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CA App Synthetic Monitor vs Cribl comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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

CA App Synthetic Monitor
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
68th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cribl
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (3rd), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (7th), Observability Pipeline Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of CA App Synthetic Monitor is 0.5%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cribl is 1.2%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cribl1.2%
CA App Synthetic Monitor0.5%
Other98.3%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2286675 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
A reliable solution for SSL offloading and to encrypt outside traffic
If you are responsible for monitoring the logs in F5, it isn't very easy. The format is complicated compared to different vendors. For example, Fortinet and Cisco have feasible formats for sending and fetching logs. Suppose I'm monitoring the logs and everything, and when I am retrieving logs from F5, I want to know whether it is regular traffic or any abnormality is happening. The logs itself is not user-friendly. It may not give you a clear way of what's happening. You have to go through different websites and work on it. You have to waste so much time on it.
Aman Verma - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Has helped reduce daily log volume significantly and streamline data routing across multiple destinations
Regarding complexity, as I mentioned before, Cribl is very simple to use. When I started 2.5 years ago, it was very easy to learn. I learned Cribl within a week, and even though I was a fresher at the time, it was easy to understand and not complex enough that someone would need to spend money on labs. It's not that complex to learn. Regarding cost efficiency, it's very good because nowadays the SIEM tools we use are too expensive on license, and SIEM tools base their license on how many logs get ingested. The unwanted logs, particularly firewall logs, represent a significant portion of unnecessary ingestion. Cribl saves our license by filtering out half of the firewall logs that are unwanted. Our main purpose for using Cribl is to save our license and save money. Currently, everyone is moving toward AI agents. We currently use regex, and AI agents could help us create those regex patterns to drop events or add raw data to events. Currently, we sit down, review the logs, and create regex patterns manually, which can be time-consuming. An AI agent could reduce this time. I read some articles indicating that Cribl Cloud has started using AI and considering MCPs and model context, but I'm not certain how far along they are. If Cribl asked me what they could improve, that would be my suggestion. The support is very good, and I had a few issues with Cribl where I raised support cases and received good responses, which is better than the quick response I didn't get from other SIEM tools and vendor tools I use. Compared to other SIEM tools, Cribl is cheaper than Splunk and DataDogs. However, it's still a bit expensive from my point of view, though I won't call it expensive. Overall, I think 99% of companies use Cribl before their SIEM tools, and compared to SIEM tools, Cribl is cheaper. Companies can use any SIEM tool such as Google, Splunk, or Cisco, and Cribl is cheaper than those SIEM tools. They might have a slight chance to reduce costs further, but I'm not the correct person to evaluate that since I'm more focused on the operational side. Regarding training, it was quite easy to grasp. It took me almost a week to understand the basic functionalities and what Cribl does. Getting more expertise took additional time, but basic functionalities and understanding what Cribl does took around four to five days. One point I want to mention is that Cribl could improve their labs or training materials in their Cribl Cloud or whatever portal they have.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"From our experience, it really helps managers in measuring application SLAs and viewing historical performance data."
"Each had strengths in one area or another, but CA covered the majority of our needs end-to-end."
"Enhancing those events to optimize, to add new fields or to remove the extra fields that are of no use helps us in log reduction by dumping the raw logs and only ingesting the interested fields, which helps us in 50 to 60% volume reduction."
"Our experience with Cribl has been very smooth; everything runs seamlessly, there are no delays or sluggishness, which I really appreciate."
"Cribl is intuitive, and a user can easily see how the payload or log looks before conversion and how it looks after conversion, and what has been transferred to the destination."
"I think it is cost-efficient because overall, after using Cribl, it helps users save cost and time."
"Cribl Cloud has no issues with handling large data ingestion volumes."
"I'd rate the solution ten out of ten."
"Cribl offers other valuable features. For instance, you can replay data from an edge device, store your daily data in a stream, and replay specific event data into Splunk if a security incident occurs"
"Mostly because of the positive reasons, I would say it is easy to use, it is sustainable, the support is nice, the coding is quite easy to understand, there are a lot of functionalities there, you can do a lot of things, and the data migration is very easy."
 

Cons

"Pricing makes little sense. We had examples where it would be cheaper to have two basic accounts than one intermediate."
"The RBMS component is limited as you can only record using Internet Explorer."
"Currently, Cribl Search is dedicated to one bucket at a time in the case of S3 buckets. The ability to search for multiple buckets would be awesome."
"We encountered some issues with the syslog data stream, particularly with handling large databases and extensive data logs."
"Improvement could be made in the logging area, as sometimes we encounter issues in a pipeline or something, and it's not immediately obvious when you look at the logs that the pipeline is failing."
"I do not think that if the pricing is on the higher side, it could be suitable for all types of users, such as small or medium ones."
"When I started using Cribl interface for managing log processing tasks, it was difficult for me to navigate because it took me a month or two to gain fluency with the software since I did not have hands-on experience initially, and I found that the documentation is not thorough enough to help users navigate how to use Cribl."
"In Cribl Search, the language and the flexibility in querying the data can be improved because it is not as good as other solutions."
"Improvement could be made in the logging area, as sometimes we encounter issues in a pipeline or something, and it's not immediately obvious when you look at the logs that the pipeline is failing."
"On the other hand, I would like to see improvements in pack management, which is currently a mess with no way to manage packs differently across worker groups."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I would not say it is a cheaply priced tool as it has been doing wonders in the market. The tool has been budget-friendly for organizations."
"The product pricing is reasonable compared to other solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business43
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise34
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cribl?
I'd highly recommend other organizations to use Cribl Search because it did help us a lot with data processing and everything.
What needs improvement with Cribl?
The user interface is acceptable, but I think a person who is just starting to use it will need to go through documentation because there is a steep learning curve to become familiar with Cribl Str...
What is your primary use case for Cribl?
I am using Cribl Stream for data routing and data processing as part of my company's IT team. We primarily use it for monitoring and collecting data.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

CA ASM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lexmark
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about CA App Synthetic Monitor vs. Cribl and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.