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Cribl 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
3.0
Cribl is cost-effective compared to Splunk, but not all users see clear returns in time and cost savings.
Sentiment score
7.5
IBM Security QRadar is cost-effective, enhancing security while reducing manpower, with positive feedback on financial returns.
With SOAR, the workflow takes one minute or less to complete the analysis.
Investing this amount was very much worth it for my organization.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.0
Cribl's customer support is effective and prompt, with high satisfaction despite some noted areas needing improved understanding of customer needs.
Sentiment score
6.1
IBM Security QRadar support is praised for expertise but criticized for slow response times and inconsistent service quality.
The community, including the engineering and sales teams, is available on Slack and is very supportive.
This process can result in outages lasting three to four hours.
They assist with advanced issues, such as hardware or other problems, that are not part of standard operations.
The problem escalates through level one to level three, and then the process starts over with Novo again.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.3
Cribl is highly scalable, enabling efficient workload distribution and quick deployment, appealing to businesses of all sizes.
Sentiment score
7.4
IBM Security QRadar is highly regarded for its scalability, with easy vertical and horizontal expansion and seamless cloud deployment.
I don't need to talk to a Cribl engineer to connect a new log source.
It is pretty scalable, just in terms of cost.
For EPS license, if you increase or exceed the EPS license, you cannot receive events.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
5.6
Cribl is stable and reliable, with quick bug resolution and improvements over time despite occasional connectivity issues.
Sentiment score
7.6
IBM Security QRadar is reliable but stability depends on correct deployment, capacity, and system resources, with minor update issues.
If the pipeline is down and we receive an alert that it's not sending information to the log collection platform for more than one or two hours, if we receive an alert, it would be great.
I think QRadar is stable and currently satisfies my needs.
The product has been stable so far.
 

Room For Improvement

Cribl faces compatibility issues, UI limitations, and documentation inconsistencies, requiring enhancements in integration, customization, and data handling.
IBM Security QRadar needs UI improvement, better integration, enhanced detection, streamlined operations, and customization for cost-effective functionality.
Perhaps more flexibility in terms of metrics would be helpful.
If AI-related support can suggest rules and integrate with existing security devices like MD, IPS, this SIM can create more relevant rules.
IBM Security QRadar does not support Canvas, so we had to create custom scripts and workarounds to pull logs from Canvas.
This would help identify critical or high-priority alarms in QRadar.
 

Setup Cost

Cribl offers competitive pricing valued for cost-effectiveness and scalability, though its complex credit system can cause confusion.
IBM Security QRadar is costly but efficient, offering flexible pricing, EPS discounts, and potential cost savings with negotiation.
Splunk is more expensive than IBM Security QRadar.
 

Valuable Features

Cribl provides efficient, real-time data transformation and routing, supporting scalability, cost reduction, and rapid integration for enhanced operational efficiency.
IBM Security QRadar excels in log management, scalability, compliance, and integration, enhancing comprehensive security management with ease.
The community on Slack is excellent for solving questions and getting ideas.
Recently, I faced an incident, a cyber incident, and it was detected in real time.
We have FortiSOAR and IBM Resilient for IBM Security QRadar orchestration.
IBM is seeking information about IBM QRadar because a part of QRadar, especially in the cloud, has been sold to Palo Alto.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cribl
Ranking in Log Management
8th
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (14th), Observability Pipeline Software (1st)
IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Log Management
5th
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
209
Ranking in other categories
User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (18th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (9th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Cribl is 1.0%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 7.4%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Joe Cicero - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates seamless log integration and reduces data costs with efficient compression
My favorite feature is Cribl Stream. That's probably the only Cribl product I have a lot of experience with, and Cribl Stream makes it very easy to identify where all the customer's log sources are and to quickly connect them to a destination source such as Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Azure Data Storage. Cribl Stream does two things: not only does it make it easy to connect one log source or one dataset to multiple storage locations, but it also has compression features, which greatly reduce the storage cost for that data. It strips out and compresses data so that only the absolute information remains and not any duplicates. Dual destination and compression are the two top features.
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.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions are best for your needs.
865,384 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
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cribl?
Something that Cribl could do better is processing time. There is not enough customization to improve performance. An example would be with AWS Lambda functions, the way we were doing it before. Th...
What is your primary use case for Cribl?
Our use cases that we are exploring Cribl for right now are for data parsing and data manipulation.
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.
 

Comparisons

 

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 Cribl vs. IBM Security QRadar and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.