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Elastic Search vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 3, 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
5.4
Organizations had mixed ROI with Elasticsearch; some saved on costs using open-source, while others faced high licensing fees.
Sentiment score
6.4
Splunk Enterprise Security enhances visibility, improves error resolution, automates processes, and integrates well, though ROI assessment can be challenging.
We have not purchased any licensed products, and our use of Elastic Search is purely open-source, contributing positively to our ROI.
It is stable, and we do not encounter critical issues like server downtime, which could result in data loss.
The main benefits observed from using Elastic Search include improvements in operational efficiency, along with cost, time, and resource savings.
The documentation for Splunk Enterprise Security is outstanding. It is well-organized and easy to access.
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.
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.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
Elastic Search's support receives varied feedback, with users favoring community resources and some noting slower official assistance.
Sentiment score
6.3
Splunk Enterprise Security support is knowledgeable but occasionally slow, with mixed efficiency reviews and valuable community resources.
The customer support for Elastic Search is one of the best I have ever tried.
I would rate technical support from Elastic Search as three out of ten.
The customer support for Elastic Search is quite good.
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.
I have had nothing but good experiences with Splunk support, receiving timely and helpful replies.
We've had great customer success managers who have helped us navigate scaling from 600 gigs to 30 terabytes.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Elastic Search is scalable, especially in cloud environments, but high-volume scalability requires careful planning and infrastructure investment.
Sentiment score
7.4
Splunk Enterprise Security offers scalable, flexible solutions handling large data volumes effortlessly, though cost concerns persist, especially on-premise.
I would rate its scalability a ten.
I can actually add more storage and memory because I host it in the cloud.
I would rate the scalability of Elasticsearch as an eight.
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.
They struggle a bit with pure virtual environments, but in terms of how much they can handle, it is pretty good.
It is easy to scale.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Elastic Search is generally stable, but performance can vary due to infrastructure, version changes, and configuration requirements.
Sentiment score
7.5
Splunk Enterprise Security is stable and resilient, though resource-heavy queries can cause occasional bugs, needing optimized use cases.
The data transfer sometimes exceeded the bandwidth limits without proper notification, which caused issues.
The stability of Elasticsearch was very high.
Elastic Search is quite stable.
They test it very thoroughly before release, and our customers have Splunk running for months without issues.
Splunk has been very reliable and very consistent.
It provides a stable environment but needs to integrate with ITSM platforms to achieve better visibility.
 

Room For Improvement

Elastic Search requires enhancements in security, scalability, user experience, integration, documentation, and support for enterprise needs.
Splunk Enterprise Security users desire improved GUI, integration, pricing, training, data handling, and advanced features for better efficiency.
This can create problems for new developers because they have to quickly switch to another version.
It is primarily based on Unix or Linux-based operating systems and cannot be easily configured in Windows systems.
The consistency and stability of Elasticsearch are commendable, and they should keep up the good work.
Improving the infrastructure behind Splunk Enterprise Security is vital—enhanced cores, CPUs, and memory should be prioritized to support better processing power.
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.
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.
 

Setup Cost

Elastic Search's free version can become costly for enterprises due to premium features, node-based pricing, and scalability challenges.
Splunk Enterprise Security is costly but valued for features and scalability, with pricing concerns for smaller businesses.
We used the open-source version of Elasticsearch, which was free.
I saw clients spend two million dollars a year just feeding data into the Splunk solution.
The platform requires significant financial investment and resources, making it expensive despite its comprehensive features.
I find it to be affordable, which is why every industry uses it.
 

Valuable Features

Elastic Search offers efficient search, scalability, and integration with Kibana and Logstash, providing affordable features and handling diverse data.
Splunk Enterprise Security excels in log management, data ingestion, and integration, enhancing security operations with user-friendly features.
Elastic Search makes handling large data volumes efficient and supports complex search operations.
The most valuable feature of Elasticsearch was the quick search capability, allowing us to search by any criteria needed.
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.
This capability is useful for performance monitoring and issue identification.
I assess Splunk Enterprise Security's insider threat detection capabilities for helping to find unknown threats and anomalous user behavior as great.
Splunk Enterprise Security provides the foundation for unified threat detection, investigation, and response, enabling fast identification of critical issues.
 

Categories and Ranking

Elastic Search
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (9th), Search as a Service (1st), Vector Databases (3rd)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
369
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 20.4%, down 28.1% compared to last year.
Splunk Enterprise Security, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 9.2% mindshare, down 11.2% since last year.
Indexing and Search Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Elastic Search20.4%
Lucidworks11.6%
Coveo8.6%
Other59.4%
Indexing and Search
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security9.2%
Wazuh10.2%
IBM Security QRadar7.0%
Other73.6%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Q&A Highlights

VV
Nov 13, 2019
 

Featured Reviews

Louis McCoy - PeerSpot reviewer
Searches through billions of documents have become impressively fast and consistent
The seamless scalability is something I see as among the best features Elastic Search offers. 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. I find configuring relevant searches within Elastic Search platform very straightforward. Elastic Search is easily scalable. The customer support for Elastic Search is quite good. I advise others looking into using Elastic Search to think about the future of your platform and where you intend it to be in five years, and based on that, which version of Elastic Search best suits the needs of your platform. Additionally, jump into the AI products first as you're in the planning phase so that as you're filling out your data, the AI products and machine learning products can enrich the data real-time early on in the process, which will save you a lot of time later. The overall performance of the platform, scalability of the platform and other additional features, especially when it comes to AI, really earn the nine.
Kyle Vernham - PeerSpot reviewer
Built-in searches and unified data access streamline alert investigation and boosts analyst efficiency
The two features I appreciate the most in Splunk Enterprise Security are the built-in searches, which have been very easy for us to get started with right out of the box, and the fact that it accesses all of our other systems. You can access it as a pane of glass rather than having to search individually. We also have the option to compare our analysts from our service to service. Splunk Enterprise Security helps our SOC team prioritize and investigate high-fidelity alerts more effectively by providing a more in-depth look and the ability to access a lot more of our data. Instead of jumping from several segmented systems, it allows us to have everything brought together in one place. For example, you have to move from our purview to our build system and to Splunk Enterprise Security, and it enables us to streamline that process. The built-in features of Splunk Enterprise Security, which we recently procured, have given us a good starting point and demonstrated the value of the product, providing an easy way to sell it to our company. The ease of getting everything into our purview helps us, and it serves as a good start for the investigation part in one location rather than what we usually have, which is jumping from system to system to system. Splunk Enterprise Security plays a role in our company's strategy to combat insider threats and advanced persistent threats by currently being in its technical test phase. We are still rolling it out, and it should help us find any insider threats based on information that our policy states should not be present in our system. Splunk Enterprise Security's risk-based alerting (RBA) has impacted our alert volume and analyst productivity because we've got many different systems feeding into it. However, it has helped to make it easier for our analysts to go through a set of events rather than 100 alerts. RBA allows us to streamline the process and customize it for our analysts. When it comes to leveraging Splunk Enterprise Security's dashboards and visualizations to communicate security posture to executives, it's pretty straightforward for any type of information. The visualization is easy to understand, but I haven't had any direct conversations with our executives.
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Comparison Review

VS
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
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
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
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
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise36
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business109
Midsize Enterprise49
Large Enterprise257
 

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?
We used the open-source version of Elasticsearch, which was free.
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
Elastic Search could improve in areas such as search criteria and query processes, as search times were longer prior to implementing Elastic Search. Elastic Search has limitations for handling huge...
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, Lucidworks and others in Indexing and Search. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.