Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Graylog Enterprise vs IBM Security QRadar comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 8, 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

Graylog Enterprise
Ranking in Log Management
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Log Management
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
210
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (4th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (17th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (8th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Graylog Enterprise is 6.2%, up from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 3.8%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Security QRadar3.8%
Graylog6.2%
Other90.0%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Ivan Kokalovic - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates backend service monitoring with efficient log retrieval and API flexibility
Graylog is valuable because it bridges technical knowledge to non-technical teams, presenting complex backend processes in a simple timeline. It boosts the knowledge of sales and customer support teams by allowing them to see the backend operations without needing to read the code. Its API is flexible for visualization, and its powerful search engine efficiently handles large volumes of log data. Moreover, its stability, fast search capabilities, and compatibility with languages like ANSI SQL enhance its utility in IT infrastructure.
Mahmoud Younes - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable installation and diverse use cases provide strong value
IBM Security QRadar has some areas for improvement. We have missed some DSM components. We need to customize logs where there is no DSM or connector for certain products. We can integrate but we have missed the DSM, which is the connector to pass logs coming from different applications. For example, with a university customer, we tried onboarding Canvas service. IBM Security QRadar does not support Canvas, so we had to create custom scripts and workarounds to pull logs from Canvas.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We have scaled from a single machine installation (a VM with a Graylog + ES + MongoDB) to (2 Graylog + 2 ES + 3 MongoDB). This was done smoothly with a minimal impact on logging."
"Message forwarding through the in-built module."
"Everything stands out as valuable, including the fact that I can quantify and qualify the logs, create pipelines and process the logs in any way I like, and create charts or data maps."
"The best feature of Graylog is the Elasticsearch integration. We can integrate and we can run filters, such as an event of interest, and those logs we can send to any SIEM tool or as an analytic. Additionally, there are clear and well-documented implementation instructions on their website to follow if needed."
"Graylog is very handy."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its new interface."
"One of the most valuable features is that you are able to do a very detailed search through the log messages in the overview."
"Storing logs in Elasticsearch means log retrieval is extremely fast, and full text search is available by default."
"Improves visibility and has a great new dashboard."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the integration capabilities on offer."
"I have found the most important features to be the flexibility, tech framework, and disk manager."
"I think QRadar is stable and currently satisfies my needs."
"There are other third-party plugins that we can use."
"There are many things I appreciate about IBM Security QRadar; I haven't used any other SIEM before IBM Security QRadar, so for me, it is perfect."
"The threat protection network is the most valuable feature, because when you get an offense, you can actually trace it back to where it originated from, how it originated, and why."
"It's user-friendly when compared to other products."
 

