Elastic Observability vs Prometheus comparison

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12,565 views|10,451 comparisons
90% willing to recommend
Prometheus Logo
6,474 views|5,765 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jun 28, 2023

We performed a comparison between Elastic Observability and Prometheus based on real PeerSpot user reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: Elastic Observability's complexity varies depending on the environment, while Prometheus has a simple basic setup but customization takes more time.
  • Features: Elastic Observability offers options for machine learning and custom development, while Prometheus has a fast data storage system and valuable scraping mechanism. Both tools have flexible integration capabilities and reliable solutions, but differ in their unique features.
  • Pricing: Elastic Observability's setup cost can range from $5,000 to $12,500 per node annually and varies based on usage and licensing. Additional paid features are also available. Prometheus, on the other hand, is free and open source, making it an attractive and affordable option.
  • Service and Support: Elastic Observability has excellent customer support with a dedicated resource, and a helpful online community. In contrast, Prometheus has no technical support and relies solely on documentation and community support.
  • ROI: Elastic Observability provides cost-effective solutions that offer complete visibility and the ability to quickly identify root causes. On the other hand, Prometheus is a free tool that offers a valuable ROI.

Comparison Results: Elastic Observability offers comprehensive features, machine learning capabilities, and can handle custom development. In contrast, Prometheus lacks user-friendly query language, visualization tools, and customer support, even though it is flexible and has integration capabilities. Elastic Observability is cost-effective and has helped reduce incidents and overheads, while Prometheus is free but lacks some essential features. Ultimately, Elastic Observability is a more complete and economical option for application performance monitoring.

To learn more, read our detailed Elastic Observability vs. Prometheus Report (Updated: May 2024).
771,157 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The tool's most valuable feature is centralized logging. Elastic Common Search helps us to search for the logs across the organization.""The ability to ensure that the data is searchable and maintainable is highly valuable for our purposes.""It's easy to deploy, and it's very flexible.""Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning over a month from multiple data sources can be completed within seconds.""The solution allows us to dig deep into data.""The solution is open-source and helps with back-end logging. It is also easy to handle.""We use AppDynamics and Elastic. The reason why we're using Elastic APM is because of the license count. It's very favorable compared to AppDynamics. It's inexpensive; it's economical.""The solution has been stable in our usage."

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"The product has an easy-to-understand interface.""The most valuable features of Prometheus for metrics collection and monitoring are its stability, robustness, and rich set of features.""I like its lightweight configuration functions.""It is a stable solution...Based on the feedback I have received from my colleagues in our company's IT department, the setup phase of the solution is relatively easy.""The most valuable features of the solution are metrics scraping capabilities and the open source community and support.""The best thing about Prometheus is its integration.""The feature I found most valuable is the number of integrations. It is the industry standard for metrics.""The sky is the limit because the solution is a flexible open box that can be used vastly to do anything you need to monitor applications."

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Cons
"The interface could be improved.""Elastic Observability is reactive rather than proactive. It should act as an ITSM tool and be able to create tickets and alerts on Jira.""In the future, Elastic APM needs a portfolio iTool. They can provide an easy way to develop the custom UI for Kibana.""The solution needs to use more AI. Once the product onboards AI, users would more effectively be able to track endpoints for specific messages.""The cost must be made more transparent.""More web features could be added to the product.""Elastic APM's visualization is not that great compared to other tools. It's number of metrics is very low.""If we had some pre-defined templates for observability that we could start using right away after deploying it – instead of having to build or to change some of the dashboards – that would be helpful."

