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Elastic Search vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 9, 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
4.4
Elastic Search boosts efficiency, reduces server downtimes, saves resources, and enhances ROI with data handling and cloud platform advantages.
Sentiment score
6.3
Users experienced improved efficiency, security, and decision-making with Splunk, despite cost challenges, leading to increased revenue and ROI.
We have not purchased any licensed products, and our use of Elastic Search is purely open-source, contributing positively to our ROI.
Software Engineer at Government of India
It is stable, and we do not encounter critical issues like server downtime, which could result in data loss.
SOC A2 at Innodata-ISOGEN
The main benefits observed from using Elastic Search include improvements in operational efficiency, along with cost, time, and resource savings.
Senior Devops Engineer at Ubique Digital LTD
The documentation for Splunk Enterprise Security is outstanding. It is well-organized and easy to access.
DevOps&Cloud Engineer Mentee at CertDirectory.io
We couldn't calculate what would have been the cost if they had actually gotten compromised; however, they were in the process, so every investment was returned immediately.
Business Development Manager at Axians Germany
On average, my SecOps team takes probably at least a quarter of the time, if not more, to remediate security incidents with Splunk Enterprise Security compared to our previous solution.
IT Orchestration Architect at Penn State University
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.2
Elastic Search's support is praised for expertise yet criticized for response times; community resources and documentation are valued alternatives.
Sentiment score
6.2
Splunk Enterprise Security's support is knowledgeable but inconsistent, with response times varying; community resources are vital for effective solutions.
The customer support for Elastic Search is one of the best I have ever tried.
Software Developer at a media company with 10,001+ employees
They have always been really responsible and responsive to my requests.
Security Lead at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
It has been sufficient to visit conferences such as SCALE in Southern California Linux Expo, where Elastic Search has a booth to talk to their staff.
Principal Scientific Computing Software Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
We have paid for Splunk support, and we’re not on the free tier hoping for assistance; we are a significant customer and invest a lot in this service.
Senior System Administrator at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
I have had nothing but good experiences with Splunk support, receiving timely and helpful replies.
Cyber Security Associate at SAP
We've had great customer success managers who have helped us navigate scaling from 600 gigs to 30 terabytes.
Principal Engineer at Aviatrix
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Elastic Search scales well but may face challenges with large databases, requiring careful management in cloud environments.
Sentiment score
7.3
Splunk Enterprise Security offers scalable architecture, supporting diverse environments and data volumes, though costs increase with large data growth.
I would rate its scalability a ten.
Backend Developer
Since we're on the cloud, whenever we need to upgrade or add resources, they handle everything.
Security Lead at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
We haven't encountered any problems so far, and there is the potential for auto-scaling.
Head of Data Management at Zeno Health
We currently rely on disaster recovery and backup recovery, which takes time to recover, during which you're basically blind, so I'm pushing my leadership team to switch over to a clustering environment for constant availability.
IT Security Engineer at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
It is one of the things that separates it from other tooling, and if not, it is the most scalable solution out there.
Systems Development Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
They struggle a bit with pure virtual environments, but in terms of how much they can handle, it is pretty good.
CTO at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Elastic Search is reliable and robust but may face memory issues or inconsistencies under heavy loads or poor planning.
Sentiment score
7.5
Splunk Enterprise Security is highly reliable, with minimal stability issues, but requires careful resource management for optimal performance.
The data transfer sometimes exceeded the bandwidth limits without proper notification, which caused issues.
SOC A2 at Innodata-ISOGEN
The stability of Elasticsearch was very high.
Backend Developer
When you put one keyword, everything related to that keyword in your ecosystem will showcase all the results.
Chief Information Security Officer at CDSL Ventures Limited
They test it very thoroughly before release, and our customers have Splunk running for months without issues.
Splunk System Engineer at a non-tech company with 11-50 employees
Splunk has been very reliable and very consistent.
Principal Engineer at Aviatrix
We need more SMEs, and there is no mechanism to tell us about indexer or search head issues.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