Cons

"Over six months, I had two similar issues where searches were performed on field "messages". It exhausted all the memory of the ES node causing an ES crash and a Graylog halt."
"I would like to see a default dashboard widget that shows the topology of the clusters defined for the graylog install."
"Dashboards, stream alerts and parsing could be improved."
"I hope to see improvements in Graylog for more interactivity, user-friendliness, and creating alerts. The initial setup is complex."
"It would be great if Graylog could provide a better Python package in order to make it easier to use for the Python community."
"The area in Graylog that needs to be improved or enhanced would be the integrations."
"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."
"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."
"The advanced planning management (APM) features should be included."
"There should be easier and wider integration opportunities. There should be more opportunities for integration with CTI info sharing areas. On platforms where you exchange CTI, there should be more visibility connected to what we share, what we can reach, or what options are connected to CTI info sharing. This is one area where they could add value because we cannot integrate it easily with QRadar. If a client has a legacy or already existing solutions for CTI, we cannot ask them to forget it because we cannot guarantee that QRadar is able to deliver everything connected to this area."
"The implementation and configuration are not easy."
"A lot of information that we receive for the devices is IP-based, but it would help if we could have a default dashboard in which we can add more details about the assets for which we are receiving the information. For example, if it is a Windows or Linux device, we only get the IP for that particular device. We don't really get the name and other details of that particular device. For that, you have to drill down into your own asset management system. It would be good to have a place where we can probably add this information so that we don't have to look into other tools."
"The product needs to improve its GUI."
"There are many types of AI, and this AI is very limited in SQL and features. There may be potential for improvement."
"IBM needs to invest more into the collaboration with other vendors."
"The only challenge with products like IBM is the EPS. You just have to be really on the events per second, as that's where the cost factor becomes a huge issue."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Consider Enterprise support if you have atypical needs or setup requirements.​"
"I use the free version of Graylog."
"We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive."
"It's an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."
"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."
"Having paid official support is wise for projects."
"It's open source and free. They have a paid version, but we never looked into that because we never needed the features of the paid version."
"​You get a lot out-of-the-box with the non-enterprise version, so give it a try first."
"The price of this product is high."
"It is a perpetual license that we have for the event collector. The licensing is done based on the number of events and flows that you receive on this particular device. These are perpetual licenses, which means once you purchase them, they don't expire, which means that the support to IBM is definitely renewed after every one year. We have an enterprise agreement with IBM, which puts the cost in a totally different category as compared to someone who is not an IBM partner and is approaching IBM for this solution. We were able to get massive discounts. To give you an idea, we recently purchased 30,000 event licenses, and it costs around $480,000. It is definitely not a cheap product. We have licenses for about 270,000 events per second and 3 million flows per second. All the appliances and their events and flows are basically clubbed together and charged or rather calculated through a single source. The console receives all the details from all the event processes that we have globally. So, the license that we have is a single license for 270,000 events per second and 3 million flows per second, but that can be managed centrally. I was only part of the secondary purchase, which was 30,000 events per second for about $480,000. You can calculate how much we paid for 270,000 events. Reducing its price would be a compromise. We have already used a lower-priced product in the form of NNT, but we had to get rid of it because it was not doing the job that we actually wanted to do. You get what you pay for."
"We pay approximately $40,000 to use the solution annually. This solution is a lot less expensive than Splunk."
"IBM Security QRadar is a very expensive tool."
"The pricing is higher but cheaper than others and there are no additional costs."
"found other solutions, with more features at the same cost or less. You don’t have to leave the Gartner Magic Quadrant to beat their price."
"The solution comes with a high price tag, while some of the competitors provide identical functionality in their offerings at no extra cost."
"It's very expensive but it fits our budget."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Log Management solutions are best for your needs.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

VS
Jun 28, 2015
Qradar vs. ArcSight
Continuing with the SIEM posts we have done at Infosecnirvana, this post is a Head to head comparison of the two Industry leading SIEM products in the market – HP ArcSight and IBM QRadar Both the products have consistently been in the Gartner Leaders Quadrant. Both HP and IBM took over niche SIEM…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Government
8%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business88
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise102
 

Questions from the Community

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?
I am not familiar with the pricing details of Graylog, as I was not responsible for that aspect. It was determined that we didn't need an enterprise plan, which is more suited for clients with less...
What needs improvement with Graylog?
An improvement I would suggest is in Graylog's user interface, such as allowing for font size adjustments. A potential enhancement could be the integration with Ollama to run large language models ...
What are the biggest differences between Securonix UEBA, Exabeam, and IBM QRadar?
It mostly depends on your use-cases and environment. Exabeam and Securonix have a stronger UEBA feature set, friendlier GUI and are not licensed based on capacity (amount of logs and information in...
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 your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Security QRadar?
When comparing with Splunk, IBM Security QRadar's cost is reasonable. Splunk is more expensive than IBM Security QRadar.
 

Also Known As

Graylog2
IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blue Cross Blue Shield, eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn, SAP, King.com, Twilio, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Find out what your peers are saying about Graylog Enterprise vs. IBM Security QRadar and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.