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Datadog vs Elastic Stack comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 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

Datadog
Ranking in Log Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
187
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), Network Monitoring Software (4th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Container Monitoring (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (2nd), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th)
Elastic Stack
Ranking in Log Management
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Datadog is 5.9%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Stack is 5.4%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Kevin Palmer - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful log aggregation and management with helpful metrics aggregation
Datadog provides us value in three major ways: First, Datadog provides best-in-class functionality in many, if not all, of the products to which we subscribe (infrastructure, APM, log management, serverless, synthetics, real user monitoring, DB monitoring). In my experience with other tools that provide similar functionality, Datadog provides the largest feature set with the most flexibility and the best performance. Second, Datadog allows us to access all of those services in one place. Having to learn and manage only one tool for all of those purposes is a major benefit. Third, Datadog provides significant connectivity between those services so that we can view, summarize, organize, translate and correlate our data with maximum effect. Not needing to manually integrate them to draw lines between those pieces of information is a huge time savings for us.
Balamurali P - PeerSpot reviewer
Advanced query capabilities enhance monitoring effectiveness
Elastic Stack should be more simplified with ready-to-use widgets. Also, incorporating AI capabilities is essential as monitoring and observability tools are now adding AI features. Ideally, it should evolve into a full-stack observability tool, similar to AppDynamics or DynaTrace, which offers a solution that includes ISP provider, API monitoring, and infrastructure monitoring.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to create custom dashboards has been incredibly useful, allowing us to visualize key metrics and KPIs in a way that makes sense for different teams and stakeholders."
"Thanks to the logs, we manage to make better reports through Jira and also to trace the request with more facility than we would be able to do otherwise."
"The ease of use allowed me to get up to speed with log management since it's my first time using Datadog."
"The management of SLOs and their related burn-rate monitors have allowed us to onboard teams to on-call fast."
"Datadog helps us detect issues early on and helps in troubleshooting."
"Datadog has so far been a breeze to use and set up."
"Dashboards are helpful for reviewing occasionally to get a higher-level overview of what's happening."
"Session recordings have been the most valuable to me as it helps me gain insights into user behaviour at scale."
"I think the ecosystem is well supported, and for logs, it was faster compared to our previous previous log management."
"I have experienced a return on investment from the use of the solution."
"Elastic Stack has made a positive impact as we can now see our logs."
"The solution's technical support is good...Elastic Stack offers good value for value for money based on the product's features and what they offer."
"The tool's most powerful aspect is its search engine capability. It's a highly effective and powerful solution for searching. We use it in professional and student projects at universities, and it delivers promising results."
"We can group a lot of alarms into one automation alarm supervision. The alarm supervision allows us to put the alarm under the same. It's quite helpful for us. We used that to suppress our alarms. Elastic already provides the agent. It is easy to integrate Elastic Stack with other devices and vendors."
"Prior to the latest updates, data lake management was a standout feature. The hybrid capability for on-premise and cloud integration was also crucial. Now, with Elastic Defense, the agent simplifies security monitoring, making it a key asset."
"The tool is huge, and it performs brilliantly. I tested it for malware, and within two weeks of launching, the product alerted me about a network intrusion. This was a tough test for it, but it performed admirably. The alerting system is excellent, and searching through logs is incredibly efficient. What's impressive is that all three products or options are integrated into one solution. This means I don't need separate logging, monitoring, or antivirus solutions."
 

Cons

"While the documentation is very good, there are areas that need a lot of focus to pick up on the key details."
"While I like the ease of use, when compared with Tenable Nessus they could still improve their usability."
"Datadog could be improved if it could detect other software in a container or server."
"In production, we intend to use trace IDs generated by RUM to attach to support tickets when a user experiences a traceable network error, and we want to display this trace ID to the user so if they were to contact us about a specific issue, they can provide us an exact ID displayed to them back to us. Currently, this is not possible out-of-the-box client-side without inventing our own solution for capturing these trace IDs, such as shimming the native fetch or returning the ID from the service response."
"In some cases the screenshots don't match the text as updates are made."
"Geo-data is also something very critical that we hope to see in the future."
"The query performance could be improved, particularly when handling large datasets, as slower response times can hinder efficiency."
"I'd like to see an expansion of the Android and IOS apps to have a simplified CI/CD pipeline history view."
"Agent deployment is a little tough in the on-premise version."
"The implementation of dashboards in the solution needs to be made easier...I had some issues with the ports and configuration since it was kind of complex to implement with Docker."
"The stability of the solution is rated as three or four out of ten as we frequently encounter issues."
"While Elastic Stack can manage vast amounts of data, if the mapping is not specified correctly, the indexing time can be slow, especially with many events per second."
"AI-enablement would be a big improvement in Elastic Stack...If there is room for an ML model in Elastic Stack, then it would be good."
"Elastic Stack should work on their dashboards and integration process."
"It should facilitate easier manual integration."
"When people try to move the data from another source to Elastic Stack for visualization, they face challenges when connecting to Elastic Stack from such different sources."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is better than some competing products."
"Datadog does not provide any free plans to use the solution. When I start with a proof of concept it would be sensible to have a free plan to test the tool and check whether it fits the requirements of the project. Before the production stage, it is always good to have a free plan with some limited features, number of requests, or logs."
"The pricing came up a bit compared to their competitors. It is not that the price has risen, but that the competitors have gone down. They keep adding more features that I would have expected to be baked in at a more nominal price. I have been increasingly dissatisfied with the pricing, but not enough to jump ship."
"It has always scaled for us. Cost scales up too, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. It's reasonable for what they're providing."
"The solution's pricing depends on project volume."
"It has a module-based pricing model."
"Pricing seemed easy until the bill came in and some things were not accounted for."
"The pricing and licensing through AWS Marketplace has been good. It would be nice if it was cheaper, but their pricing is reasonable for what it is. Sometimes, for their newer features, they charge as if it's fully fleshed out, even though it is a newer feature and it may have less stuff than their other items."
"If I compare Elastic Stack to the other products in the market, I would say that the tool is available at a competitive price."
"I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"The product is expensive."
"I used the open-source version of Elastic Stack, because of which I did not have to pay anything."
"It depends on the specifics, but generally, Elastic is economical for certain use cases."
"We are using the open-source community version of the product."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Ultimately, the pricing depends upon the capacity planning that the enterprise architect does."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...
Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Dynatrace. Dynatrace offers network ...
What do you like most about Elastic Stack?
The tool is huge, and it performs brilliantly. I tested it for malware, and within two weeks of launching, the product alerted me about a network intrusion. This was a tough test for it, but it per...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Stack?
My experience with Elastic Stack pricing indicates that it is node-based. While I do not have complete pricing details, they are available online. If I choose Elastic Cloud, it includes licensing a...
What needs improvement with Elastic Stack?
There are improvements needed for Elastic Stack. It is mostly based on Lucene, and the heart of Elastic Stack is Lucene, which has some limitations. Anything built on top of Lucene often feels an a...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Adobe, Samsung, facebook, HP Cloud Services, Electronic Arts, salesforce, Stanford University, CiTRIX, Chef, zendesk, Hearst Magazines, Spotify, mercardo libre, Slashdot, Ziff Davis, PBS, MLS, The Motley Fool, Politico, Barneby's
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Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. Elastic Stack and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.