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Cribl vs Elastic Stack comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 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

Cribl
Ranking in Log Management
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (14th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (11th), Observability Pipeline Software (1st)
Elastic Stack
Ranking in Log Management
10th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Cribl is 1.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Stack is 5.2%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Phanindra Ponnada - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides good documentation and worth the investment
As of now, there are some environments where some organizations are still on legacy infrastructure, so they are still in virtual environments and are using old versions of devices. Some companies bought Splunk, while others bought Cribl for a very low-priced license. There are some protocols to connect from Cribl to Splunk. I understand Cribl has come into the market very recently, but the tool might have had a picture in its mind where organizations might also have some legacy infrastructure. In the future, with our protocols or our level of architecture, Cribl should not come and say that it is not compatible with them. If Cribl is the reason because I have to change my environment, then I will have to end up investing more. There are some organizations where the end machines have forwarders that forward the data to Cribl, and from it, the data is forwarded to Splunk. This is how general architecture works. There are two methods of connection between Cribl and Splunk. One is the S2S protocol, which collects logs from Cribl or sends data between Cribl and Splunk. There is another method called HTTP Event Collector (HEC) and HTTPS protocol. With Cribl, connecting to Splunk mostly uses the S2S protocol. The tool supports all the latest devices and platform devices, like all the latest operating systems. There are some organizations where there is legacy infrastructure or if they are still on the old platforms. Companies using old platforms have to consider HTTP Event Collector (HEC), and then they have to change their infrastructure setup in order to fulfill that setup. In order to have Google and Splunk set up in my organization, if I have to change my existing infrastructure connectivity or setup, that might incur more cost or more investment for me to have Cribl and Splunk. Cribl should provide compatibility, or else the tool's developers should speak to the people of such organizations and understand the challenges. Cribl could have developed some version that can give backward compatibility.
Balamurali P - PeerSpot reviewer
Advanced query capabilities enhance monitoring effectiveness
Elastic Stack should be more simplified with ready-to-use widgets. Also, incorporating AI capabilities is essential as monitoring and observability tools are now adding AI features. Ideally, it should evolve into a full-stack observability tool, similar to AppDynamics or DynaTrace, which offers a solution that includes ISP provider, API monitoring, and infrastructure monitoring.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Features such as Cribl Stream, Cribl LogStream, and Cribl Edge have been the most beneficial. The Cribl LogStream, in particular, is valuable for routing data, creating firewalls on pipelines, and putting security measures in place to ensure data reaches its destination without issues."
"The product's most valuable features include the internal management of events, coding perspective, data processing, and serialization."
"When it comes to the product's installation phase, it is not tough for people who have good knowledge...The tool is worth the investment."
"The platform's most valuable feature is the ability to transform data in real-time within the pipeline without sending it to a destination."
"The capability to reduce logs in a user-friendly manner is a standout feature. Cribl allows us to view logs live as they are being processed, giving us quick feedback on the changes made."
"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"
"The support team was very helpful and managed to get everything production-ready."
"Cribl offers easy plugin configurations and source collection settings, allowing us to collect logs from any source."
"I have experienced a return on investment from the use of the solution."
"The tool's most powerful aspect is its search engine capability. It's a highly effective and powerful solution for searching. We use it in professional and student projects at universities, and it delivers promising results."
"The tool is huge, and it performs brilliantly. I tested it for malware, and within two weeks of launching, the product alerted me about a network intrusion. This was a tough test for it, but it performed admirably. The alerting system is excellent, and searching through logs is incredibly efficient. What's impressive is that all three products or options are integrated into one solution. This means I don't need separate logging, monitoring, or antivirus solutions."
"It supports various integrations. It's open source and has excellent community support."
"Elastic Stack has made a positive impact as we can now see our logs."
"I think the ecosystem is well supported, and for logs, it was faster compared to our previous previous log management."
"The biggest strength of Elastic Stack is its brilliant archiving capabilities."
"The scripting model in Elastic Stack allows me to query logs and then put the data into Grafana."
 

Cons

"Cribl could improve by offering easier integrations with enterprise products, similar to what Splunk provides."
"There is no alerting mechanism for the leader/worker nodes status."
"There have been several administrative issues. Another point is that the browsing functions aren't very intuitive."
"Cribl should consider adding more features that are applicable to smaller firms, allowing broader access to their data migration through Cribl."
"Cribl could have developed some version that can give backward compatibility."
"There is room for improvement in the documentation and knowledge base, particularly regarding configurations like sources where logs are being ingested"
"Cribl doesn't have as many packs available"
"The sys logging could be enhanced to make it easier to identify errors, especially when dealing with multiple functions."
"The tool's pricing can be improved."
"When people try to move the data from another source to Elastic Stack for visualization, they face challenges when connecting to Elastic Stack from such different sources."
"The stability of the solution is rated as three or four out of ten as we frequently encounter issues."
"Improving integration capabilities, especially with authentication systems, firewalls, and security controls, is a crucial area for improvement in Elastic Stack. Additionally, enhancing functionality to handle large Yara queries more efficiently would be beneficial, as many EDR solutions can run such queries faster than Elastic Stack's current limitations."
"The solution is expensive, particularly the training and certification. If customers want to increase their use of Elastic Stack, they should consider reducing the cost of certification and training."
"There could be better documentation."
"Improvements are needed in the solution in areas like SOAR and TIP, where there are certain shortcomings."
"Elastic Stack's search capabilities can be challenging, especially when searching for precise data from past years, such as two or ten years ago. Its indexing performance for exact data retrieval may decrease as the data volume grows. Therefore, I believe there is room for improvement in the product's search functionality. It needs to improve its pricing as well."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It depends on the specifics, but generally, Elastic is economical for certain use cases."
"I used the open-source version of Elastic Stack, because of which I did not have to pay anything."
"Ultimately, the pricing depends upon the capacity planning that the enterprise architect does."
"The product is expensive."
"If I compare Elastic Stack to the other products in the market, I would say that the tool is available at a competitive price."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"We are using the open-source community version of the product."
"I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
10%
Healthcare Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cribl?
I am not aware of the pricing details, however, I know they use a credit format for billing.
What needs improvement with Cribl?
At the moment, I don't have specific feedback on what can be improved as I do not work with Cribl daily. Perhaps more flexibility in terms of metrics would be helpful.
What is your primary use case for Cribl?
I am using Cribl to have everything centralized in one tool in terms of data collection. We were working with different Splunk customers, and Cribl helps collect data and then send it to an S3 buck...
What do you like most about Elastic Stack?
The tool is huge, and it performs brilliantly. I tested it for malware, and within two weeks of launching, the product alerted me about a network intrusion. This was a tough test for it, but it per...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Stack?
I may not be able to answer as this is customer-paid Elastic Stack, and I didn't handle the payment.
What needs improvement with Elastic Stack?
Elastic Stack should be more simplified with ready-to-use widgets. Also, incorporating AI capabilities is essential as monitoring and observability tools are now adding AI features. Ideally, it sho...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Cribl vs. Elastic Stack and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.