Security, user interface, and scalability issues dominate user feedback, alongside requests for improved integration, support, and feature clarity.
Splunk Enterprise Security needs UI improvements, better training, cost reductions, enhanced integrations, optimized analytics, and increased automation.
From a technical point of view, there are no significant issues recalled as Elastic Search has been absolutely awesome for this use case and covers 100% of the needs.
Principal Scientific Computing Software Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
If I need to parse one million records saved into Elastic Search, it becomes a nightmare because I need to do the pagination, and it is very problematic in that regard.
Lead Engineer at Spidersilk
Observability features like search latency, indexing rate, and maybe rejected requests should be added to make the platform more reliable and accessible for everyone.
Senior System Engineer at EPAM Systems
Improving the infrastructure behind Splunk Enterprise Security is vital—enhanced cores, CPUs, and memory should be prioritized to support better processing power.
Resident Consultant (Security Analyst) at helpag
Splunk Enterprise Security is not something that automatically picks things; you have to set up use cases, update data models, and link the right use cases to the right data models for those detections to happen.
Security & Risk Analyst at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
For any future enhancements or features, such as MLTK and SOAR platform integration, we need more visibility, training, and certification for the skilled professionals who are working.
Security Consultant at Matiq
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise users appreciate Elastic Search's open-source nature, though costs can escalate with technical requirements and node-based pricing.
Splunk Enterprise Security is costly, but its features justify the expense for those with larger budgets.
On the AWS side, it is very expensive because they charge based on query basis or how much data is transferred in and out, making it very expensive.
Lead Engineer at Spidersilk
Having the hosted solution and not having to pay for essentially a DevOps person on staff to manage makes it affordable.
CTO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
You can host it on-premises, which would incur zero cost, or take it as a SaaS-based service, where the expenses remain minimal.
Senior Software Engineer at Agoda
I saw clients spend two million dollars a year just feeding data into the Splunk solution.
CTO at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The platform requires significant financial investment and resources, making it expensive despite its comprehensive features.
System Engineer - Security Presales at Raya Integration
I find it to be affordable, which is why every industry uses it.
Vice President Research And Development at OSINT Ambition
 

Valuable Features

Elastic Search offers scalable, fast search, data integration, and analytics with cost-effective, adaptable features and robust security.
Splunk Enterprise Security excels in rapid data searching, real-time monitoring, flexible data ingestion, and comprehensive visualization for enhanced security.
Elastic Search makes handling large data volumes efficient and supports complex search operations.
Software Engineer at Government of India
The most valuable feature of Elasticsearch was the quick search capability, allowing us to search by any criteria needed.
Backend Developer
The speed with which Elastic Search is able to search through all of the documents we place into it is quite remarkable, as we search through 65 billion documents in less than a second in most cases, on a constant consistent basis.
Director, Software Engineering at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
This capability is useful for performance monitoring and issue identification.
Staff Performance Engineer at ServiceNow
I assess Splunk Enterprise Security's insider threat detection capabilities for helping to find unknown threats and anomalous user behavior as great.
Splunk System Engineer at a non-tech company with 11-50 employees
Splunk Enterprise Security provides the foundation for unified threat detection, investigation, and response, enabling fast identification of critical issues.
Specialist-Infrastructure Opertions at Allianz Technology
 

Categories and Ranking

Elastic Search
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (6th), Search as a Service (1st), Vector Databases (2nd)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
375
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (2nd), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Elastic Search and Splunk Enterprise Security aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Elastic Search is designed for Indexing and Search and holds a mindshare of 13.6%, down 28.0% compared to last year.
Splunk Enterprise Security, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 7.4% mindshare, down 10.0% since last year.
Indexing and Search Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Elastic Search13.6%
Lucidworks7.5%
OpenText Knowledge Discovery (IDOL)6.7%
Other72.2%
Indexing and Search
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security7.4%
Wazuh7.3%
IBM Security QRadar5.6%
Other79.7%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Q&A Highlights

VV
DevOps Engineer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
Nov 13, 2019
 

