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Elastic Observability vs Honeycomb Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

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
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (10th), Log Management (14th), Container Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)
Honeycomb Enterprise
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
26th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
AI Code Assistants (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 3.9%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Honeycomb Enterprise is 1.4%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Elastic Observability3.9%
Honeycomb Enterprise1.4%
Other94.7%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

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.
meetharoon - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Machine learning is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"It has always been a stable solution."
"The solution has been stable in our usage."
"The customizable dashboards in Elastic Observability allow us to group relevant data to specific aspects of our solution, giving us around 20 interlinked dashboards which provide an overview, and if one aspect shows weird behavior, we can focus on that specific aspect of our software with a dedicated dashboard."
"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."
"The architecture and system's stability are simple."
"I think Elastic Observability is already in very good shape."
"The most valued feature of Elastic is its log analytics capabilities."
"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

"There could be more low-code features included in the product."
"The cost must be made more transparent."
"Elastic Observability could improve asset discovery as the current requirement to push the agent is not ideal."
"The tool's scalability involves a more complex implementation process. It requires careful calculations to determine the number of nodes needed, the specifications of each node, and the configuration of hot, warm, and cold zones for data storage. Additionally, managing log retention policies adds further complexity. The solution's pricing also needs to be cheaper."
"There's a steep learning curve if you've never used this solution before."
"Elastic Observability needs to have better standardization, logging, and schema."
"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."
"One example is the inability to monitor very old databases with the newest version."
"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."
"The way Grit architecture is designed and how it works, it is and may not become an alternative choice of code security solutions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Elastic Observability is expensive."
"The product’s pricing needs improvement."
"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."
"Elastic Observability's pricing could be better for small-scale users."
"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."
"Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."
"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."
Information not available
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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%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
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...
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 needs improvement with Honeycomb.io?
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 securit...
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....
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Grit
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
Clover Health, Eaze, Intercom, Fender
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Observability vs. Honeycomb Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,029 professionals have used our research since 2012.