Elastic Stack vs Graylog comparison

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Elastic Stack

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Graylog and Elastic Stack compete in the data analysis and IT infrastructure management sector. Elastic Stack appears to have the upper hand due to its scalability and adaptability, making it a more comprehensive solution for extensive data analysis needs.

Features:Graylog provides real-time alerting, straightforward configuration, and intuitive navigation, which cater to smaller-scale deployments effectively. Elastic Stack offers comprehensive search capabilities, extensive visualization options, and scalability that enable detailed insights into larger data sets.

Room for Improvement:Graylog users suggest enhancing its data visualization tools, integrations with third-party applications, and expanding its feature set to accommodate larger deployments. Elastic Stack could improve by streamlining its complex setup process, reducing the steep learning curve, and offering better documentation to simplify user onboarding.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:Graylog is highly regarded for quick setup times and effective support services. Elastic Stack, although challenging to deploy due to complexity, benefits from an active community and extensive resources, partially offsetting limited direct customer service.

Pricing and ROI:Graylog offers a cost-effective solution with lower setup costs, providing satisfactory ROI for its core functionalities. Elastic Stack, priced at a premium, delivers higher returns for enterprises when fully utilizing its advanced analytics and visualization features.

To learn more, read our detailed Elastic Stack vs. Graylog Report (Updated: June 2025).

Elastic Stack vs. Graylog

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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 Stack

Ranking in Log Management

11th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Graylog

Ranking in Log Management

15th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Stack is 5.4%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Graylog is 6.7%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Log Management

Featured Reviews

Balamurali P

Solution Architect at a tech consulting company with 501-1,000 employees

Advanced query capabilities enhance monitoring effectiveness

Elastic Stack should be more simplified with ready-to-use widgets. Also, incorporating AI capabilities is essential as monitoring and observability tools are now adding AI features. Ideally, it should evolve into a full-stack observability tool, similar to AppDynamics or DynaTrace, which offers a solution that includes ISP provider, API monitoring, and infrastructure monitoring.

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Ivan Kokalovic

DevOps Engineer at Proton Technologies

Facilitates backend service monitoring with efficient log retrieval and API flexibility

Graylog is valuable because it bridges technical knowledge to non-technical teams, presenting complex backend processes in a simple timeline. It boosts the knowledge of sales and customer support teams by allowing them to see the backend operations without needing to read the code. Its API is flexible for visualization, and its powerful search engine efficiently handles large volumes of log data. Moreover, its stability, fast search capabilities, and compatibility with languages like ANSI SQL enhance its utility in IT infrastructure.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The biggest strength of Elastic Stack is its brilliant archiving capabilities."

"I think the ecosystem is well supported, and for logs, it was faster compared to our previous previous log management."

"The machine learning capabilities are valuable."

"The scripting model in Elastic Stack allows me to query logs and then put the data into Grafana."

"The only beneficial aspect of Elastic Stack is that it's open source."

"The tool is huge, and it performs brilliantly. I tested it for malware, and within two weeks of launching, the product alerted me about a network intrusion. This was a tough test for it, but it performed admirably. The alerting system is excellent, and searching through logs is incredibly efficient. What's impressive is that all three products or options are integrated into one solution. This means I don't need separate logging, monitoring, or antivirus solutions."

"I have experienced a return on investment from the use of the solution."

"Elastic Stack has made a positive impact as we can now see our logs."

More Elastic Stack pros

"The best feature of Graylog is the Elasticsearch integration. We can integrate and we can run filters, such as an event of interest, and those logs we can send to any SIEM tool or as an analytic. Additionally, there are clear and well-documented implementation instructions on their website to follow if needed."

"Graylog is very handy."

"What I like about Graylog is that it's real-time and you have access to the raw data. So, you ingest it, and you have access to every message and every data item you ingest. You can then build analytics on top of that. You can look at the raw data, and you can do some volumetric estimations, such as how big traffic you have, how many messages of data of a type you have, etc."

"I like the correlation and the alerting."

"We have scaled from a single machine installation (a VM with a Graylog + ES + MongoDB) to (2 Graylog + 2 ES + 3 MongoDB). This was done smoothly with a minimal impact on logging."

"This had increased productivity for the dev and support teams, because we are directly notifying them."

"One of the most valuable features is that you are able to do a very detailed search through the log messages in the overview."

"Graylog's search functionality, alerting functionality, user management, and dashboards are useful."

More Graylog pros

Cons

"The solution is expensive, particularly the training and certification. If customers want to increase their use of Elastic Stack, they should consider reducing the cost of certification and training."

"Support could be improved. The error code is not helpful. We have to ask for it or pass it on to community forums."

"Improving integration capabilities, especially with authentication systems, firewalls, and security controls, is a crucial area for improvement in Elastic Stack. Additionally, enhancing functionality to handle large Yara queries more efficiently would be beneficial, as many EDR solutions can run such queries faster than Elastic Stack's current limitations."

"It should facilitate easier manual integration."

"The implementation of dashboards in the solution needs to be made easier...I had some issues with the ports and configuration since it was kind of complex to implement with Docker."

"There could be better documentation."

