Graylog Enterprise vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

Graylog and Splunk are both solutions in the Log Management category. Graylog is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.0, while Splunk is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3. Graylog holds a 4.4% mindshare in Log Management, compared to Splunk’s 6.9% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Graylog users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

Graylog Enterprise

Read 24 Graylog Enterprise reviews

7,856 Views
7,856 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Splunk Enterprise Security

Read 375 Splunk Enterprise Security reviews

26,439 Views
14,277 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Graylog Enterprise

Splunk Enterprise Security

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 14, 2025

Splunk Enterprise Security and Graylog Enterprise compete in the log management and security information and event management (SIEM) markets. Based on data, Splunk might have the upper hand due to its scalability and broad integrations, while Graylog is noted for its open-source advantages and specific use case efficiency.

Features: Splunk Enterprise Security is renowned for its log management, comprehensive search via schema-on-read technology, and strong integration capabilities. It provides operational intelligence and flexibility in data handling, alongside enhanced visibility from diverse data sources. Graylog Enterprise features robust search functionalities and alerting capabilities, emphasizing its strength in managing data from various sources on an open-source platform.

Room for Improvement: Splunk Enterprise Security users seek improved visualizations and a more intuitive GUI, alongside better security administration controls. Enhancements in real-time intelligence and second-factor authentication are also desired. Graylog Enterprise needs a more user-friendly interface for complex environments and better documentation, along with increased integration capabilities for extended flexibility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk Enterprise Security offers a variety of deployment options including public, private, hybrid clouds, and on-premises solutions, supported by a robust community. Users value the professional support and knowledge base, despite noted delays in response times. Graylog Enterprise, mostly deployed on-premises or in hybrid clouds, benefits from the simplicity of open-source availability, though lacks extensive support for resolving complex issues.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk Enterprise Security is perceived as high-cost, justified by its extensive features and performance in large enterprises, with substantial returns in security and operational efficiency. Graylog Enterprise appeals to budget-conscious users due to its open-source model, offering significant licensing cost savings but potentially requiring more development work for full-scale implementation.

To learn more, read our detailed Graylog Enterprise vs. Splunk Enterprise Security Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Graylog Enterprise vs. Splunk Enterprise Security

December 2025

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Helped 881,665 peers since 2012

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

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Splunk Enterprise Security

Ranking in Log Management

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

375

Ranking in other categories

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Graylog Enterprise is 4.4%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 6.9%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Log Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security	6.9%
Graylog Enterprise	4.4%
Other	88.7%

Log Management

Featured Reviews

NicolaeCIornii

Security Officer at JSC "Moldtelecom" S.A.

Log analysis has become clearer and faster but visualization and extensibility still need work

The problem was with the complexity and the cost to add extensions. We found this very expensive to buy another version with additional features. I think that Graylog Enterprise does not have customizable dashboards. I did not see them in Graylog Enterprise because most of the time we used the open source free version, which is limited. I think Graylog Enterprise should improve some things that they have in the paid version and perhaps provide users with a menu that gives examples of parsing logs and draws graphics so that people do not need to improve another system such as Grafana. This would be interesting. When it comes to functionalities, I found the log management in Graylog Enterprise acceptable. It is very simple to use and to collect logs. It has support for different protocols and different ports, and the sidecar is easy to use. However, in visualization, I think it needs to be much better.

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reviewer1469784

Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Helps us detect cyber threats quickly and integrate multiple feeds effectively

Overall, the product is good, but when it comes to some infrastructure issues, we have to dig into more logs. There is no straightforward indication of an issue. Health check kind of dashboards are not available. More AI would help us, and more optimization, since security products run more queries. The AI module could suggest solutions, optimizing queries or workload balancing. If the product itself advises on running queries during peak times, it would be similar to what ChatGPT currently offers. We see quite a few issues on stability. Even last week, we faced something, and identifying bottlenecks is not easy. We need more SMEs, and there is no mechanism to tell us about indexer or search head issues. Self-monitoring dashboards could be beneficial. The technical support still requires more improvement. Often, primary support takes a lot of time and forwards most solutions to the engineering side. The primary support team has very limited knowledge to provide.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Troubleshooting is straightforward with Graylog Enterprise."

"The ability to write custom alerts is key to information security and compliance."

"Open source and user friendly."

"Real-time UDP/GELF logging and full text-based searching."

"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."

"UDP is a fast and lightweight protocol, perfect for sending large volumes of logs with minimal overhead."

"Graylog is valuable because it bridges technical knowledge to non-technical teams, presenting complex backend processes in a simple timeline."

