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Cribl vs syslog-ng by One Identity comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 20, 2026

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
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (6th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (6th), Observability Pipeline Software (1st)
syslog-ng by One Identity
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 July 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Cribl is 2.6%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of syslog-ng by One Identity is 1.3%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cribl2.6%
syslog-ng1.3%
Other96.1%
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

"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 handles huge volumes of data exceptionally well."
"When we had Cribl in place, it provided a vision and a platform for us to control what we send and how we send it in terms of data passing, data enrichment, and many more things, with massaging the data."
"Mostly because of the positive reasons, I would say it is easy to use, it is sustainable, the support is nice, the coding is quite easy to understand, there are a lot of functionalities there, you can do a lot of things, and the data migration is very easy."
"Cribl is one of the best data pipelining platforms, and with all the features that have been upgraded over the past three years, it has been seamless."
"We save about 75% percent of our costs by processing network and firewall logs through Cribl."
"Cribl features integration support since it works with 50 plus sources and destinations, data routing and flexibility allowing me to easily route telemetry to multiple destinations such as SIEM, data lake, and cheap object storage, and data processing and reduction because it filters out unwanted fields, removes redundant data, and restructures logs before reaching systems, which is helpful in saving cost and improving performance."
"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"
"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."
"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."
"Syslog-ng has a separate config file in addition to the core configuration."
"The ability to extract and store the logs is the most valuable feature of syslog-ng."
"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."
 

Cons

"In terms of areas for improvement, I would say Cribl internal logging has been one of the bottlenecks; that should be enhanced."
"Cribl Stream is good, but I feel they could develop more products apart from Cribl Stream for my use case."
"Their documentation should be updated."
"I think the pricing for Cribl is acceptable, but it may not be feasible for a lot of companies in the Netherlands since you need a huge starting license."
"My experience with the user interface when managing log processing tasks is quite complex for new beginners, and there is also a documentation gap that leads new beginners to take a while to get fluency over the software."
"The speed was fast. The quality, however, there wasn't a solution just because I think it was a bug and it was never fixed as far as I know."
"There are opportunities for AI to be incorporated more tightly into Cribl to help build out those pipelines and apply some more complex logic to those transformations could be useful."
"There is room for improvement in the documentation and knowledge base, particularly regarding configurations like sources where logs are being ingested"
"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 room for improvement in terms of observability."
"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 always the potential for additional integration and protocol extensions."
 

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 a free open-source solution."
"Syslog-ng is open-source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
6%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise34
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cribl?
I find the pricing of Cribl to be cost-efficient because it has helped us save costs for data storage by removing unwanted logs.
What needs improvement with Cribl?
One improvement Cribl could work on is Cribl's Git integration. If I want to integrate my private repository, I can do this, but there is a specific format required in Git. If I commit something to...
What is your primary use case for Cribl?
We started using Cribl one year ago for data optimization. Currently, we are using Cribl for its one terabyte ingestion that is free, which is one significant advantage. We are using it for that pu...
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...
 

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 by One Identity and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
904,973 professionals have used our research since 2012.