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Cribl vs Prometheus Group comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 8, 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
3.5
Cribl is cost-effective compared to Splunk, but not all users see clear returns in time and cost savings.
Sentiment score
8.5
Prometheus Group is free and cost-effective, offering substantial savings and efficient monitoring compared to AWS native services.
Using open-source Prometheus saves me money compared to AWS native services.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.3
Cribl's customer support is effective and prompt, with high satisfaction despite some noted areas needing improved understanding of customer needs.
Sentiment score
4.0
Prometheus Group support relies on comprehensive documentation and active community forums, praised for their helpfulness and accessibility.
They had extensive expertise with the product and were able to facilitate everything we needed.
The community, including the engineering and sales teams, is available on Slack and is very supportive.
Prometheus does not offer traditional technical support.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.5
Cribl is highly scalable, enabling efficient workload distribution and quick deployment, appealing to businesses of all sizes.
Sentiment score
6.9
Prometheus Group efficiently scales from small to large enterprises, supporting extensive user bases with minimal maintenance required.
I don't need to talk to a Cribl engineer to connect a new log source.
Cribl is quite scalable, as we could add worker nodes as our data grows.
It is pretty scalable, just in terms of cost.
Prometheus is scalable, with a rating of ten out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
5.8
Cribl is stable and reliable, with quick bug resolution and improvements over time despite occasional connectivity issues.
Sentiment score
8.9
Prometheus Group is praised for stability and frequent updates, despite occasional performance issues tied to infrastructure.
In deploying it into enterprise or production environments, it's quite reliable.
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.
Deploying it on multiple instances or using Kubernetes for automatic management has enhanced its stability.
 

Room For Improvement

Cribl faces compatibility issues, UI limitations, and documentation inconsistencies, requiring enhancements in integration, customization, and data handling.
Prometheus Group's setup and query language are challenging; improvements needed in UI, documentation, integrations, security, error handling, and pricing.
In terms of large datasets—whether they originated from network inputs, virtual machines, or cloud instances—ingesting the data into the destination was relatively easy.
Perhaps more flexibility in terms of metrics would be helpful.
 

Setup Cost

Cribl offers competitive pricing valued for cost-effectiveness and scalability, though its complex credit system can cause confusion.
Prometheus Group is cost-effective due to its open-source nature, preferred over more expensive solutions like New Relic or Datadog.
I don't think any other solution offers this much value at this price point.
Prometheus is cost-effective for me as it is free.
 

Valuable Features

Cribl provides efficient, real-time data transformation and routing, supporting scalability, cost reduction, and rapid integration for enhanced operational efficiency.
Prometheus Group offers robust API integrations, customizable dashboards, scalability, and adaptability, ensuring efficient monitoring across diverse environments.
The data reduction and preprocessing capabilities make Cribl really unique.
The community on Slack is excellent for solving questions and getting ideas.
It allows me to save money by avoiding costs associated with AWS native services like CloudWatch or Amazon Prometheus.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cribl
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
13th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (7th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (10th), Observability Pipeline Software (1st)
Prometheus Group
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Cribl is 1.0%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prometheus Group is 2.5%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Prometheus Group2.5%
Cribl1.0%
Other96.5%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Abdullah Zubair - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables seamless SIEM/Data Migration and Log Filtration across the enterprise estate
They've already done many good things with the product, but perhaps they could implement a temporary SIEM solution where we could store logs and display them as a SIEM, though I think that's not the space that Cribl is actually looking into. Based on my experience, this product is brilliant and there isn't much or anything important lacking in the product. We encountered some occasional issues with the syslog data stream, particularly when handling large data volume, and getting it to parse and field extracted correctly, but no major alarms that would halt the days operation. There were few source vendor specific challenges, but overall, I didn't notice anything major beyond that. Most of the process went smoothly. However, we did need to carry some troubleshooting to resolve the issues we faced while connecting with other platforms and few data stream miss-behaving, which wasn't a straightforward task for us. In terms of large datasets—whether they originated from network inputs, virtual machines, or cloud instances—ingesting the data into the destination was relatively easy. In summary, aside from the usual difficulties or issues that someone could face with any project, everything else went well.
MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Free to use and provides valuable monitoring capabilities
Prometheus is a scalable and flexible tool that I can deploy on any cloud platform. It is free to use and provides valuable monitoring capabilities. It allows me to save money by avoiding costs associated with AWS native services like CloudWatch or Amazon Prometheus. The ability to deploy on any cloud platform or environment, including Kubernetes, is a major advantage.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cribl?
I think the pricing for Cribl is reasonable. For large usage, but I heard the calculation of those credits is a bit complicated.
What needs improvement with Cribl?
So since we’re handling a ton of data, I think we could really benefit from a more integrated or connected way to manage it all. Like, if there is a way to better track data lineage, metadata, thos...
What is your primary use case for Cribl?
We use Cribl Stream to collect logs from multiple sources, transform and enrich them, filter out unnecessary data before sending them to SIEM. We also use Cribl to route logging to data lake.
What do you like most about Prometheus?
The most valuable feature of Prometheus is its ability to collect metrics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Prometheus?
Prometheus is cost-effective for me as it is free. Using cloud-native alternatives like Amazon Prometheus would incur charges.
What is your primary use case for Prometheus?
I use Prometheus for monitoring purposes in IT infrastructure. It is particularly useful for environments using Kubernetes, as it monitors ports, containers, instances, and applications effectively.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Cribl vs. Prometheus Group and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.