"We're using the Community edition, but I know that it has really good dashboarding and alerts."

More Graylog Enterprise pros

"It has increased our business resilience. It's a top-of-the-line SIEM security product. It's the best tool for our security analysts which helps them do their job better. That then protects our company from adversary actors."

"The search engine and indexes are fast and optimized, and the report generation dashboard is user-friendly."

"It is easy to use in any environment."

"Splunk Enterprise Security performs 80% of our work on its own; we just have to do the remaining 20%, which gives us the freedom to explore and detect threats more effectively."

"I like the ease with which dashboards can be created."

"Visualizations are the best way to understand deviation techniques from the norm."

"UBA, User Behavior Analytics, is a key feature."

"The investigation feature helps the team seamlessly put everything together, providing a consistent view of all relevant artifacts for incidents."

More Splunk Enterprise Security pros

Cons

"Graylog could improve the process of creating rules. We have to create them manually by doing parses and applying them. Other SIEM solutions have basic rules and you can create and get more events of interest."

"We ran into problems with Elasticsearch throwing a circuit-breaking exception due to field data size being too large. It turned out that the heap size directly impacted this size in a high-throughput environment, causing unexplained instability in Graylog. We were able to troubleshoot on the Elasticsearch size, but we should have been able to reference some minimum requirements for Graylog to know that our settings weren't sufficient."

"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 infrastructure cost is the main issue. I like the rest. If the infrastructure costs could be lower, it would be fantastic."

"There should be some user groups and an auto sign-in feature."

"There are many other applications in the market that influenced my rating reduction."

"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."

"Dashboards, stream alerts and parsing could be improved."

More Graylog Enterprise cons

"Deployment is not difficult but the lock sources and configurations can take time."

"Splunk Enterprise Security provides us with the relevant context to help guide our investigations, but it would be interesting to add even more context, for instance, in order to raise the level of risk."

"I'd like a dashboard that allows me to connect elements through drag-and-drop functionality."

"Its pricing model and integration with third-party services can be improved. We had faced an issue with integration. The alerting feature is currently not available with Splunk, but it is definitely available with Datadog and PagerDuty. They should include this feature. A few dashboards in Splunk look quite old and are not that modern. They aren't bad, but improving these dashboards will definitely make Splunk more attractive and usable. I read in a few blog posts that there were a few security incidents related to Splunk agents. So, it can be made more secure."

"Licensing costs can be a barrier for those with limited budgets."

"Splunk's implementation process for managing multiple indexes can be complex, especially when dealing with a large number of components."

"The area of concern revolves around the fact that Splunk is an expensive product."

"I would like to get visibility into the data pipelines on heavy forwarders and indexers to see exactly their source and the cause of saturation when it occurs. This would help us learn even more about our high use applications."

More Splunk Enterprise Security cons

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."

"We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive."

"I am using a community edition. I have not looked at the enterprise offering from Graylog."

"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."

"You get a lot out-of-the-box with the non-enterprise version, so give it a try first."

More Graylog Enterprise pricing and cost advice

"This solution is costly. Splunk is obviously a great product, but you should only choose this product if you need all the features provided. Otherwise, if you don't need all the features to meet your requirements, there are probably other products that will be more cost-effective. It's cost versus the functionality requirement."

"I've heard Splunk is often preferred over other options, but the cost can be prohibitive for smaller organizations."

"Pricing and licensing are quite high compared to other tools or SIEM tools, but the features justify it."

"Splunk Enterprise Security is expensive."

"While Splunk is more expensive than other solutions, we would still choose it because of its capabilities."

"While licensing can be a concern, there are ways to reduce the licensing costs including filtering some events."

"It is a bit costly."

"Our ROI is high."

More Splunk Enterprise Security pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

Vinod Shankar

Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

11%

University

Government

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	9

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	109
Midsize Enterprise	50
Large Enterprise	264

Questions from the Community

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...

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What needs improvement with Graylog?

I do not have any specific examples or numbers, such as time saved or incidents to share. Currently, I have no suggestions for how Graylog Enterprise can be improved, as there are no pain points or...

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What is your primary use case for Graylog?

Graylog Enterprise is the logging and management tool we initially used, but later we stopped using it and switched to Loki, Grafana Loki for the logs. Eventually, we moved back to Graylog Enterpri...

