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Elastic Stack vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

Elastic and Splunk are both solutions in the Log Management category. Elastic is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.8, while Splunk is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3. Elastic holds a 4.4% mindshare in Log Management, compared to Splunk’s 7.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Elastic users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Splunk users who would recommend it.
Elastic Stack
Read 17 Elastic Stack reviews
  • 5,489 Views
  • 5,489 Comparison Views
100% willing to recommend
Splunk Enterprise Security
Read 374 Splunk Enterprise Security reviews
  • 23,828 Views
  • 13,105 Comparison Views
94% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

Splunk Enterprise Security and Elastic Stack compete in the security and data analytics category. Splunk Enterprise Security seems to have the upper hand due to its advanced security features and extensive integration capabilities.

Features: Splunk Enterprise Security provides advanced threat detection, customizable dashboards, and risk-based alerting, making it ideal for large enterprises needing comprehensive security operations and integrations. Elastic Stack excels in robust search capabilities, real-time monitoring, and efficient log management. Its open-source model ensures ease of implementation and strong community support.

Room for Improvement: Splunk could enhance its ease of use, user interface, and simplify deployment processes, as well as improve community support and cost management. Elastic Stack should focus on refining its user interface, optimizing third-party integrations, and enhancing documentation to aid new users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk provides versatile deployment options, including cloud, on-premises, and hybrid models with strong technical support, though response times could improve. Elastic Stack offers flexible deployments with similar environment support but relies heavily on community forums, which may not suffice for all user needs.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk's pricing, based on data ingestion, can be costly, potentially acting as a barrier for smaller companies, though its rich security features provide significant ROI for large enterprises. Elastic Stack, particularly in its open-source form, is a more economical option appealing to budget-conscious organizations, though additional costs may arise for advanced features.

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Buyer's Guide
Elastic Stack vs. Splunk Enterprise Security
December 2025
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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
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Log Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
374
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Stack is 4.4%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 7.3%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security7.3%
Elastic Stack4.4%
Other88.3%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

LB
Lakshmi Bodepu
Senior Consultant at Skillfield
Offers robust out-of-the-box integrations and streamlines logging processes effortlessly
There are improvements needed for Elastic Stack. It is mostly based on Lucene, and the heart of Elastic Stack is Lucene, which has some limitations. Anything built on top of Lucene often feels an add-on, and that includes vector databases. Elastic Stack can store vector embeddings as well and perform AI and machine learning tasks out of the box without excessive configuration. The main improvements involve increasing speed and compression capabilities; I have seen databases that claim to achieve significantly better compression. 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. Improper mapping usually means that every document received gets indexed for all fields, which is not desired. Elastic consultants typically optimize this, but out of the box, as data volume increases, scaling becomes necessary. They are working on these improvements in new versions.
Read full review
reviewer1469784 - PeerSpot reviewer
reviewer1469784
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.
Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Elastic Stack has made a positive impact as we can now see our logs."
"The only beneficial aspect of Elastic Stack is that it's open source."
"The biggest strength of Elastic Stack is its brilliant archiving capabilities."
"The detection rules in Elastic Stack are the most valuable feature. The search capabilities are excellent and fast. As we collect logs from workstations and devices, the detection rules run on top of the logs and detect any suspicious activity, raising alerts accordingly. Integration with Elastic Stack depends on the specific integration. Elastic provides some bridging integrations that make it easy, but require custom integration. Most integrations are simple, but customization can be challenging because we need to do some parsing. There's something called Elastic Common Schema, and we need to parse the source logs to match this schema, which can be a bit challenging."
"It is a very scalable solution...I didn't face any problem with this scalability part of the solution since we only have a few pieces of equipment in our company."
"It is an excellent tool for monitoring purposes."
"Prior to the latest updates, data lake management was a standout feature. The hybrid capability for on-premise and cloud integration was also crucial. Now, with Elastic Defense, the agent simplifies security monitoring, making it a key asset."
"The scripting model in Elastic Stack allows me to query logs and then put the data into Grafana."
More Elastic Stack pros
"The solution has made us more secure."
"An example of how these features benefited my organization is that the mean time to detect compromised accounts from the time that we're able to detect that account and then launch some automation to actually disable the account and work with the end user to fix the issue has gone from taking a couple of days to literally taking two to three minutes."
"The security part is useful as it helps secure the entire environment."
"The search lookups are useful."
"We primarily use it to correlate logs throughout the enterprise for both searching and use in investigations."
"The features I appreciate the most in Splunk Enterprise Security are the scheduled alerts and the search function."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"This solution helps us increase our productivity."
More Splunk Enterprise Security pros
 

