Elastic Observability vs Honeycomb Enterprise comparison

Elastic and Honeycomb.io are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Elastic is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.7, while Honeycomb.io is ranked #25 with an average rating of 8.0. Elastic holds a 3.0% mindshare in APM, compared to Honeycomb.io’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Elastic users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Honeycomb.io users who would recommend it.

Elastic Observability

Read 29 Elastic Observability reviews

8,461 Views
7,023 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Honeycomb Enterprise

Read 3 Honeycomb Enterprise reviews

2,582 Views
2,272 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Elastic Observability

Honeycomb Enterprise

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

Elastic Observability and Honeycomb Enterprise are competing in the observability market. Honeycomb Enterprise holds a superior position with its advanced features providing valuable insights.

Features: Elastic Observability offers robust analytics, efficient search capabilities, and seamless integration with the Elastic Stack, providing users with comprehensive real-time insights. Honeycomb Enterprise features granular event-level data visualization, advanced debugging, and powerful analytical tools enabling more detailed troubleshooting processes for complex scenarios.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Elastic Observability is easy to deploy, especially for Elastic Stack users, and provides reliable support. Honeycomb Enterprise, using a cloud-native approach, simplifies scaling and management but might present challenges during initial configuration. Both support systems are strong, but Elastic's support is more accessible during the setup stage.

Pricing and ROI: Elastic Observability offers competitive pricing with a substantial ROI, especially for those utilizing the Elastic Stack ecosystem, providing a cost-effective solution. Honeycomb Enterprise, while more expensive, delivers a high ROI through its advanced capabilities, transforming complex needs into clear insights, serving those with demanding requirements.

To learn more, read our detailed Elastic Observability vs. Honeycomb Enterprise Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability vs. Honeycomb Enterprise

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 Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

6th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (9th), Log Management (12th), Container Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)

Honeycomb Enterprise

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

25th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

AI Code Assistants (11th), AI Observability (18th)

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 3.0%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Honeycomb Enterprise is 1.3%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Elastic Observability	3.0%
Honeycomb Enterprise	1.3%
Other	95.7%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Mohammed-Abdelalim

Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Has provided powerful customization for unique monitoring needs but needs more out-of-the-box capabilities

In my opinion, the best features of Elastic Observability are their flexibility to integrate with other existing systems and the ability to build a unified monitoring tool that can integrate with existing ones and end-to-end user journeys which require a lot of customizations. The greatest feature in Elastic is the ability to customize. This is similar to my comments about customizable dashboards in Elastic because it's visible to the analyst. However, it's very great. Customizing these dashboards can meet the customer's specific use cases and specific stories that they have in their environment, their special environment that doesn't look like other environments. The dashboarding in Elastic is highly customizable to the level of logos. If the customer wants his company logo in the dashboard, it can be done.

Read full review

meetharoon

CEO at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

Its pattern-matching and code transformation capabilities can be adapted for mass identification and remediation of vulnerable libraries

I asked very specific questions to Mr. Pell about consideration of code security scenarios in pattern design and rules, specifically that tuned with OWASP Top 10. I believe addition of code security focus can be a value-add, though the way Grit architecture is designed and how it works, it is and may not become an alternative choice of code security solutions. Rather, it must be treated as a powerful supplementary tool that augments the existing code security solutions (such as Snyk or Checkmarx) in a DevSecOps or Secure DevOps environment. Anyone interested in learning more on this front or have queries, can get in touch with me for a consulting.

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

"The Elastic User Interface framework lets us do custom development when needed. You need to have some Javascript knowledge. We need that knowledge to develop new custom tests."

"Elastic provides built-in features for queries and report generation. It's a very good tool for monitoring integration capabilities."

"Good design and easy to use once implemented."

"Its diverse set of features available on the cloud is of significant importance."

"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 over a month from multiple data sources can be completed within seconds."

"It has always been a stable solution."

"The architecture and system's stability are simple."

"I have built a mini business intelligence system based on Elastic Observability."

More Elastic Observability pros

"The solution's most valuable features are the queries for the OpenTelemetry events and all the tracing."

"The solution's initial setup process was straightforward since we were getting enough support from Honeycomb.io's team."

"The approach offers significant benefits in terms of efficiency, consistency, and proactive security management, particularly valuable for organizations with large, distributed development teams."

Cons

"One example is the inability to monitor very old databases with the newest version."

"Elastic Observability could improve asset discovery as the current requirement to push the agent is not ideal."

"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."

"The solution needs to use more AI. Once the product onboards AI, users would more effectively be able to track endpoints for specific messages."

"Elastic APM's visualization is not that great compared to other tools. It's number of metrics is very low."

"The auto-discovery isn't nearly as good. That's a big portion of it. When you drop the agent onto the JVM and you're trying to figure things out, having to go through and manually do all that is cumbersome."

"Elastic Observability’s price could be improved."

"In the future, Elastic APM needs a portfolio iTool. They can provide an easy way to develop the custom UI for Kibana."

More Elastic Observability cons

"The way Grit architecture is designed and how it works, it is and may not become an alternative choice of code security solutions."