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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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

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Comparisons

Grafana Loki vs Graylog Enterprise

Compared 22% of the time

Wazuh vs Graylog Enterprise

Compared 17% of the time

syslog-ng vs Graylog Enterprise

Compared 8% of the time

Security Onion vs Graylog Enterprise

Compared 6% of the time

Fortinet FortiAnalyzer vs Graylog Enterprise

Compared 3% of the time

More Graylog Enterprise Competitors

IBM Security QRadar vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 10% of the time

Wazuh vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 5% of the time

Sentinel vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 4% of the time

Dynatrace vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 4% of the time

Datadog vs Splunk Enterprise Security

Compared 3% of the time

More Splunk Enterprise Security Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Graylog Enterprise

January 2026

Download Graylog Enterprise product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Enterprise Security

January 2026

Download Splunk Enterprise Security product report

Also Known As

Graylog2

No data available

Overview

Graylog Enterprise, recognized for log collection, real-time search, and enriched data handling, offers an open-source framework that integrates seamlessly with Elasticsearch. Its user-centric interface streamlines data correlation and log aggregation, supporting both backend services and comprehensive monitoring needs.

Graylog Enterprise stands out for its stability and powerful log management capabilities, facilitating efficient log aggregation, real-time updates, and data analytics. Users benefit from its plugin-based alerting, user-friendly interface, and support for microservices, including Docker integration. The ability to search in detail, flexible API integration, and data enrichment features are highly valued. Challenges include collector application issues, desired visualization enhancements, and authentication integration improvements. Users seek advancements in UI customization, backup functions, and easier rule creation.

What are Graylog Enterprise's most important features?

Log Collection: Efficiently aggregates and handles diverse logs.
Real-Time Search: Provides immediate log data access.
Custom Alerts: Plugin-based alerting for tailored notifications.
Dashboard Enhancements: Improved visualization for data insights.
Data Enrichment: Adds value through detailed log analysis.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Audit Trail Support: Essential for compliance in financial sectors.
Security Event Correlation: Enables incident analysis and response.
Faster Issue Identification: Speeds up troubleshooting with detailed visualization.
API Flexibility: Seamless integration across systems and environments.
Comprehensive Monitoring: Centralized log management enhances oversight.

In industrial use, Graylog Enterprise is crucial for audit trailing in financial sectors, facilitating security event identification and error monitoring. Backend teams leverage real-time analytics for swift issue resolution, while developers appreciate the comprehensive log visualization enabled by Docker integration for microservice management.

Graylog

Splunk Enterprise Security delivers powerful log management, rapid searches, and intuitive dashboards, enhancing real-time analytics and security measures. Its advanced machine learning and wide system compatibility streamline threat detection and incident response across diverse IT environments.

Splunk Enterprise Security stands out in security operations with robust features like comprehensive threat intelligence and seamless data integration. Its real-time analytics and customizable queries enable proactive threat analysis and efficient incident response. Integration with multiple third-party feeds allows detailed threat correlation and streamlined data visualization. Users find the intuitive UI and broad compatibility support efficient threat detection while reducing false positives. Despite its strengths, areas such as visualization capabilities and integration processes with cloud environments need enhancement. Users face a high learning curve, and improvements in automation, AI, documentation, and training are desired to maximize its potential.

What Are the Key Features of Splunk Enterprise Security?

Log Management: Efficiently manages and organizes a vast amount of logs for better data handling.
Rapid Data Search: Quickly retrieves relevant data for fast decision-making.
Flexible Dashboards: Customizable dashboards provide clear data visualization.
Comprehensive Threat Intelligence: Offers detailed insights to preemptively defend against threats.
Real-Time Analytics: Analyzes data in real-time to enhance response times.
Integration with Third-Party Feeds: Streamlines information flow from multiple sources.

What Benefits Should Users Investigate in Reviews?

Efficient Incident Response: Enhances the ability to respond promptly to threats.
False Positive Reduction: Minimizes incorrect threat alarms, making monitoring more efficient.
Threat Detection Speed: Accelerates the identification and evaluation of security threats.
Cost-Effectiveness: Potential savings through better licensing options and operational efficiency.
User Adaptability: Enhancements in documentation and training resources aid in overcoming the learning curve.

In specific industries like finance and healthcare, Splunk Enterprise Security is instrumental for log aggregation, SIEM functionalities, and compliance monitoring. Companies leverage its capabilities for proactive threat analysis and response, ensuring comprehensive security monitoring and integration with various tools for heightened operational intelligence.

Splunk

Sample Customers

Blue Cross Blue Shield, eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn, SAP, King.com, Twilio, Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.

Buyer's Guide

Graylog Enterprise vs. Splunk Enterprise Security

December 2025

Free Report: Graylog Enterprise vs. Splunk Enterprise Security

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