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

Grafana Loki vs IBM Security QRadar comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 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

Grafana Loki
Ranking in Log Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Log Management
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
211
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (4th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (18th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (8th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Grafana Loki is 7.9%, up from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 3.8%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Grafana Loki7.9%
IBM Security QRadar3.8%
Other88.3%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Volodymyr Bondarchuk - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrations enhance monitoring but problem-solving proves challenging
Different types of integrations with various sources are the most helpful and useful features of Grafana Loki that I found for myself. As part of Kubernetes technology, I noticed benefits from using this product such as availability, configuration balancing, high availability solutions for high performance, and failover clustering. It provides a clear picture about the state of the system and gives needed information for taking action and quickly fixing problems.
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

"There are new features like that pilot code and things like that for profiling."
"The product's most valuable features are ease of installation, management, and reporting. It has an efficient ability to set thresholds for alerts, as well."
"Different types of integrations with various sources are the most helpful and useful features of Grafana Loki that I found for myself."
"The best feature of Grafana Loki is that it integrates well with our other tool."
"The most valuable features of the solution stem from the fact that it is an open-source tool that is stable and flexible."
"The most valuable feature of Grafana Loki is the dashboards which are really simple to create."
"Grafana Loki is easy to monitor and detect errors."
"We are using Grafana Loki as a database for real-time metrics."
"I have used IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics in a Cloud Pak on Amazon, and there it runs on top of it and is easy to assess. Additionally, I have installed processes and characters."
"The ability to add extensions is the most valuable feature. For example, extensions that provide valuable test ports."
"I think this is a good product for enterprises because of the performance and out-of-the-box rules and use cases. If they want to reach the maturity level early, they can use these out-of-the-box rules and use cases. That will help them a lot."
"Improves visibility and has a great new dashboard."
"Search capabilities are sufficient for most tasks."
"I have found IBM QRadar to be stable."
"I am generally satisfied with the product."
"The feature that I find the most useful is that IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics is free of charge. It's a fully free product that can be installed on top of IBM QRadar SIEM."
 

Cons

"The solution's scalability depends on the team managing the Grafana instance."
"I do not see any areas for improvement at the moment."
"I would rate Grafana Loki a seven out of ten because it is open source, and sometimes there can be problems that are difficult to fix without official support."
"Visualization-wise, Grafana Loki's dashboard looks a little outdated compared to other open-source visualization tools like Chronograf."
"It would be beneficial if Loki could directly access Windows Server logs or events directly from the servers."
"The solution has shortcomings regarding security monitoring-oriented features that need improvement."
"The Docker container partition feature needs improvement as they do not reuse the space and goes into a pending state."
"There is a need for some change in the alerting types of the product. In short, a few changes in the alert area are needed due to minor shortcomings."
"The solution could improve by having more out-of-the-box use cases."
"The tool is very complicated. One place for improvement would be to have a more user-friendly interface. Having better support in Spanish would be cool."
"QRadar needs a lot of fine tuning"
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the script which we have to create for custom actions. QRadar needs to improve that feature. Additionally, QRadar has to provide the playbooks designing features."
"There could be improvements made to the UI, the user interface. Though the newer version, 7.3.2, might already have this improvement in place."
"IMB should reduce the pricing, or reduce some of the features for a more economical solution for the customer."
"QRadar UBA only keeps the data for a short while (it's refreshed every five minutes) and would be improved if this were extended to a week or month."
"They need to improve their threat intelligence feed and they need to improve their user behavior analytics modules."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My company doesn't need to pay for the licensing cost of the solution."
"The cost is less than other paid services like CloudWatch."
"We use a free version."
"Grafana Loki is a free, open-source solution."
"The solution is open source."
"I use the open-source version of the product."
"The pricing structure varies based on the number of users; there might be specific taxes to pay for it."
"You can use the free version of Grafana Loki on-premises."
"The pricing is good."
"Pricing (based on EPS) will be more accurate."
"QRadar's price is reasonable compared to LogRhythm."
"In terms of additional costs, it depends on the subscription that you choose. There are plenty of options to choose from."
"Customers have to purchase a license based on the number of users, devices, and applications they want to protect. It allows you to take a license on a subscription basis for three years or five years."
"QRadar is quite expensive. It wouldn't be worth it for a small business..."
"As for licensing costs, I haven't seen the exact figures, but it is considered somewhat costly. On a scale from one to ten, where one is very expensive and ten is very cheap, I would rate it a six—it’s costly but worth the money."
"Pricing and licensing are competitive. Their new licensing options allow logs to bypass the correlation engine for a flat rate, which is also appealing for log data that is compliance-driven for a small amount of money."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Log Management solutions are best for your needs.
869,883 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
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business89
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise102
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Grafana Loki?
We are using Grafana Loki as a database for real-time metrics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana Loki?
Since it is an open source tool, there are no charges or fees.
What needs improvement with Grafana Loki?
I have no ideas at this moment about what could be improved in Grafana Loki.
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

No data available
IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Find out what your peers are saying about Grafana Loki vs. IBM Security QRadar and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,883 professionals have used our research since 2012.