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Cribl vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 21, 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 Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (6th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (10th), Observability Pipeline Software (1st)
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (15th), Container Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Cribl is 1.1%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.0%, up from 0.8% 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 (%)
Cribl1.1%
VMware Aria Operations for Applications1.0%
Other97.9%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Manoj Gowda J - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps reduce log ingestion cost by dropping unnecessary events and customizing pipelines
The best feature in Cribl, when getting logs from some custom application, is the ability to break up logs that pile up together and come as one event. Cribl has a feature called JSON Unroll or Unroll function that allows you to differentiate the events; each event will come ingested as a single log instead of piling it up with multiple events. This is critical as this generally happens in CrowdStrike. This feature helps us significantly. When the ingestion is high from unwanted logs, logs not related to security purposes can be dropped by writing the parser function. By dropping events that are not required for security purpose monitoring, we can reduce the ingestion, which drastically reduces the cost as well. Cribl gives another option where I can store some logs, and when needed, I can pick them up from there. The interface is very handy and not very complicated, yet there are many functions you can perform. You can play around with numerous functions, parse there, and add UDMs to SecOps, which makes it really easy. To simplify the pipeline, when we go to the pipelines, there are vast options. We can make it specific requirements based on the customers. I would prefer a customized or simplified version. Cribl is a very good platform to work with, with lots of features that other platforms don't provide.
ToniLindberg - PeerSpot reviewer
Troubleshooting capabilities have improved application monitoring and support engagement
I can see what happens end to end, which is pretty beneficial. The solution has troubleshooting capabilities, providing a direct connection to knowledge base articles from VMware Broadcom. When I encounter an error, I can search directly within the system to see what solutions have been employed by others. It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cribl is specifically designed to reduce the data costs associated with the destination platform, which is one of its core offerings."
"The platform's most valuable feature is the ability to transform data in real-time within the pipeline without sending it to a destination."
"The product's most valuable features include the internal management of events, coding perspective, data processing, and serialization."
"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."
"Our experience with Cribl has been very smooth; everything runs seamlessly, there are no delays or sluggishness, which I really appreciate."
"The best feature in Cribl, when getting logs from some custom application, is the ability to break up logs that pile up together and come as one event."
"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 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"
"I gladly recommend VMware Aria Operations for Applications because it is cost effective and has commendable AI response capabilities."
"VMware comes with a support team, and if you have trouble, you can easily create a ticket, and VMware will help you. Therefore, the best aspect is the support."
"It significantly improves application performance management by offering recommendations for resource allocation to avoid wastage or overcommitment."
"I find VMware Aria Operations for Applications to be very stable, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."
"Tanzu itself, integrated with multiple solutions, bestows support and security upon a container platform, especially when it comes to managing open-source container platforms such as Kubernetes."
"The solution provides single-console management for multiple VMware environments and cloud integrations, whether hybrid, private, or public cloud."
"The solution is great for virtualization and preparing the infrastructure in Tanzu to test products. It's very fast and has good visibility."
"No issues with stability."
 

Cons

"We encountered some issues with the syslog data stream, particularly with handling large databases and extensive data logs."
"Cribl could have developed some version that can give backward compatibility."
"There have been several administrative issues. Another point is that the browsing functions aren't very intuitive."
"Cribl could improve by offering easier integrations with enterprise products, similar to what Splunk provides."
"Cribl should consider adding more features that are applicable to smaller firms, allowing broader access to their data migration through Cribl."
"When I explored the endpoint, I found myself wishing for clearer instructions presented in a sequential manner."
"There is no alerting mechanism for the leader/worker nodes status."
"There is room for improvement in the documentation and knowledge base, particularly regarding configurations like sources where logs are being ingested"
"It could use a URL document server. Everything in the market is moving towards automation and everybody's looking for the single click operations as well relational data locality."
"I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases."
"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."
"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."
"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."
"VMware technical support has declined since the Broadcom acquisition. Previously, they were more focused on issue resolution, but now they prioritize licensing verification before providing support."
"They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people. That way they don't have to ask us."
"The return on investment is best suited for organizations that do not have the resources for a dedicated VM environment team. However, the cost of the product doesn't show significant benefits."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The product pricing is reasonable compared to other solutions."
"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."
"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."
"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cribl?
Cribl is very inexpensive, with enterprise pricing around 30 cents per GB, which is really decent. Organizations looking to ingest terabytes or petabytes of data each day find it quite an inexpensi...
What needs improvement with Cribl?
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 th...
What is your primary use case for Cribl?
Our main use case for Cribl was SIEM migration, where we merged multiple SIEM solutions to a single SIEM solution. SIEM migration was the most major use case we were looking for. The second use cas...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The solution includes cost drivers that can be configured according to your environment. You can input server-wise, CPU-wise, storage, and memory costs per hour or day. Once cost drivers are provid...
What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including priva...
What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
I have been involved in several projects where I had to implement automation and monitoring alerting. I performed automation using VMware Aria Operations for Applications. There is an automation ta...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware
Find out what your peers are saying about Cribl vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.