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Cribl vs Splunk 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
3.5
Cribl is cost-effective compared to Splunk, but not all users see clear returns in time and cost savings.
Sentiment score
6.5
Splunk Enterprise Security enhances visibility, improves error resolution, automates processes, and integrates well, though ROI assessment can be challenging.
The documentation for Splunk Enterprise Security is outstanding. It is well-organized and easy to access.
We couldn't calculate what would have been the cost if they had actually gotten compromised; however, they were in the process, so every investment was returned immediately.
On average, my SecOps team takes probably at least a quarter of the time, if not more, to remediate security incidents with Splunk Enterprise Security compared to our previous solution.
 

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
6.4
Splunk Enterprise Security support is knowledgeable but occasionally slow, with mixed efficiency reviews and valuable community resources.
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.
We have paid for Splunk support, and we’re not on the free tier hoping for assistance; we are a significant customer and invest a lot in this service.
I have had nothing but good experiences with Splunk support, receiving timely and helpful replies.
We've had great customer success managers who have helped us navigate scaling from 600 gigs to 30 terabytes.
 

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
7.4
Splunk Enterprise Security offers scalable, flexible solutions handling large data volumes effortlessly, though cost concerns persist, especially on-premise.
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.
We currently rely on disaster recovery and backup recovery, which takes time to recover, during which you're basically blind, so I'm pushing my leadership team to switch over to a clustering environment for constant availability.
They struggle a bit with pure virtual environments, but in terms of how much they can handle, it is pretty good.
It is easy to scale.
 

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
7.6
Splunk Enterprise Security is stable and resilient, though resource-heavy queries can cause occasional bugs, needing optimized use cases.
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.
Cribl is quite stable and doesn't crash; there's no unusual behavior.
They test it very thoroughly before release, and our customers have Splunk running for months without issues.
Splunk has been very reliable and very consistent.
It provides a stable environment but needs to integrate with ITSM platforms to achieve better visibility.
 

Room For Improvement

Cribl faces compatibility issues, UI limitations, and documentation inconsistencies, requiring enhancements in integration, customization, and data handling.
Splunk Enterprise Security users desire improved GUI, integration, pricing, training, data handling, and advanced features for better efficiency.
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.
Improving the infrastructure behind Splunk Enterprise Security is vital—enhanced cores, CPUs, and memory should be prioritized to support better processing power.
Splunk Enterprise Security is not something that automatically picks things; you have to set up use cases, update data models, and link the right use cases to the right data models for those detections to happen.
For any future enhancements or features, such as MLTK and SOAR platform integration, we need more visibility, training, and certification for the skilled professionals who are working.
 

Setup Cost

Cribl offers competitive pricing valued for cost-effectiveness and scalability, though its complex credit system can cause confusion.
Splunk Enterprise Security is costly but valued for features and scalability, with pricing concerns for smaller businesses.
Cribl is very inexpensive, with enterprise pricing around 30 cents per GB, which is really decent.
I saw clients spend two million dollars a year just feeding data into the Splunk solution.
The platform requires significant financial investment and resources, making it expensive despite its comprehensive features.
I find it to be affordable, which is why every industry uses it.
 

Valuable Features

Cribl provides efficient, real-time data transformation and routing, supporting scalability, cost reduction, and rapid integration for enhanced operational efficiency.
Splunk Enterprise Security excels in log management, data ingestion, and integration, enhancing security operations with user-friendly features.
The data reduction and preprocessing capabilities make Cribl really unique.
The community on Slack is excellent for solving questions and getting ideas.
This capability is useful for performance monitoring and issue identification.
I assess Splunk Enterprise Security's insider threat detection capabilities for helping to find unknown threats and anomalous user behavior as great.
Splunk Enterprise Security provides the foundation for unified threat detection, investigation, and response, enabling fast identification of critical issues.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cribl
Ranking in Log Management
7th
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (13th), Observability Pipeline Software (1st)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Log Management
2nd
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
365
Ranking in other categories
IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Cribl is 1.1%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 9.3%, down from 11.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security9.3%
Cribl1.1%
Other89.6%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

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.
Kyle Vernham - PeerSpot reviewer
Built-in searches and unified data access streamline alert investigation and boosts analyst efficiency
The two features I appreciate the most in Splunk Enterprise Security are the built-in searches, which have been very easy for us to get started with right out of the box, and the fact that it accesses all of our other systems. You can access it as a pane of glass rather than having to search individually. We also have the option to compare our analysts from our service to service. Splunk Enterprise Security helps our SOC team prioritize and investigate high-fidelity alerts more effectively by providing a more in-depth look and the ability to access a lot more of our data. Instead of jumping from several segmented systems, it allows us to have everything brought together in one place. For example, you have to move from our purview to our build system and to Splunk Enterprise Security, and it enables us to streamline that process. The built-in features of Splunk Enterprise Security, which we recently procured, have given us a good starting point and demonstrated the value of the product, providing an easy way to sell it to our company. The ease of getting everything into our purview helps us, and it serves as a good start for the investigation part in one location rather than what we usually have, which is jumping from system to system to system. Splunk Enterprise Security plays a role in our company's strategy to combat insider threats and advanced persistent threats by currently being in its technical test phase. We are still rolling it out, and it should help us find any insider threats based on information that our policy states should not be present in our system. Splunk Enterprise Security's risk-based alerting (RBA) has impacted our alert volume and analyst productivity because we've got many different systems feeding into it. However, it has helped to make it easier for our analysts to go through a set of events rather than 100 alerts. RBA allows us to streamline the process and customize it for our analysts. When it comes to leveraging Splunk Enterprise Security's dashboards and visualizations to communicate security posture to executives, it's pretty straightforward for any type of information. The visualization is easy to understand, but I haven't had any direct conversations with our executives.
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Comparison Review

VS
Feb 26, 2015
HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. ​McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm
We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

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 Business110
Midsize Enterprise48
Large Enterprise255
 

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 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 a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cribl vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.