"While Elastic Stack can manage vast amounts of data, if the mapping is not specified correctly, the indexing time can be slow, especially with many events per second."

"Agent deployment is a little tough in the on-premise version."

More Elastic Stack cons

"More customization is always useful."

"Graylog could improve the process of creating rules. We have to create them manually by doing parses and applying them. Other SIEM solutions have basic rules and you can create and get more events of interest."

"The biggest problem is the collector application, as we wanted to avoid using Graylog Collector Sidecar due to its architecture."

"I would like to see a default dashboard widget that shows the topology of the clusters defined for the graylog install."

"Over six months, I had two similar issues where searches were performed on field "messages". It exhausted all the memory of the ES node causing an ES crash and a Graylog halt."

"When it comes to configuring the processing pipeline, writing the rules can be very tedious, especially since the documentation isn't extensive on how the functions provided for these rules work."

"We ran into problems with Elasticsearch throwing a circuit-breaking exception due to field data size being too large. It turned out that the heap size directly impacted this size in a high-throughput environment, causing unexplained instability in Graylog. We were able to troubleshoot on the Elasticsearch size, but we should have been able to reference some minimum requirements for Graylog to know that our settings weren't sufficient."

"Graylog can improve the index rotation as it's quite a complex solution."

More Graylog cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."

"I used the open-source version of Elastic Stack, because of which I did not have to pay anything."

"We are using the open-source community version of the product."

"The product is expensive."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"If I compare Elastic Stack to the other products in the market, I would say that the tool is available at a competitive price."

"It depends on the specifics, but generally, Elastic is economical for certain use cases."

"Ultimately, the pricing depends upon the capacity planning that the enterprise architect does."

"It's open source and free. They have a paid version, but we never looked into that because we never needed the features of the paid version."

"We're using the Community edition."

"I am using a community edition. I have not looked at the enterprise offering from Graylog."

"Consider Enterprise support if you have atypical needs or setup requirements."

"Graylog is a free open-source solution. The free version has a capacity limitation of 2 GB daily, if you want to go above this you have to purchase a license."

"Having paid official support is wise for projects."

"I use the free version of Graylog."

"It's an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."

More Graylog pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Educational Organization

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Elastic Stack?

The tool is huge, and it performs brilliantly. I tested it for malware, and within two weeks of launching, the product alerted me about a network intrusion. This was a tough test for it, but it per...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Stack?

I may not be able to answer as this is customer-paid Elastic Stack, and I didn't handle the payment.

What needs improvement with Elastic Stack?

What do you like most about Graylog?

The product is scalable. The solution is stable.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Graylog?

I am not familiar with the pricing details of Graylog, as I was not responsible for that aspect. It was determined that we didn't need an enterprise plan, which is more suited for clients with less...

What needs improvement with Graylog?

An improvement I would suggest is in Graylog's user interface, such as allowing for font size adjustments. A potential enhancement could be the integration with Ollama to run large language models ...

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Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Elastic Stack

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Download Graylog product report

Also Known As

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Graylog2

Overview

Elastic Stack is a comprehensive tool for log management, observability, indexing, and security, widely adopted for managing logs, alert creation, SIEM, SOC, and threat analysis. It integrates with CloudStrike and Endpoint Security, enhancing search capabilities and Application Performance Monitoring.

Elastic Stack offers powerful solutions for logging, data storage, and visualization with Kibana. It allows MSSPs to efficiently manage security and assists companies with data analysis. It's known for its easy implementation, scalability, real-time monitoring, and extensive integrations. The open-source nature and community support add significant value, making it a popular choice across industries. While highly capable, there is a need for enhancement in dashboard implementation, data integration, and certain advanced features. Licensing, compatibility, and cost-related improvements can further elevate its efficacy.

What are the key features of Elastic Stack?

Powerful Search Capabilities: Offers robust, efficient searching across vast datasets
Scalability: Easily handles large volumes of data
Anomaly Detection: Identifies irregular patterns in data
Machine Learning: Enhances data analysis with intelligent insights
Real-Time Monitoring: Provides up-to-date monitoring of applications and systems
Extensive Integration: Supports diverse tools and solutions

What benefits should users consider?

Ease of Implementation: Quick setup and integration into existing systems
Robust Security: Comprehensive monitoring and analysis capabilities
Community Support: Ongoing improvements and guidance from a dedicated community
Hybrid Deployment: Flexibility in using both cloud and on-premise solutions

In healthcare, Elastic Stack enhances database search capabilities, aiding in patient record management and data retrieval. Managed Security Service Providers use it for comprehensive security management, integrating it with tools like firewalls and authentication systems. Companies benefit from its application in Application Performance Monitoring and its flexibility in adapting to hybrid environments.

Elastic

Graylog is purpose-built to deliver the best log collection, storage, enrichment, and analysis. Graylog is:

Considerably faster analysis speeds.
More robust and easier-to-use analysis platform.
Simpler administration and infrastructure management.
Lower cost than alternatives.
Full-scale customer service.
No expensive training or tool experts required.

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Blue Cross Blue Shield, eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn, SAP, King.com, Twilio, Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Elastic Stack vs. Graylog