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Elastic Observability vs Logstash comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (10th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (15th), Container Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (11th)
Logstash
Ranking in Log Management
27th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 1.2%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Logstash is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Observability1.2%
Logstash0.9%
Other97.9%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammed-Abdelalim - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
reviewer2727468 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Application Engineer at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
Transforms logs for real-time insights and seamless reporting
Logstash is used for transforming logs, and you can use many plugins in Logstash. Logstash works with configuration files that contain three main parts: an input part, a filter part, and an output part. In the input part, we can take logs from many sources such as Beats, files, or Kafka. The filter part is used to filter the logs that are shipped from Beats. From my understanding and experience with Logstash, it is usually used for processing logic, meaning I can control what fields should be transferred to Elastic and what fields shouldn't be transferred. This is the main function I use Logstash for. Elastic is a famous open-source searching engine that helps operation teams speed up the investigation process and provides real-time insights for performance reporting.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool's most valuable feature is centralized logging. Elastic Common Search helps us to search for the logs across the organization."
"The ability to ensure that the data is searchable and maintainable is highly valuable for our purposes."
"I think Elastic Observability is already in very good shape."
"We can view and connect different sources to the dashboard using it."
"I have built a mini business intelligence system based on Elastic Observability."
"Its diverse set of features available on the cloud is of significant importance."
"It is very stable, and I would rate it ten out of ten based on my interaction with it."
"It's easy to deploy, and it's very flexible."
"Everything aligns well with improving our organization."
"Logstash has numerous plugins for inputs and outputs, allowing it to work well in environments that do not contain other Elastic components."
"The functionality of Logstash is quite easy to implement and the plugin ecosystem of Logstash is great, with plugins for shell script monitoring and SQL monitoring working well with the tool."
"I can collect logs from various data sources, including hardware."
"The transformation means we ship the logs in the way that we want them to be presented in Kibana, which is the main function we use Logstash for."
"We have three or four Logstash servers for high availability."
 

Cons

"In the future, Elastic APM needs a portfolio iTool. They can provide an easy way to develop the custom UI for Kibana."
"The solution would be better if it was capable of more automation, especially in a monitoring capacity or for the response to abnormalities."
"The cost must be made more transparent."
"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."
"There is room for improvement regarding its APM capabilities."
"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."
"They need more skills in the market. There are not enough skills in the market. It is not pervasive enough on the market, in my opinion. In other words, there isn't a big enough user base."
"One example is the inability to monitor very old databases with the newest version."
"There can be a UI to implement with Logstash. Currently, I have to work with config files and everything."
"The product needs to improve its compatibility."
"Almost all the research can be very bad. We still have a problem with importing the log system."
"We still have a problem with importing the log system."
"Elastic does not provide proper support for Logstash worldwide, and I rate their technical support as one out of ten."
"An enhancement we could implement is the ability to cluster Logstash to exist in more than one node."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 product’s pricing needs improvement."
"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."
"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."
"The product is not that cheap."
"We have been using the open-source version."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Educational Organization
6%
 

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?
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,...
What do you like most about Logstash?
I can collect logs from various data sources, including hardware.
What needs improvement with Logstash?
Customization can be automated with Logstash, but it is at the developer's disposal. The developer has to do it, not the tool as such. There is scope for optimization, but that is all outside the t...
What is your primary use case for Logstash?
The purposes for which I am using Logstash largely include log aggregation and application monitoring.
 

Comparisons

 

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. Logstash and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.