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Cribl vs syslog-ng comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 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
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (9th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (8th), Observability Pipeline Software (1st)
syslog-ng
Ranking in Log Management
17th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
3.2
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Cribl is 2.6%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of syslog-ng is 2.0%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cribl2.6%
syslog-ng2.0%
Other95.4%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

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.
OC
IT Infrastructure & Cloud Security Manager at Thux
Has ensured compliance by centralizing log data and supporting secure connections
We currently do not use that feature. We currently have just an open-source release, not a premium release. My boss has indicated that he wants to buy a premium syslog-ng version next month. I think we can use other features of this tool in the future. In syslog-ng, I think a GUI would be beneficial. I am unsure if the premium module has a GUI to administer it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"My favorite feature of Cribl is just how easy it makes working with the data; it's always been a pain point for us with other solutions, just taking our raw data from the source, transforming and manipulating it into what we need on the SIM side."
"The features of Cribl that I appreciate the most are the ability for in-place searching for our logs, so we don't have to move our logs outside of our cloud, which gives us privacy and compliance requirements."
"What I appreciate the most about Cribl is the free training, the free access to all the training, and how easy it is to learn it."
"The ease of management and configuration of Cribl Edge features is highly beneficial—I have many thousands of Cribl Edge nodes deployed, and it's very easy to make configuration changes across the board or update the agent."
"The feature I appreciate most about Cribl is that it is really easy to use and quick to replicate data models on different data sets."
"Cribl definitely helps with the complexity because you don't have to push for deployment—they provide the interface where you can mimic what the output will look like, and you can see that in real time when setting up the Cribl configuration, which definitely helps considerably."
"Cribl does a really great job of making sure that no matter how crazy the data set is, we're able to see that data and understand it, and then perform advanced functions against the data to make sure that it is in the ready state for whatever the end place is in which we wish to send it."
"The platform's most valuable feature is the ability to transform data in real-time within the pipeline without sending it to a destination."
"We chose syslog-ng because it is easy to install, easy to maintain, easy to update, and due to the fact that all data arrive in raw format, we can manipulate it as we want."
"What I appreciate most about syslog-ng is its configuration; its C-style config is much easier to understand, read, and write than other popular solutions such as syslog or rsyslog."
"The ability to extract and store the logs is the most valuable feature of syslog-ng."
"Syslog-ng has a separate config file in addition to the core configuration."
"Syslog-ng provides easy access to all my logs. It helps me show managers and other clients precisely where an incident occurred. I also like it because you can integrate syslog-ng with multiple solutions to allow real-time monitoring."
"Syslog-ng has built-in features that we can use to create alerts for a SIEM solution. It isn't a true SIEM solution, but it's sufficient for the time being."
"For us, the most valuable feature is the use of compound search for searching logs at a specific time, by a specific user, or specific behavior."
 

Cons

"Cribl could be improved by some UI tweaks and some usability tweaks, mostly centered around error troubleshooting for large volumes of Edge nodes."
"Cribl doesn't have as many packs available"
"Currently, we sit down, review the logs, and create regex patterns manually, which can be time-consuming."
"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."
"Cribl could be improved by some UI tweaks and some usability tweaks, mostly centered around error troubleshooting for large volumes of Edge nodes."
"Optimizing CPU utilization on the edge side is something that could be improved; we see, particularly on older hardware and older OSes, Cribl Edge service can eat up quite a bit of CPU resources compared to some other products we've used in the past, indicating there's room for improvement."
"The deployment itself is a bit complicated and the documentation is not very clear."
"The sys logging could be enhanced to make it easier to identify errors, especially when dealing with multiple functions."
"Syslog-ng has built-in features that we can use to create alerts for a SIEM solution. It isn't a true SIEM solution, but it's sufficient for the time being."
"The filtering has room for improvement."
"It's hard to find people who know how to use syslog-ng. I often find problems with configurations, and solutions aren't integrated correctly with syslog-ng. For example, there might be data with extra decimals, or the collector agents are incorrectly named. It isn't a problem with the solution; it's a lack of professionals."
"There is always the potential for additional integration and protocol extensions."
"In syslog-ng, I think a GUI would be beneficial. I am unsure if the premium module has a GUI to administer it."
"There is room for improvement in terms of observability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product pricing is reasonable compared to other solutions."
"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."
"Syslog-ng is open-source."
"Syslog-ng is a free open-source solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
5%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cribl?
Cribl has been excellent when it comes to pricing, setup cost, and licensing. The team navigates us through their models seamlessly and we adopt Cribl Cloud easily. Within a month's time, we're abl...
What needs improvement with Cribl?
Cribl handles a high volume of diverse data types very well, such as logs and metrics. However, the endpoint plug-in tool can use some refinement, as it tends to hit system resources and can someti...
What is your primary use case for Cribl?
Cribl is used to manage routing of different log systems and vulnerability type log scanning and retention, which is then re-routed to log retention servers. Firewall logs are sent directly from fi...
What needs improvement with syslog-ng?
We currently do not use that feature. We currently have just an open-source release, not a premium release. My boss has indicated that he wants to buy a premium syslog-ng version next month. I thin...
What is your primary use case for syslog-ng?
In Italy, we have to be compliant with the Garante for privacy. We have to log every login, logout, or login failure made by a system administrator. We store all syslog data of the infrastructure. ...
What advice do you have for others considering syslog-ng?
When it comes to parsing, I can parse both structured and unstructured data, though our data are only structured. Currently, we collect all data we receive as raw data. Each file is stored for each...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Tecnocom, University of Victoria, University of Exeter, Datapath
Find out what your peers are saying about Cribl vs. syslog-ng and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,899 professionals have used our research since 2012.