Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Datadog vs Elastic Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 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
6.4
Datadog boosts ROI by reducing downtime, enhancing reliability, optimizing resources, improving cost efficiency, and expediting issue resolution.
Sentiment score
6.0
Elastic Security provides satisfactory ROI and cost savings, though users experience varied support levels and payback periods.
Previously we had thirteen contractors doing the monitoring for us, which is now reduced to only five.
IT Manager at Liberty Mutual Insurance
Datadog has delivered more than its value through reduced downtime, faster recovery, and infrastructure optimization.
Sr. Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
I believe features that would provide a lot of time savings, just enabling you to really narrow down and filter the type of frustration or user interaction that you're looking for.
QA Engineer at Townsquare Interactive
It does not require hefty security budgets and can be deployed for enterprise security effectively.
Assistant Director at PTA
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Datadog offers knowledgeable support but has variable ticket resolution and communication challenges, with limited direct engineer access.
Sentiment score
6.4
Elastic Security support is inconsistent; users favor community and documentation, while premium users seek more responsive and personalized help.
When I have additional questions, the ticket is updated with actual recommendations or suggestions pointing me in the correct direction.
Applications Web Services Technical Engineer at Ace Hardware
Overall, the entire Datadog comprehensive experience of support, onboarding, getting everything in there, and having a good line of feedback has been exceptional.
Systems Administrator at Townsquare Interactive
I've had a couple instances where I reached out to Datadog's support team, and they have been really super helpful and very kind, even reaching back out after resolving my issues to check if everything's going well.
Security Engineer at Invitation Homes
Support is prompt and helpful.
Senior Cyber Security Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Most of the time when my team encounters issues, they receive responses within 24 hours.
Assistant Director at PTA
I have not faced any difficulties with Elastic Security, as we have a pretty good support service from them.
Chief Product Officer at ClusterPower
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Datadog scales efficiently across diverse environments, handling increased workloads seamlessly, though costs may rise with extensive usage.
Sentiment score
7.3
Elastic Security offers scalable solutions adaptable to various environments, praised for flexibility and requiring careful planning for integration.
Datadog's scalability has been great as it has been able to grow with our needs.
IT Manager at Liberty Mutual Insurance
We did, as a trial, engage the AWS integration, and immediately it found all of our AWS resources and presented them to us.
Systems Administrator at Townsquare Interactive
Datadog's scalability is strong; we've continued to significantly grow our software, and there are processes in place to ensure that as new servers, realms, and environments are introduced, we're able to include them all in Datadog without noticing any performance issues.
Senior Custom Software Development Consultant at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
It allows us to think about specific use cases, such as gathering malicious IPs in a single view and analyzing threats based on geolocation.
Assistant Director at PTA
Elastic Security is quite scalable.
Chief Product Officer at ClusterPower
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Datadog is praised for its reliable performance with minimal downtime and quick resolution of occasional data import issues.
Sentiment score
7.7
Elastic Security is generally stable and reliable but can face challenges with big data and requires careful configuration.
Datadog is very stable, as there hasn't been any downtime or issues since I've been here, and it's always on time.
Security Engineer at Invitation Homes
Datadog seems stable in my experience without any downtime or reliability issues.
Full Stack Developer at Townsquare Interactive
Datadog seems to be more stable, and I really want to have a complete demo before making a call to decide on this.
Enterprise solution architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
In terms of stability, I would rate Elastic a solid eight out of ten.
Senior Cyber Security Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Datadog struggles with complex pricing, customization needs, usability, and requires improved integration, training, and cost management for large organizations.
Elastic Security needs improvements in authentication, usability, automation, scalability, integration, and pricing, with user-friendly dashboards and documentation.
It would be great to see stronger AI-driven anomaly detection and predictive analytics to help identify potential issues before they impact performance.
Operations Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
We want to be able to customize the cost part, and we would appreciate more granular access control.
Service Manager at PwC
The documentation is adequate, but team members coming into a project could benefit from more guided, interactive tutorials, ideally leveraging real-world data.
Senior Software Engineer at Los Angeles Times Communications, LLC
CrowdStrike and Defender have more established threat intelligence integration due to having a larger client base.
Senior Cyber Security Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
My security testing team continuously reports vulnerabilities, and we have to fix and update the versions frequently.
Assistant Director at PTA
Machine learning algorithms become better with time; as they ingest a huge volume of data, they become better.
Chief Product Officer at ClusterPower
 

Setup Cost

Datadog offers flexible pricing but can become costly with larger infrastructures; users appreciate low setup costs and initial free hosts.
Elastic Security provides a free open-source option, competitive pricing, and subscription plans, appealing to cost-conscious enterprises.
The setup cost for Datadog is more than $100.
Senior Performance and Architecture Analyst at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Everybody wants the agent installed, but we only have so many dollars to spread across, so it's been difficult for me to prioritize who will benefit from Datadog at this time.
Applications Web Services Technical Engineer at Ace Hardware
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is really expensive.
Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a wholesaler/distributor with 5,001-10,000 employees
The pricing is reasonable, especially for Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs), making it a viable option for businesses building their security infrastructure.
Senior Cyber Security Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
This is beneficial for SMEs as they do not need extensive budgets for security solutions.
Assistant Director at PTA
Elastic Security is considered cost-effective, especially at lower EPS levels.
Performance Practice Specialist at a local government with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