"We can make alerts based on static numbers, which may block us from building alerts that could be generic enough or could be serviced."

"The process of log scraping gets delayed on Honeycomb.io. At times, it gives false alerts to the application team."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product’s pricing needs improvement."

"Elastic Observability is cheaper than other similar solutions, such as Dynatrace. Its license calculation is based on various factors like data volume and physical infrastructure, particularly related to RAM capacity."

"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."

"We have been using the open-source version."

"Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."

"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."

"So far, there are just the standard licensing fees. Several of the components are embedded in the license or are even open source. They're even free depending on what you use, which makes it even more appealing to someone that is discussing pricing of the solution."

"The product is not that cheap."

More Elastic Observability pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	16

No data available

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?

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,...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Honeycomb.io?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Honeycomb.io?

Although Grit is a tool code code migration and management of technical debt for large chunks of work, we reviewed Grit from the use case of assisting in faster remediation of vulnerable libraries....

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Honeycomb.io?

We set up Honeycomb.io on all the services so that we can have all the set traces of the communication between all the services inside the company. This helps us understand where it could be failin...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

Dynatrace vs Elastic Observability

Compared 8% of the time

Grafana vs Elastic Observability

Compared 8% of the time

Zabbix vs Elastic Observability

Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 18% of the time

Grafana vs Honeycomb Enterprise

Compared 9% of the time

Splunk Observability Cloud vs Honeycomb Enterprise

Compared 8% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Honeycomb Enterprise

Compared 5% of the time

Chronosphere vs Honeycomb Enterprise

Compared 4% of the time

More Honeycomb Enterprise Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability

December 2025

Download Elastic Observability product report

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

November 2025

Download Honeycomb Enterprise product report

Also Known As

No data available

Grit

Overview

Elastic Observability offers a comprehensive suite for log analytics, application performance monitoring, and machine learning. It integrates seamlessly with platforms like Teams and Slack, enhancing data visualization and scalability for real-time insights.

Elastic Observability is designed to support production environments with features like logging, data collection, and infrastructure tracking. Centralized logging and powerful search functionalities make incident response and performance tracking efficient. Elastic APM and Kibana facilitate detailed data visualization, promoting rapid troubleshooting and effective system performance analysis. Integrated services and extensive connectivity options enhance its role in business and technical decision-making by providing actionable data insights.

What are the most important features of Elastic Observability?

Centralized Logging: Streamlines the collection, analysis, and storage of log data.
Powerful Search: Provides robust search capabilities for quick access to relevant information.
Scalability: Supports growing data needs across diverse environments.
Real-time Telemetry: Ensures up-to-date insights and monitoring.
Platform Integration: Seamlessly connects with services like Teams and Slack.
Data Visualization: Enhances visibility with Elastic APM and Kibana.

What benefits and ROI should users explore in reviews?

Cost-effectiveness: Offers significant savings through efficient data management.
Rapid Incident Response: Minimizes downtime with quick troubleshooting tools.
Comprehensive Insights: Supports better business decisions with detailed data analysis.
Performance Tracking: Enables assessment of system effectiveness and improvements.

Elastic Observability is employed across industries for critical operations, such as in finance for transaction monitoring, in healthcare for secure data management, and in technology for optimizing application performance. Its data-driven approach aids efficient event tracing, supporting diverse industry requirements.

Elastic

Honeycomb Enterprise is designed to optimize performance visibility, offering a robust platform for distributed system observability. It provides insights for complex data and aids in faster issue resolution, making it a valuable tool for IT professionals.

This tool is tailored for real-time data tracking and improving system performance efficiency. Enterprises benefit from its capacity to handle large-scale data, ensuring seamless operations and continuity. Honeycomb Enterprise helps teams to tackle data challenges head-on by delivering comprehensive analytics that enhance infrastructure reliability and performance metrics.

What Features Make Honeycomb Enterprise Stand Out?

High-Resolution Visibility: Enables detailed system monitoring to identify issues quickly.
Trace Analysis: Offers powerful tracing of distributed systems for in-depth insights.
Data Scalability: Manages extensive data sets effortlessly for better decision-making.
Real-Time Alerts: Provides instant alerts to preempt potential disruptions.
Collaboration Tools: Facilitates teamwork with integrated tools enhancing productivity.

What Benefits and ROI Can Users Expect?

Reduced Downtime: Faster detection and resolution of issues minimizes operational interruptions.
Cost Efficiency: Optimizes resources leading to lower operational costs.
Improved Decision Making: Enhanced data analytics lead to smarter business strategies.
Enhanced Productivity: Streamlined processes improve team efficiency and output quality.

In industries like finance, e-commerce, and technology, Honeycomb Enterprise implementations demonstrate its utility in managing complex data flows and optimizing system reliability. Businesses in these sectors leverage its capabilities to maintain high service standards and operational efficiency.

Honeycomb.io

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank

Clover Health, Eaze, Intercom, Fender

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability vs. Honeycomb Enterprise

December 2025

Free Report: Elastic Observability vs. Honeycomb Enterprise

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