Cons

"It lacks a clear NDR (Network Detection and Response) feature. If Elastic could enhance this aspect, it would significantly boost its capabilities."
"Elastic Stack should be more simplified with ready-to-use widgets."
"Agent deployment is a little tough in the on-premise version."
"Support could be improved. The error code is not helpful. We have to ask for it or pass it on to community forums."
"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."
"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."
"It should facilitate easier manual integration."
More Elastic Stack cons
"The price of the solution could be cheaper."
"The integration feature with other applications, such as anti-DDoS application Arbor, needs to be more powerful."
"The difficult part is related to integration with sources of data that are used to create the logs as this depends on the infrastructure of the client."
"Some additional features that should be included in the next release of Splunk Enterprise Security are an integrated Attack Range, not as a separate solution, providing a way to test the rules in the production environment."
". Having a trial version or more training on Splunk would be helpful."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is not exactly user-friendly."
"The high cost of Splunk Enterprise Security prevented us from using its full capabilities."
"It will be helpful for customers if they can create some real-world cases, and we can find a case study to align with. I know that Splunk has tremendous potential. We only include a tiny piece of it. There is a lot of stuff that we need to learn. If Splunk can provide more real-time examples, that will be helpful for customers."
More Splunk Enterprise Security cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"We are using the open-source community version of the product."
"I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"Ultimately, the pricing depends upon the capacity planning that the enterprise architect does."
"It depends on the specifics, but generally, Elastic is economical for certain use cases."
"If I compare Elastic Stack to the other products in the market, I would say that the tool is available at a competitive price."
"I used the open-source version of Elastic Stack, because of which I did not have to pay anything."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is expensive but the solution is equipped with a lot of features."
"It is expensive. I work for multiple clients. I am working for more than five clients, but most of the clients are switching from Splunk to Sentinel because of the cost. Even though Sentinel is very limited, clients are moving to Sentinel."
"Splunk Enterprise Security's pricing is competitive."
"The pricing seems good relative to the other vendors that we have had here. However, they need to find ways to be more flexible with the licensing and be able to deal with situations where we start generating more logs. Maybe having some controls in the Splunk interface to turn it off, so we don't have to change anything in our application."
"The pricing is a little bit on the higher side, but looking at what Splunk provides us, it is reasonable."
"The solution is costly."
"It can be cost-prohibitive when you start to scale and have terabytes of data. Its cost model is based on how much data it processes a day. If they're able to create scaled-down niche or custom package offerings, it may help with the cost. Instead of the full-blown features, if they can narrow the scope where it can only be used for a specific purpose, it would kind of create that market for the product, and it may help with the costing. When you start using it as a central aggregator and you're pumping tons of logs at it, pretty soon, you'll start hitting your cap on what it can process a day. Once you've got that, you're kind of defeating the purpose because you're going to have to scale back."
"Its price is fair. Like with anything else, if you go into the cloud, different providers cost more, and you are able to throttle back or throttle up. The cost is comparable with anything else."
More Splunk Enterprise Security pricing and cost advice
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Comparison Review

VS
Vinod Shankar
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…
Read full review
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business109
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise263
 