Datadog excels with real-time monitoring, integrations, intuitive dashboards, and analytics, enhancing observability and operational efficiency in complex environments.
Elastic Security provides scalable, customizable threat response with fast search, real-time analysis, and strong community support for actionable insights.
Our architecture is written in several languages, and one area where Datadog particularly shines is in providing first-class support for a multitude of programming languages.
Senior Software Engineer at Los Angeles Times Communications, LLC
Having all that associated analytics helps me in troubleshooting by not having to bounce around to other tools, which saves me a lot of time.
Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a wholesaler/distributor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Datadog was able to find the alerts and trigger to notify our team in a very prompt manner before it got worse, allowing us to promptly adjust and remediate the situation in time.
Security Engineer at Invitation Homes
Elastic Security offers good insight regarding alerts, reports, and cases.
Senior Cyber Security Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Elastic Security offers advanced features such as machine learning and integration with ChatGPT.
Performance Practice Specialist at a local government with 10,001+ employees
We require rapid processing speed for alerts and event data, and Elastic Security is very efficient at handling this level of data.
Assistant Director at PTA
 

Categories and Ranking

Datadog
Ranking in Log Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
210
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), Network Monitoring Software (3rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Container Monitoring (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (2nd), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (5th), AI Observability (1st)
Elastic Security
Ranking in Log Management
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (5th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (15th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Datadog is 4.7%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Security is 2.9%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Datadog4.7%
Elastic Security2.9%
Other92.4%
Log Management
 

Q&A Highlights

HB
Senior Software Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Sep 29, 2022
 

Featured Reviews

Dhroov Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Site Reliability Engineer at Grainger
Has improved incident response with better root cause visibility and supports flexible on-call scheduling
Datadog needs to introduce more hard limits to cost. If we see a huge log spike, administrators should have more control over what happens to save costs. If a service starts logging extensively, I want the ability to automatically direct that log into the cheapest log bucket. This should be the case with many offerings. If we're seeing too much APM, we need to be aware of it and able to stop it rather than having administrators reach out to specific teams. Datadog has become significantly slower over the last year. They could improve performance at the risk of slowing down feature work. More resources need to go into Fleet Automation because we face many problems with things such as the Ansible role to install Datadog in non-containerized hosts. We mainly want to see performance improvements, less time spent looking at costs, the ability to trust that costs will stay reasonable, and an easier way to manage our agents. It is such a powerful tool with much potential on the horizon, but cost control, performance, and agent management need improvement. The main issues are with the administrative side rather than the actual application.
Laurentiu Popescu - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Product Officer at ClusterPower
Has improved threat detection with deep log analysis and streamlined investigation workflows
The most useful features I find in Elastic Security are the forensic ones that allow us to carry deeper analysis into the logs for in-depth investigations, and the dashboards, with the reporting dashboard being quite user-friendly. Elastic Security is quite good at identifying threats, as it is part of the deep investigation tool that I mentioned before. Unless we need to look further into a certain log, we can carry out a deeper analysis and forensics on those particular logs. I can assess the impact of Elastic Security's real-time data analysis on our threat response efficiency as working pretty good. We are looking for real-time analysis because we have a continuous inflow of logs from different sources: from our cloud, from Active Directory, from our network. So it works pretty well.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Log Management solutions are best for your needs.
879,711 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Answers from the Community

HB
Senior Software Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Sep 29, 2022
Sep 29, 2022
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 core indicators of the health of our system. You can build very useful dashboards right out of the box using this solution. Our developers are able to see how code is running in production, and having ...
2 out of 7 answers
reviewer1584621 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Consultant at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Jun 21, 2021
Dear, Unfortunately, I can't say much about Datadog but I have used ELK for a short period.  And I can tell you not everything works the way it should. For example, I noticed heavy CPU usage for a Windows client on MS AD servers. I advise you to consider this if it's important to you. Good luck!
Shibu Babuchandran - PeerSpot reviewer
Regional Manager/ Service Delivery Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Jun 22, 2021
Datadog: Unify logs, metrics, and traces from across your distributed infrastructure. Datadog is the leading service for cloud-scale monitoring. It is used by IT, operations, and development teams who build and operate applications that run on dynamic or hybrid cloud infrastructure. Start monitoring in minutes with Datadog! Datadog features offered are:200+ turn-key integrations for data aggregationClean graphs of StatsD and other integrations Elasticsearch: Open Source, Distributed, RESTful Search Engine. Elasticsearch is a distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine capable of storing data and searching it in near real time. Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats and Logstash are the Elastic Stack (sometimes called the ELK Stack). Elasticsearch provides the following key features:Distributed and Highly Available Search Engine.Multi Tenant with Multi Types.Various set of APIs including RESTful
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise46
Large Enterprise98
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise15
 

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 Security?
Elastic provides the capability to index quickly due to the reverse indexes it offers. This data is crucial as it contains critical information. The reverse index allows fast data indexing because ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Security?
I am satisfied with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing cost. It is a pure 10.
What needs improvement with Elastic Security?
I do not have any specific recommendations for improvements in Elastic Security, but I feel that the AI module should get more mature. These machine learning algorithms become better with time; as ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Elastic SIEM, ELK Logstash
 

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
Texas A&M, U.S. Air Force, NuScale Power, Martin's Point Health Care
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. Elastic Security and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,711 professionals have used our research since 2012.