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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
6.9
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Logstash
Ranking in Log Management
33rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Graylog is 6.6%, up from 5.7% 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's search functionality, alerting functionality, user management, and dashboards are useful."
"Message forwarding through the in-built module."
"It has data adapters and lookup tables that utilize HTTP calls to APIs."
"Storing logs in Elasticsearch means log retrieval is extremely fast, and full text search is available by default."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Everything aligns well with improving our organization."
"I can collect logs from various data sources, including hardware."
"Logstash has numerous plugins for inputs and outputs, allowing it to work well in environments that do not contain other Elastic components."
"We have three or four Logstash servers for high availability."
 

Cons

"More complex visualizations and the ability to execute custom Elasticsearch queries would be great."
"I would like to see a date and time in the Graylog Grok patterns so that I can save time when searching for a log. I like how the streams and the search query work, but adding a date and time will allow me to pull out a log in a milli-second."
"There should be some user groups and an auto sign-in feature.​"
"I would like to see some kind of visualization included in Graylog."
"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 hope to see improvements in Graylog for more interactivity, user-friendliness, and creating alerts. The initial setup is complex."
"Graylog needs to improve their authentication. Also, the fact that Graylog displays logs from the top down is just ridiculous."
"The biggest problem is the collector application, as we wanted to avoid using Graylog Collector Sidecar due to its architecture."
"The product needs to improve its compatibility."
"We still have a problem with importing the log system."
"Elastic does not provide proper support for Logstash worldwide, and I rate their technical support as one out of ten."
"Almost all the research can be very bad. We still have a problem with importing the log system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"Consider Enterprise support if you have atypical needs or setup requirements.​"
"​You get a lot out-of-the-box with the non-enterprise version, so give it a try first."
"I use the free version of Graylog."
"I am using a community edition. I have not looked at the enterprise offering from Graylog."
"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."
"It's an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Educational Organization
6%
 

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?
Logstash lacks a graphical user interface, necessitating a strong programming background to handle it effectively. It is challenging for business users who need a skilled team for its operation. Ch...
What is your primary use case for Logstash?
I am considered an expert in Elastic Observability ( /products/elastic-observability-reviews ) in the Middle East. During my experience, I have worked heavily on Logstash ( /products/logstash-38586...
 

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: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.