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Graylog vs Logstash comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
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
Logstash
Ranking in Log Management
36th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Graylog is 6.4%, up from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Logstash is 0.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Mustafa Husny - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to collect logs from various data sources, including hardware
I use Logstash primarily for connecting logs from hardware. This is the main use case. The second use case involves making correlations between logs from various sources.  I can collect logs from various data sources, including hardware. The product needs to improve its compatibility.  I rate…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Graylog is very handy."
"Graylog's search functionality, alerting functionality, user management, and dashboards are useful."
"We run a containerized microservices environment. Being able to set up streams and search for errors and anomalies across hundreds of containers is why a log aggregation platform like Graylog is valuable to us."
"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."
"What I like about Graylog is that it's real-time and you have access to the raw data. So, you ingest it, and you have access to every message and every data item you ingest. You can then build analytics on top of that. You can look at the raw data, and you can do some volumetric estimations, such as how big traffic you have, how many messages of data of a type you have, etc."
"One of the most valuable features is that you are able to do a very detailed search through the log messages in the overview."
"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 ability to write custom alerts is key to information security and compliance."
"Everything aligns well with improving our organization."
"I can collect logs from various data sources, including hardware."
"We have three or four Logstash servers for high availability."
 

Cons

"Lacks sufficient documentation."
"Since container orchestration systems are popular and Graylog fits the niche well, perhaps they could officially support running in docker containers on Kubernetes as a StatefulSet as a use case. That way, the declarative nature of Kubernetes config files would document their best case deployment scenario-"
"I would like to see a default dashboard widget that shows the topology of the clusters defined for the graylog install."
"The infrastructure cost is the main issue. I like the rest. If the infrastructure costs could be lower, it would be fantastic."
"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."
"Graylog can improve the index rotation as it's quite a complex solution."
"More customization is always useful."
"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."
"Almost all the research can be very bad. We still have a problem with importing the log system."
"The product needs to improve its compatibility."
"We still have a problem with importing the log system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"If you want something that works and do not have the money for Splunk or QRadar, take Graylog.​​"
"I use the free version of Graylog."
"Consider Enterprise support if you have atypical needs or setup requirements.​"
"Having paid official support is wise for projects."
"​You get a lot out-of-the-box with the non-enterprise version, so give it a try first."
"We're using the Community edition."
"I am using a community edition. I have not looked at the enterprise offering from Graylog."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Government
8%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
9%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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?
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...
What do you like most about Logstash?
I can collect logs from various data sources, including hardware.
What needs improvement with Logstash?
Almost all the research can be very bad. We still have a problem with importing the log system. The earliest type of Syslog data requires creating ingest pipelines, and that work is very difficult ...
What is your primary use case for Logstash?
We already use the Elasticsearch system. Our system is faster than version seven. Version seven does not have very special functions. We don't have the Elastic Agent. We are now using Beats, and it...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Graylog2
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blue Cross Blue Shield, eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn, SAP, King.com, Twilio, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Graylog vs. Logstash and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
839,319 professionals have used our research since 2012.