Featured Reviews

Vaibhav Shukla - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at Agoda
Search performance has transformed large-scale intent discovery and hybrid query handling
While Elastic Search is a good product, I see areas for improvement, particularly regarding the misconception that any amount of data can simply be dumped into Elastic Search. When creating an index, careful consideration of data massaging is essential. Elastic Search stores mappings for various data types, which must remain below a certain threshold to maintain functionality. Users need to throttle the number of fields for searching to avoid overloading the system and ensure that the design of the document is efficient for the Elastic Search index. Additionally, I suggest utilizing ILM periodically throughout the year to manage data shuffling between clusters, preventing hotspots in the distribution of requests across nodes.
reviewer1469784 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Helps us detect cyber threats quickly and integrate multiple feeds effectively
Overall, the product is good, but when it comes to some infrastructure issues, we have to dig into more logs. There is no straightforward indication of an issue. Health check kind of dashboards are not available. More AI would help us, and more optimization, since security products run more queries. The AI module could suggest solutions, optimizing queries or workload balancing. If the product itself advises on running queries during peak times, it would be similar to what ChatGPT currently offers. We see quite a few issues on stability. Even last week, we faced something, and identifying bottlenecks is not easy. We need more SMEs, and there is no mechanism to tell us about indexer or search head issues. Self-monitoring dashboards could be beneficial. The technical support still requires more improvement. Often, primary support takes a lot of time and forwards most solutions to the engineering side. The primary support team has very limited knowledge to provide.
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Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Feb 26, 2015
HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. ​McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm
We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Answers from the Community

VV
DevOps Engineer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
Nov 13, 2019
Nov 13, 2019
First of all, we need to understand what those two softwares are; Splunk is a finished SIEM that is mainly used to analyze data, such as logs, net flows, etc. Splunk comes in different flavors, below I will include a link of all the products they have. https://www.splunk.com/en_us/software.html Some of them can be even downloaded or you can try them in the cloud, below I will give you a link ...
2 out of 4 answers
NF
Account-Manager at Consist ITU Environmental Software GmbH
Nov 11, 2019
We use ELK or other freeware stacks in isolated small scenarios. Think of a small or medium company with a „midsized“ webshop. You can easily do your Log management with an ELK-Stack, let's say size 5 up to 10 GB, no Problem. Please keep in mind to order Hardware. The best thing on ELK is that you can start immediately you don't have to wait for licensing and it's easy to build the first small things. Another Example: Your Marketing Dep. wants to do some singular evaluations and very specialized marketing stuff. It is temporary and they don't have the budget for licensing. The results are not for permanent use. Just use ELK. In my opinion, ELK is only cost-effective if you don't need to buy their professional service. You must leave the cases small. If you are looking for bigger scenarios or you want to build-up a SIEM, SOC or even doing elevated things like SOAR it is a very different kind of thing. There can be account issues that a developer usually won't mind at the first glance but a Controller will. You have to look at the Total Cost of Ownership, Scalability, Time to Market, Secureness of future development, maintenance e.g. If you want to build up a complex scenario with the secureness of scalability you should go with SPLUNK. If tomorrow there is a better tool with lower costs and less need for input of manpower I will refer to this.
AB
Associate Product Marketing Manager with 501-1,000 employees
Nov 11, 2019
Splunk: hard to use, expensive with predatory pricing, few OOTB rules, SOAR is a premium, good luck training analyst on their platform in under six months. SPLUNK SEARCH. ELK Stack: easy to use, open-source, no predatory pricing, more robust use cases OOTB, loved and used by millions all over the globe, open ecosystem that can integrate with almost any major IT stack out of the box. LUCENE.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise43
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business109
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise264
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ELK Elasticsearch?
Logsign provides us with the capability to execute multiple queries according to our requirements. The indexing is very high, making it effective for storing and retrieving logs. The real-time anal...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?
Elastic Search's pricing totally depends on the server. Managed services from AWS are used, and we have worked on a self-managed Elastic Search cluster. On the AWS side, it is very expensive becaus...
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
To be honest, there is only one downside of Elastic Search that makes sense because we use a basic license, which is a free license. We do not have some features available because of the free licen...
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...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
 

Also Known As

Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

T-Mobile, Adobe, Booking.com, BMW, Telegraph Media Group, Cisco, Karbon, Deezer, NORBr, Labelbox, Fingerprint, Relativity, NHS Hospital, Met Office, Proximus, Go1, Mentat, Bluestone Analytics, Humanz, Hutch, Auchan, Sitecore, Linklaters, Socren, Infotrack, Pfizer, Engadget, Airbus, Grab, Vimeo, Ticketmaster, Asana, Twilio, Blizzard, Comcast, RWE and many others.
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic, Luigi's Box, OpenText and others in Indexing and Search. Updated: January 2026.
880,901 professionals have used our research since 2012.