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Elastic Observability vs Grafana Loki comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

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 Observability
Ranking in Log Management
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (7th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (10th), Container Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
Grafana Loki
Ranking in Log Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 1.3%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana Loki is 7.9%, up from 6.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Grafana Loki7.9%
Elastic Observability1.3%
Other90.8%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Stefan Decuypere - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time dashboards and visual insights have streamlined issue analysis and monitoring
After careful consideration about areas for improvement in Elastic Observability, aspects such as pricing, customization, implementation, and scalability could be improved. As a user of the system, I know what it costs but am not directly involved in cost-benefit evaluations or maintenance, which is handled by another team. I develop the visual representation of the data and frankly, I don't see major gaps in my application or anything I would really miss; I appreciate the fast pace of the developments that have occurred in the last couple of years. Regarding room for improvement in Elastic Observability, I would have preferred built-in tools to manage the indexes on deployment for better visual representation, as the initial feedback regarding system performance and data storage was fairly primitive and lacking.
Volodymyr Bondarchuk - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrations enhance monitoring but problem-solving proves challenging
Different types of integrations with various sources are the most helpful and useful features of Grafana Loki that I found for myself. As part of Kubernetes technology, I noticed benefits from using this product such as availability, configuration balancing, high availability solutions for high performance, and failover clustering. It provides a clear picture about the state of the system and gives needed information for taking action and quickly fixing problems.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We can view and connect different sources to the dashboard using it."
"It is very stable, and I would rate it ten out of ten based on my interaction with it."
"It is a powerful tool that allows users to collect and transform logs as needed, enabling flexible visualization and analysis."
"Machine learning is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"The ability to ensure that the data is searchable and maintainable is highly valuable for our purposes."
"The solution is open-source and helps with back-end logging. It is also easy to handle."
"The product has connectors to many services."
"It's easy to deploy, and it's very flexible."
"Loki also utilizes the same service discovery mechanism as used by Prometheus. So, whatever labeled metadata you see in Prometheus, you have the exact same metadata in the Loki system. Given this level of intricacy and the attempt to address these challenges, I firmly believe that Loki deserves praise for the work."
"Grafana agent is very lightweight and does not cost significant resources of our cluster."
"Different types of integrations with various sources are the most helpful and useful features of Grafana Loki that I found for myself."
"Grafana Loki is easy to monitor and detect errors."
"The effectiveness of filters is pivotal for optimizing the search process and extracting the specific information we need from the extensive log data."
"The most valuable features of the solution stem from the fact that it is an open-source tool that is stable and flexible."
"The most valuable part of Loki is the ability to filter logs by keywords and devices."
"I appreciate the capability to process logs from microservices and seamlessly integrate them into Grafana."
 

Cons

"Elastic Observability is difficult to use. There are only three options for customization but this can be difficult for our use case. We do not have other options to choose the metrics shown, such as CPU or memory usage."
"Elastic Observability could improve asset discovery as the current requirement to push the agent is not ideal."
"Elastic Observability needs to improve the retrieval of logs and metrics from all the instances."
"More web features could be added to the product."
"If we had some pre-defined templates for observability that we could start using right away after deploying it – instead of having to build or to change some of the dashboards – that would be helpful."
"Elastic Observability is an excellent product for monitoring and visibility, but it lacks predictive analytics. Most solutions are aligned with the AIOps requirements, but this piece is missing in Elastic and should be included."
"The solution would be better if it was capable of more automation, especially in a monitoring capacity or for the response to abnormalities."
"Elastic Observability’s price could be improved."
"The platform's stability needs improvement."
"It would be beneficial if Loki could directly access Windows Server logs or events directly from the servers."
"We had a well-structured dashboard with a functional query. However, an issue arose when the Kubernetes pod restarted. The statistics from our Grafana query would reset, dropping to zero and starting anew. This was particularly noticeable with linear graphs, which are expected to show consistent growth."
"I do not see any areas for improvement at the moment."
"We encountered certain limitations when it came to alerting, particularly when dealing with specific data sources."
"The product must improve its UI."
"It's not intended for proprietary services, so you have to struggle with configuration a lot."
"Enhancing speed could be a game-changer, and while it might vary depending on the application, it's a factor worth exploring."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."
"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."
"We will buy a premium license after POC."
"There are two types: cloud and SaaS. They charge based on data ingestion, ingest rate, hard retention, and warm retention. I believe it costs around $25,000 annually to ingest 30GB of data daily. That is the SaaS version. There is also a self-managed license where the customer manages their own infrastructure on-prem. In such cases, there are three license tiers that respectively cost $5,000 annually per node, $7,000 per node, and $12,500 per node."
"The price of Elastic Observability is expensive."
"Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."
"We have been using the open-source version."
"The product is not that cheap."
"Grafana Loki is an open-source solution."
"The pricing structure varies based on the number of users; there might be specific taxes to pay for it."
"Grafana Loki is a free, open-source solution."
"The solution is open source."
"We use a free version."
"I find the licensing structure quite reasonable, as the free license effectively meets my requirements."
"My company doesn't need to pay for the licensing cost of the solution."
"You can use the free version of Grafana Loki on-premises."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?
The problem is their licensing model, which is a bit confusing. Many customers struggle to understand their total cost of ownership because Elastic licensing is not dependent on easy, quantifiable ...
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
Out-of-the-box use cases have room for improvement in Elastic Observability. They don't invest a lot in building out-of-the-box observable use cases, and they are more focusing on giving a very fle...
What do you like most about Grafana Loki?
We are using Grafana Loki as a database for real-time metrics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana Loki?
Since it is an open source tool, there are no charges or fees.
What needs improvement with Grafana Loki?
I have no ideas at this moment about what could be improved in Grafana Loki.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Observability vs. Grafana Loki and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,778 professionals have used our research since 2012.