"Grafana Loki is an open-source solution."
"We use a free version."
"The pricing is very complicated, and it is very pricey. You do require a lot of different licenses in order to get a comprehensive solution that is not just the SIEM solution."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is a worthwhile investment given the comprehensive range of features it offers."
"In terms of pricing, I believe Splunk is unreasonably costly for the majority of mid and small-sized companies."
"Luckily, we come under a large federal agency, and before the pandemic, they signed a large enterprise license agreement. It worked out great and to our advantage because we are a small organization. We got a 300 gig license, and we just did not have the buying power to be able to get products cheaply. Because we all partnered together under the agency umbrella, we were able to get Splunk Enterprise Security, UBA, and ITSI for cheap. This was good considering the fact that some of these premium apps require a minimum number of users, and we do not have the number of people needed to even justify buying it."
"Splunk is a bit pricier, but the benefits and ROI are huge."
"Splunk ES is quite expensive compared to some products on the market."
"The price can always be lower, but it is fair at the moment. The cost efficiencies depend on the licensing and how much data we are bringing in. We have a fairly large footprint, so it is cost-effective."
"Be upfront about your needs and expectations. Splunk is great to work with."
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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
18%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana Loki?
We use the open-source version of Loki. The cloud version is competitively priced compared to other market solutions.
What needs improvement with Grafana Loki?
It would be beneficial if Loki could directly access Windows Server logs or events directly from the servers.
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: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.