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Elastic Security vs Security Onion comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

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 Security
Ranking in Log Management
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (5th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (16th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (8th)
Security Onion
Ranking in Log Management
20th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Security is 2.9%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Security Onion is 4.2%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Elastic Security2.9%
Security Onion4.2%
Other92.9%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Laurentiu Popescu - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Product Officer at ClusterPower
Has improved threat detection with deep log analysis and streamlined investigation workflows
The most useful features I find in Elastic Security are the forensic ones that allow us to carry deeper analysis into the logs for in-depth investigations, and the dashboards, with the reporting dashboard being quite user-friendly. Elastic Security is quite good at identifying threats, as it is part of the deep investigation tool that I mentioned before. Unless we need to look further into a certain log, we can carry out a deeper analysis and forensics on those particular logs. I can assess the impact of Elastic Security's real-time data analysis on our threat response efficiency as working pretty good. We are looking for real-time analysis because we have a continuous inflow of logs from different sources: from our cloud, from Active Directory, from our network. So it works pretty well.
Jörg Kippe - PeerSpot reviewer
Scientist at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees
A mature and affordable solution that is easy to install and easy to update
The product takes time to learn, it's not that easy. In the beginning we had a lot of questions. If you want to use such a tool in an real (industrial) environment, you have to ask how to get the network data. Can we do a full packet capture? Can we provide agents to our end systems? There are no simple solutions to these questions. It's a general problem when running such systems in an industrial environment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the scalability. We are in Indonesia, more engineers understand Elastic Security here. So it is easier to scale and also develop. In features, the discovery to query all the logs is very important to us. It is very easy, especially with the query function and the feature to generate alerts and create tools. Sometimes we use the alert security dashboard to monitor our clients."
"The indexes allow you to get your results quickly. The filtering and log passing is the advantage of Logstash."
"Enables monitoring of application performance and the ability to predict behaviors."
"The solution is compatible with the cloud-native environment and they can adapt to it faster."
"Elastic Security is a highly flexible platform that can be implemented anywhere."
"It's very customizable, which is quite helpful."
"Its flexibility is most valuable. We can have a number of scenarios, and we can get logs from anything. If we know how to use Logstash, we can tweak it in many ways. This makes the logging search on Elastic very easy."
"The cost is reasonable. It's not overly pricey."
"The most valuable feature of Security Onion for security monitoring is its ability to find infected ports."
"Security Onion is the most mature solution in the market."
"We use Security Onion for internal vulnerability assessment."
 

Cons

"This type of monitoring is not very mature just yet. We need more real-time information in a way that's easier to manage."
"Technical support could respond faster."
"We'd like to see some more artificial intelligence capabilities."
"Their visuals and graphs need to be better."
"I would like the process of retrieving archived data and viewing it in Kibana to be simplified."
"There is room for improvement in the Kibana dashboard and in the asset management for the program."
"The training that is offered for Elastic is in need of improvement because there is no depth to it."
"Elastic Security has a steep learning curve, so it takes some time to tune it and set it up for your environment. There are some costs associated with logging things that don't have value. So you need to be cautious to only log things that make sense and keep them around for as long as you need. You shouldn't hold onto things just because you think you might need them."
"The product is not easy to learn."
"Security Onion's user interface could be improved."
"The initial setup of the solution is a little bit difficult."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free, open-source version of this solution."
"The product offers an amazing pricing structure. Price-wise, the product is very competitive."
"This is an open-source product, so there are no costs."
"Compared to other products such as Dynatrace, this is one of the cheaper options."
"The solution is free."
"When compared to other products, the price is average or on the low side."
"Affordable but with additional costs"
"The licensing cost of Elastic Security is based on the daily ingestion rate. I can't recall the exact figure, but for 10GB of log action daily, it would cost around $20,000."
"Security Onion is a free solution."
"It is an open-source solution."
"Security Onion is an open-source solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
University
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise15
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
What do you like most about Elastic Security?
Elastic provides the capability to index quickly due to the reverse indexes it offers. This data is crucial as it contains critical information. The reverse index allows fast data indexing because ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Security?
I am satisfied with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing cost. It is a pure 10.
What do you like most about Security Onion?
The most valuable feature of Security Onion for security monitoring is its ability to find infected ports.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Security Onion?
Security Onion is an open-source solution. On a scale from one to ten, where ten is expensive and one is cheap, I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten.
What needs improvement with Security Onion?
The initial setup of the solution is a little bit difficult.
 

Also Known As

Elastic SIEM, ELK Logstash
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Texas A&M, U.S. Air Force, NuScale Power, Martin's Point Health Care
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Security vs. Security Onion and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,371 professionals have used our research since 2012.