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"The simplicity of the query language could be improved. The current query language is not easy to work with.""Its documentation could be clearer to understand.""The query language in Prometheus is an area of concern where improvements are required.""Prometheus requires improvement on the query side.""There is a need for a more comprehensive overview of exporters, especially when dealing with many of them.""The solution has shortcomings regarding security monitoring-oriented features to support custom use cases, like out-of-the-box test scenarios and threat-related use cases of its users.""Lacks the ability to clusterize.""Setting up the rules in Prometheus can be confusing, making it an area where improvements are required."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "So far, there are just the standard licensing fees. Several of the components are embedded in the license or are even open source. They're even free depending on what you use, which makes it even more appealing to someone that is discussing pricing of the solution."
  • "There are two types: cloud and SaaS. They charge based on data ingestion, ingest rate, hard retention, and warm retention. I believe it costs around $25,000 annually to ingest 30GB of data daily. That is the SaaS version. There is also a self-managed license where the customer manages their own infrastructure on-prem. In such cases, there are three license tiers that respectively cost $5,000 annually per node, $7,000 per node, and $12,500 per node."
  • "Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."
  • "The price of Elastic Observability is expensive."
  • "Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."
  • "One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."
  • "Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."
  • "We will buy a premium license after POC."
  • More Elastic Observability Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The price of Prometheus is good, it is affordable because it is open source and there is no cost to it. You put it on your own server and the costs incurred completely depend on how you set it up."
  • "This is an open-source solution."
  • "The solution is not expensive."
  • "The solution is open source."
  • "The solution is free of cost."
  • "We use the solution's open-source version."
  • "The tool is open-sourced."
  • "We have the open-source version, so we don't pay for it."
  • More Prometheus Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning… more »
    Top Answer:I rate the pricing a five out of ten. The product is not that cheap.
    Top Answer:The tool's scalability involves a more complex implementation process. It requires careful calculations to determine the number of nodes needed, the specifications of each node, and the configuration… more »
    Top Answer:The most valuable feature of Prometheus is its ability to collect metrics.
    Top Answer:For a project I am currently working on in my company, I use Grafana, but for the data source part, I use Prometheus. I use Prometheus in a Kubernetes cluster. I use Prometheus for the processes… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    12,565
    Comparisons
    10,451
    Reviews
    16
    Average Words per Review
    445
    Rating
    7.9
    Views
    6,474
    Comparisons
    5,765
    Reviews
    32
    Average Words per Review
    387
    Rating
    8.3
    Comparisons
    Learn More
    Overview
    To effectively monitor and gain insights across your distributed systems, you need to have all your observability data in one stack. Break down silos by bringing together application, infrastructure, and user data into a unified solution for end-to-end observability and alerting.
    Rely on the most widely deployed observability platform available, built on the proven Elastic Stack (also known as the ELK Stack) to converge silos, delivering unified visibility and actionable insights.

    Prometheus is a powerful open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit designed for cloud-native environments. 

    It collects metrics from various sources, including applications, services, and infrastructure components, providing real-time insights into system performance. 

    With its flexible data model and query language, Prometheus enables users to analyze and visualize metrics, facilitating troubleshooting and capacity planning. Its robust alerting system allows for proactive monitoring, notifying users of any anomalies or issues. 

    Prometheus also offers seamless integration with popular tools and frameworks, making it a versatile solution for monitoring and observability.

    Sample Customers
    PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
    Information Not Available
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company27%
    Manufacturing Company18%
    Healthcare Company9%
    Insurance Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Healthcare Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm20%
    Retailer13%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Educational Organization7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm27%
    Computer Software Company16%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Government6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise55%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise67%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business41%
    Midsize Enterprise28%
    Large Enterprise31%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise68%
    Buyer's Guide
    Elastic Observability vs. Prometheus
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Observability vs. Prometheus and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    771,157 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Elastic Observability is ranked 7th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 22 reviews while Prometheus is ranked 9th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 32 reviews. Elastic Observability is rated 7.8, while Prometheus is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Elastic Observability writes "The user interface framework lets us do custom development when needed. ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Prometheus writes "A very flexible open box that can be used vastly to do anything you need". Elastic Observability is most compared with Dynatrace, New Relic, AppDynamics, Azure Monitor and Sentry, whereas Prometheus is most compared with Azure Monitor, New Relic, Dynatrace, Sentry and AWS X-Ray. See our Elastic Observability vs. Prometheus report.

    See our list of best Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability vendors.

    We monitor all Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.