Elastic Beats vs Graylog Enterprise 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 Enterprise

Read 22 Graylog Enterprise reviews

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7,823 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Elastic Beats

Graylog Enterprise

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 8, 2025

Graylog Enterprise and Elastic Beats compete in data monitoring and analytics. Graylog Enterprise seems to have the upper hand with comprehensive log management and direct support options, essential for structured support needs.

Features: Graylog Enterprise offers extensive log management, real-time user monitoring, and flexible data visualization. Elastic Beats provides lightweight data shippers, seamless Elasticsearch integration, and efficient data capture.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Graylog Enterprise is noted for its simple setup and reliable support services, making deployment smoother. Elastic Beats benefits from easy configuration and strong community support, though direct support is limited.

Pricing and ROI: Graylog Enterprise incurs initial costs but provides substantial ROI with comprehensive features. Elastic Beats is free and open source, reducing upfront costs, but additional ELK stack components may increase expenses.

To learn more, read our detailed Log Management Report (Updated: December 2025).

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Log Management

December 2025

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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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Graylog Enterprise

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (9th)

Featured Reviews

it_user1269834

I.T. Manager at a healthcare company with 51-200 employees

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.

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reviewer2704128

Head of Cyber Security & CTO at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Robust event correlation enhances operations, yet integration scope can broaden for seamless data handling

The features and capabilities of Graylog that we have found most valuable are related to its basis on open search, which was ElasticSearch. We appreciate being able to integrate custom feeds and do custom parsers, and to be able to do some of the correlation on it. That all works effectively. 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. We use it for investigating problems and problem management. We throw all the information at it, we have it alerting for certain conditions, but generally we use it for deep diving into issues as needed.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The security aspects in general have been very useful to use."

"There's a whole spectrum of features on the solution that users can take advantage of. It's a very robust product."

"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."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its new interface."

"Allowing us to set up alerts and integrate with platforms we already use, such as Slack and OpsGenie to alert users of these errors proactively, is also a very useful feature."

"This had increased productivity for the dev and support teams, because we are directly notifying them."

"I am very proud of how very stable the solution is."

"The product is scalable. The solution is stable."

"Storing logs in Elasticsearch means log retrieval is extremely fast, and full text search is available by default."

"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."

More Graylog Enterprise 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."

"Lacks sufficient documentation."

"The area in Graylog that needs to be improved or enhanced would be the integrations."

"More complex visualizations and the ability to execute custom Elasticsearch queries would be great."

"There should be some user groups and an auto sign-in feature."

"With technical support, you are on your own without an enterprise license."

"Graylog could improve the process of creating rules. We have to create them manually by doing parses and applying them. Other SIEM solutions have basic rules and you can create and get more events of interest."

"Over six months, I had two similar issues where searches were performed on field "messages". It exhausted all the memory of the ES node causing an ES crash and a Graylog halt."

"Graylog needs to improve their authentication. Also, the fact that Graylog displays logs from the top down is just ridiculous."

More Graylog Enterprise cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It wasn't cheap, but it was cost-effective compared to many of the other solutions."

"If you want something that works and do not have the money for Splunk or QRadar, take Graylog."

"Graylog is a free open-source solution. The free version has a capacity limitation of 2 GB daily, if you want to go above this you have to purchase a license."

"I use the free version of Graylog."

"It's an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."

"Having paid official support is wise for projects."

"You get a lot out-of-the-box with the non-enterprise version, so give it a try first."

"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're using the Community edition."

More Graylog Enterprise pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Computer Software Company

15%

Comms Service Provider

10%

University

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	8

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Graylog?

The product is scalable. The solution is stable.

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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...

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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 ...

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Log Management

December 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Graylog Enterprise

December 2025

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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 Enterprise, recognized for log collection, real-time search, and enriched data handling, offers an open-source framework that integrates seamlessly with Elasticsearch. Its user-centric interface streamlines data correlation and log aggregation, supporting both backend services and comprehensive monitoring needs.

Graylog Enterprise stands out for its stability and powerful log management capabilities, facilitating efficient log aggregation, real-time updates, and data analytics. Users benefit from its plugin-based alerting, user-friendly interface, and support for microservices, including Docker integration. The ability to search in detail, flexible API integration, and data enrichment features are highly valued. Challenges include collector application issues, desired visualization enhancements, and authentication integration improvements. Users seek advancements in UI customization, backup functions, and easier rule creation.

What are Graylog Enterprise's most important features?

Log Collection: Efficiently aggregates and handles diverse logs.
Real-Time Search: Provides immediate log data access.
Custom Alerts: Plugin-based alerting for tailored notifications.
Dashboard Enhancements: Improved visualization for data insights.
Data Enrichment: Adds value through detailed log analysis.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Audit Trail Support: Essential for compliance in financial sectors.
Security Event Correlation: Enables incident analysis and response.
Faster Issue Identification: Speeds up troubleshooting with detailed visualization.
API Flexibility: Seamless integration across systems and environments.
Comprehensive Monitoring: Centralized log management enhances oversight.

In industrial use, Graylog Enterprise is crucial for audit trailing in financial sectors, facilitating security event identification and error monitoring. Backend teams leverage real-time analytics for swift issue resolution, while developers appreciate the comprehensive log visualization enabled by Docker integration for microservice management.

Graylog

Sample Customers

Sprint

Blue Cross Blue Shield, eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn, SAP, King.com, Twilio, Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Find out what your peers are saying about Wazuh, Splunk, Datadog and others in Log Management. Updated: December 2025.

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