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Elastic Observability vs IBM Security QRadar comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.1
Elastic Observability enhances cost-effectiveness, reduces incidents, and improves efficiency, yielding significant time savings and operational benefits.
Sentiment score
7.5
IBM Security QRadar is praised for efficiency, affordability, and high ROI, acting as essential protection against security threats.
Investing this amount was very much worth it for my organization.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.7
Elastic Observability's support is praised for prompt, efficient service and effective community-driven insights, enhancing overall user experience.
Sentiment score
6.1
IBM Security QRadar's customer service is excellent but has inconsistent support quality and response times varying by region.
They assist with advanced issues, such as hardware or other problems, that are not part of standard operations.
The problem escalates through level one to level three, and then the process starts over with Novo again.
I received very good support, possibly due to a good relationship with IBM.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Elastic Observability is efficiently scalable, with performance stability across varying team sizes, influenced by subscription level and infrastructure.
Sentiment score
7.5
IBM Security QRadar is renowned for its scalability, smoothly managing large loads with hardware integration and license upgrades.
Elastic Observability seems to have a good scale-out capability.
What is not scalable for us is not on Elastic's side.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Elastic Observability is praised for its robust and stable performance, efficiently handling large data volumes across industries.
Sentiment score
7.6
IBM Security QRadar is stable with proper deployment, though some users face issues from misconfigurations or high log volumes.
It is very stable, and I would rate it ten out of ten based on my interaction with it.
Elastic Observability is really stable.
I think QRadar is stable and currently satisfies my needs.
The product has been stable so far.
 

Room For Improvement

Elastic Observability needs better licensing, visualization, automation, integration, pricing, AI features, customization, and support for observability and cost transparency.
IBM Security QRadar requires enhanced UI, integration, and AI, as it's complex, costly, and has suboptimal support and dashboard features.
It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like network observability, package flow analysis, and device performance data on the infrastructure side.
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.
We receive logs from different types of devices and need a way to correlate them effectively.
If AI-related support can suggest rules and integrate with existing security devices like MD, IPS, this SIM can create more relevant rules.
Improving the integration with IBM Server for MetaMask for correlation rules would be beneficial.
 

Setup Cost

Elastic Observability offers competitive pricing with variable costs, favoring enterprises over startups, requiring premiums for advanced features.
IBM Security QRadar is a high-cost SIEM solution ideal for large enterprises, offering strong features and negotiable pricing.
The license is reasonably priced, however, the VMs where we host the solution are extremely expensive, making the overall cost in the public cloud high.
Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing.
 

Valuable Features

Elastic Observability offers scalable logging, seamless integrations, real-time visualization, and enhances system performance with a user-friendly, open-source model.
IBM Security QRadar excels in scalability, integration, real-time threat detection, and supports diverse environments with customizable dashboards and analytics.
The most valuable feature is the integrated platform that allows customers to start from observability and expand into other areas like security, EDR solutions, etc.
the most valued feature of Elastic is its log analytics capabilities.
All the features that we use, such as monitoring, dashboarding, reporting, the possibility of alerting, and the way we index the data, are important.
Recently, I faced an incident, a cyber incident, and it was detected in real time.
IBM is seeking information about IBM QRadar because a part of QRadar, especially in the cloud, has been sold to Palo Alto.
The scenarios we could write regarding the compliance-related issues were quite helpful.
 

Categories and Ranking

Elastic Observability
Ranking in Log Management
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (7th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Container Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)
IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Log Management
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
208
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (4th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (17th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (9th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 1.4%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 3.7%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Adelina Craciun - PeerSpot reviewer
Customization enables tailored monitoring and alerting across departments
The possibility to customize it has been quite useful. Whatever the other departments want to dream up, we implement. Whatever they want to monitor, the granularity of it, the changes in the threshold, and the anomalies that they want reported all require some development. So far, every single request has been fulfilled.
Md. Shahriar Hussain - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time incident detection and user-friendly dashboard benefit daily operations
There are many types of AI, and this AI is very limited in SQL and features. There may be potential for improvement. So far, it seems very limited. It shows some good features in the correlation part, but I think there is room for improvement. For instance, when creating rules, it can suggest more rules, reducing the effort needed. If AI-related support can suggest rules and integrate with existing security devices like MD, IPS, this SIM can create more relevant rules. Sometimes logs I receive don't mean anything, and I need technical stakeholders to share or forward logs, but these are sometimes inadequate. Keywords can help identify insufficient logs. I often lack time to verify logs. Sharing false positive results could be reduced to help my team.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Log Management solutions are best for your needs.
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Comparison Review

VS
Jun 28, 2015
Qradar vs. ArcSight
Continuing with the SIEM posts we have done at Infosecnirvana, this post is a Head to head comparison of the two Industry leading SIEM products in the market – HP ArcSight and IBM QRadar Both the products have consistently been in the Gartner Leaders Quadrant. Both HP and IBM took over niche SIEM…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing. However, sizing and licensing information could be clearer.
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
Of course, maintenance is necessary, as with any software, requiring updates with the latest features and security enhancements. It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like netw...
What are the biggest differences between Securonix UEBA, Exabeam, and IBM QRadar?
It mostly depends on your use-cases and environment. Exabeam and Securonix have a stronger UEBA feature set, friendlier GUI and are not licensed based on capacity (amount of logs and information in...
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Observability vs. IBM Security QRadar and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.