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Elastic Beats vs Graylog comparison

Elastic and Graylog are both solutions in the Log Management category. Additionally, 75% of Elastic users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Graylog users who would recommend it.
Elastic Beats
Read 2 Elastic Beats reviews
    75% willing to recommend
    Graylog
    Read 21 Graylog reviews
    • 9,223 Views
    • 5,549 Comparison Views
    95% willing to recommend
     

    Comparison Buyer's Guide

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    Executive Summary
    We performed a comparison between Elastic Beats and Graylog based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

    Find out what your peers are saying about Wazuh, Splunk, Datadog and others in Log Management.

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    To learn more, read our detailed Log Management Report (Updated: May 2025).
    Buyer's Guide
    Log Management
    May 2025
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    Helped 859,687 peers since 2012

    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

    Elastic Beats
    Average Rating
    8.0
    Number of Reviews
    2
    Ranking in other categories
    No ranking in other categories
    Graylog
    Average Rating
    8.0
    Reviews Sentiment
    7.2
    Number of Reviews
    21
    Ranking in other categories
    Log Management (15th)
     

    Featured Reviews

    reviewer1269834 - PeerSpot reviewer
    A great addition to our security monitoring system
    We haven't to this point had to scale very large, we want to continue to evolve, but it's a slow process for us. From what I've used so far, and my reading on it, I don't think we're going to have any problems scaling to really whatever size we need.
    Read full review
    Ivan Kokalovic - PeerSpot reviewer
    Facilitates backend service monitoring with efficient log retrieval and API flexibility
    Graylog is valuable because it bridges technical knowledge to non-technical teams, presenting complex backend processes in a simple timeline. It boosts the knowledge of sales and customer support teams by allowing them to see the backend operations without needing to read the code. Its API is flexible for visualization, and its powerful search engine efficiently handles large volumes of log data. Moreover, its stability, fast search capabilities, and compatibility with languages like ANSI SQL enhance its utility in IT infrastructure.
    Read full review

    Quotes from Members

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

    Pros

    "There's a whole spectrum of features on the solution that users can take advantage of. It's a very robust product."
    "The security aspects in general have been very useful to use."
    "Graylog's search functionality, alerting functionality, user management, and dashboards are useful."
    "We run a containerized microservices environment. Being able to set up streams and search for errors and anomalies across hundreds of containers is why a log aggregation platform like Graylog is valuable to us."
    "One of the most valuable features is that you are able to do a very detailed search through the log messages in the overview."
    "What I like about Graylog is that it's real-time and you have access to the raw data. So, you ingest it, and you have access to every message and every data item you ingest. You can then build analytics on top of that. You can look at the raw data, and you can do some volumetric estimations, such as how big traffic you have, how many messages of data of a type you have, etc."
    "It has data adapters and lookup tables that utilize HTTP calls to APIs."
    "The Graylog features that have proven to be most beneficial for our data analysis in particular are that we tend to use it as a big data store, so we have the correlation rules that, if something matches under certain conditions, it raises an alarm."
    "Open source and user friendly."
    "We're using the Community edition, but I know that it has really good dashboarding and alerts."
    More Graylog pros
     

    Cons

    "The dashboard is not user-friendly. The solution, in general, isn't great from a user's perspective."
    "At some level, the documentation, the information as far as the components, it's sometimes a little difficult to find the information necessary to implement aspects."
    "We ran into problems with Elasticsearch throwing a circuit-breaking exception due to field data size being too large. It turned out that the heap size directly impacted this size in a high-throughput environment, causing unexplained instability in Graylog. We were able to troubleshoot on the Elasticsearch size, but we should have been able to reference some minimum requirements for Graylog to know that our settings weren't sufficient."
    "It would be great if Graylog could provide a better Python package in order to make it easier to use for the Python community."
    "More complex visualizations and the ability to execute custom Elasticsearch queries would be great."
    "Elasticsearch recommendations for tuning could be better. Graylog doesn't have direct support for running the system inside of Kubernetes, so it can be challenging to fill in the gaps and set up containers in a way that is both performant and stable."
    "Its scalability gets complicated when we have to update or edit multiple nodes."
    "When it comes to configuring the processing pipeline, writing the rules can be very tedious, especially since the documentation isn't extensive on how the functions provided for these rules work."
    "There should be some user groups and an auto sign-in feature.​"
    "I would like to see a default dashboard widget that shows the topology of the clusters defined for the graylog install."
    More Graylog cons
     

    Pricing and Cost Advice

    "It wasn't cheap, but it was cost-effective compared to many of the other solutions."
    "​You get a lot out-of-the-box with the non-enterprise version, so give it a try first."
    "If you want something that works and do not have the money for Splunk or QRadar, take Graylog.​​"
    "Having paid official support is wise for projects."
    "I use the free version of Graylog."
    "It's an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."
    "It's open source and free. They have a paid version, but we never looked into that because we never needed the features of the paid version."
    "There is an open source version and an enterprise version. I wouldn't recommend the enterprise version, but as an open source solution, it is solid and works really well."
    "We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive."
    More Graylog pricing and cost advice
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    Top Industries

    By visitors reading reviews
    No data available
    Computer Software Company
    17%
    Comms Service Provider
    10%
    Educational Organization
    7%
    University
    7%
     

    Company Size

    By reviewers
    Large Enterprise
    Midsize Enterprise
    Small Business
    No data available
     

    Questions from the Community

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    What do you like most about Graylog?
    The product is scalable. The solution is stable.
    See all answers
    What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Graylog?
    I am not familiar with the pricing details of Graylog, as I was not responsible for that aspect. It was determined that we didn't need an enterprise plan, which is more suited for clients with less...
    See all answers
    What needs improvement with Graylog?
    An improvement I would suggest is in Graylog's user interface, such as allowing for font size adjustments. A potential enhancement could be the integration with Ollama to run large language models ...
    See all answers
     

    Comparisons

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    Security Onion vs Graylog Logo
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    Compared 6% of the time
    Fortinet FortiAnalyzer vs Graylog Logo
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    Compared 3% of the time
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    Product Reports

    Buyer's Guide
    Log Management
    May 2025
    Elastic Beats reportDownload Elastic Beats product report
    Buyer's Guide
    Graylog
    June 2025
    Graylog reportDownload Graylog product report
     

    Also Known As

    No data available
    Graylog2
     

    Overview

    Beats is the platform for single-purpose data shippers. They install as lightweight agents and send data from hundreds or thousands of machines to Logstash or Elasticsearch.

    Elastic

    Graylog is purpose-built to deliver the best log collection, storage, enrichment, and analysis. Graylog is:

    • Considerably faster analysis speeds.
    • More robust and easier-to-use analysis platform.
    • Simpler administration and infrastructure management.
    • Lower cost than alternatives.
    • Full-scale customer service.
    • No expensive training or tool experts required.
    Graylog
     

    Sample Customers

    Sprint
    Blue Cross Blue Shield, eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn, SAP, King.com, Twilio, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
    Buyer's Guide
    Log Management
    May 2025
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    859,687 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    See our list of best Log Management vendors.

    We monitor all Log Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.