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...
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Stack?
My experience with Elastic Stack pricing indicates that it is node-based. While I do not have complete pricing details, they are available online. If I choose Elastic Cloud, it includes licensing a...
See all answers
What needs improvement with Elastic Stack?
There are improvements needed for Elastic Stack. It is mostly based on Lucene, and the heart of Elastic Stack is Lucene, which has some limitations. Anything built on top of Lucene often feels an a...
See all answers
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...
See all answers
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 ...
See all answers
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...
See all answers
 

Comparisons

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Security Onion vs Elastic Stack Logo
Security Onion vs Elastic Stack
Compared 12% of the time
Grafana Loki vs Elastic Stack Logo
Grafana Loki vs Elastic Stack
Compared 7% of the time
Dynatrace vs Elastic Stack Logo
Dynatrace vs Elastic Stack
Compared 6% of the time
VMware Aria Operations for Logs vs Elastic Stack Logo
VMware Aria Operations for Logs vs Elastic Stack
Compared 5% of the time
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IBM Security QRadar vs Splunk Enterprise Security Logo
IBM Security QRadar vs Splunk Enterprise Security
Compared 9% of the time
Wazuh vs Splunk Enterprise Security Logo
Wazuh vs Splunk Enterprise Security
Compared 6% of the time
Dynatrace vs Splunk Enterprise Security Logo
Dynatrace vs Splunk Enterprise Security
Compared 5% of the time
Datadog vs Splunk Enterprise Security Logo
Datadog vs Splunk Enterprise Security
Compared 4% of the time
Sentinel vs Splunk Enterprise Security Logo
Sentinel vs Splunk Enterprise Security
Compared 3% of the time
More Splunk Enterprise Security Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Elastic Stack
December 2025
Elastic Stack reportDownload Elastic Stack product report
Buyer's Guide
Splunk Enterprise Security
December 2025
Splunk Enterprise Security reportDownload Splunk Enterprise Security product report
 

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

Splunk Enterprise Security delivers powerful log management, rapid searches, and intuitive dashboards, enhancing real-time analytics and security measures. Its advanced machine learning and wide system compatibility streamline threat detection and incident response across diverse IT environments.

Splunk Enterprise Security stands out in security operations with robust features like comprehensive threat intelligence and seamless data integration. Its real-time analytics and customizable queries enable proactive threat analysis and efficient incident response. Integration with multiple third-party feeds allows detailed threat correlation and streamlined data visualization. Users find the intuitive UI and broad compatibility support efficient threat detection while reducing false positives. Despite its strengths, areas such as visualization capabilities and integration processes with cloud environments need enhancement. Users face a high learning curve, and improvements in automation, AI, documentation, and training are desired to maximize its potential.

What Are the Key Features of Splunk Enterprise Security?
  • Log Management: Efficiently manages and organizes a vast amount of logs for better data handling.
  • Rapid Data Search: Quickly retrieves relevant data for fast decision-making.
  • Flexible Dashboards: Customizable dashboards provide clear data visualization.
  • Comprehensive Threat Intelligence: Offers detailed insights to preemptively defend against threats.
  • Real-Time Analytics: Analyzes data in real-time to enhance response times.
  • Integration with Third-Party Feeds: Streamlines information flow from multiple sources.
What Benefits Should Users Investigate in Reviews?
  • Efficient Incident Response: Enhances the ability to respond promptly to threats.
  • False Positive Reduction: Minimizes incorrect threat alarms, making monitoring more efficient.
  • Threat Detection Speed: Accelerates the identification and evaluation of security threats.
  • Cost-Effectiveness: Potential savings through better licensing options and operational efficiency.
  • User Adaptability: Enhancements in documentation and training resources aid in overcoming the learning curve.

In specific industries like finance and healthcare, Splunk Enterprise Security is instrumental for log aggregation, SIEM functionalities, and compliance monitoring. Companies leverage its capabilities for proactive threat analysis and response, ensuring comprehensive security monitoring and integration with various tools for heightened operational intelligence.

Splunk
 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Buyer's Guide
Elastic Stack vs. Splunk Enterprise Security
December 2025
Free Report: Elastic Stack vs. Splunk Enterprise Security
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