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Elastic Security vs IBM Security QRadar comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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

Torq
Sponsored
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
AI-SOC (13th), AI-Powered Security Automation (2nd)
Elastic Security
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (8th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (5th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (15th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (8th)
IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
219
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (7th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (17th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (7th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (11th)
 

Featured Reviews

Nimrod Vardi - PeerSpot reviewer
Global IT Director at OpenWeb
Automation workflows have transformed our IT, enabling secure just-in-time access control
We work with them quite often, so we have a direct line regarding areas in Torq that have room for improvement. If we have a feature request, we can request it. I do not have anything in mind at the moment. We were a design partner for a short while, so we feel that they listen and that users of the system have an impact on the way the system is designed for the better. They have a new community, which is something that I personally suggested years ago. There are many people like me in different places and they might have already built the workflow that I need. Having the option to share workflows or to jump on a thread and say I have this need, did anyone ever build a workflow for it, is amazing. Someone would jump in and say yes, sure, here, take this workflow. I think this is an amazing thing and I really hope that the community will come alive because I think this is really powerful. This is something that I already suggested and it did happen eventually, and I am quite happy with it. I do not have any specific feature in mind that I have a need for at the moment.
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.
HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Have managed daily asset and alert monitoring effectively but have encountered limitations with manual processes and interface usability
It's still very manual and doesn't work on its own. It's still in an early stage and not on par where we can consider it a really successful detection system. The accuracy is not there. The UI could be better when compared to Sentinels where we can use flags and tagging. It could be much more user-friendly. IBM Security QRadar has all features and is fully competitive with other SIEM tools, but when it comes to user-friendliness, a new user takes time to get used to it. More intuitive, user-friendly interfaces and more helpful documentation would be beneficial. The query searching and data fetching could be faster. In large to very large organizations with around 5,000 or 6,000 assets or beyond, even with proper configurations and RAM and hardware backing up, the query is fairly slow.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"As an analyst, it has demonstrated potential to reduce workforce requirements and time needed for related activities."
"What I appreciate most about Torq is that it is an essential part of our system."
"Once I started to use the system and I saw the potential, it changed all of our work in IT."
"Using that one piece of AI, we auto-closed 511 cases in quarter four alone."
"It's a good platform and the very best in the current market. We looked at the Forester report from December 2022 where it was said to be a leader."
"I can look at events from more than one source across multiple different locations and find patterns or anomalies. The machine learning capabilities are helpful, and I can create rules for notifications to be more proactive rather than responding after something has gone wrong."
"It can handle millions of loads at a time, and you can always use the filters to find exactly what you are looking for and detect errors in every log message you are searching for, basically."
"The indexes allow you to get your results quickly. The filtering and log passing is the advantage of Logstash."
"It is scalable."
"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."
"What customers found most valuable in Elastic Security feature-wise is the search capability, in particular, the way of writing the search query and the speed of searching for results."
"Elastic has a lot of beats, such as Winlogbeat and Filebeat. Beats are the agents that have to be installed on the terminals to send the data. When we install beats or Elastic agents on every terminal, they don't overload the terminals. In other SIEM solutions such as Splunk or QRadar, when beats or agents are installed on endpoints, they are very heavy for the terminals. They consume a lot of power of the terminals, whereas Elastic agents hardly consume any power and don't overload the terminals."
"Search capabilities are sufficient for most tasks."
"Improves visibility and has a great new dashboard."
"There is a single dashboard that gives us a complete overview of what is happening around the globe."
"QRadar, Splunk, and ArcSight are SIEM solutions with built-in AI/ML features. They can do the complete investigation and alert the admin about what is happening. They can also do the root cause analysis. There are many other features that come with QRadar. It has a more granular log, so you can integrate with various non-IT as well as IT-based components. You can get unstructured data to the SIEM data, and you can identify more what is happening in the network or what is happening in the central head office. You can also identify what is happening between your remote offices. You can also use it to identify what the users in the field are doing on their devices and how things are moving. From the integration point of view, it is very centric. It gives complete control centrally. If a user is not connected to the system, whenever he comes online, we can see the policy updates over the Internet, and we can ensure that the data that is supposed to be protected is protected."
"It's a state-of-the-art product for security information and event management (SIEM)."
"The product has plenty of features and capabilities."
"It also has a graph that shows the traffic history. I can see what happened yesterday or today. If there's an incident, I can check the traffic behavior on QRadar."
"The event collector, flow collector, PCAP and SOAR are valuable."
 

Cons

"It was able to capture data but was unable to differentiate between the agent hostname we are using and the hostname that resides on the back end of the Internet."
"Regarding stability, I have noticed some lagging, crashing, and downtime, which is one of my largest gripes."
"The initial deployment of Torq was not easy."
"The solution does not have a UI and this is one of the reasons we are looking for another solution."
"Elastic has one problem. In the past, Elastic Security was free. Now, they currently only offer the basic license or a certain period of time."
"The solution's basic setup takes time, and a lot of effort is required from the beginning to make it actually work."
"We'd like better premium support."
"The solution should generate an automatic product that integrates with ELK Stack to use artificial intelligence."
"The solution could also use better dashboards. They need to be more graphical, more matrix-like."
"We'd like to see some more artificial intelligence capabilities."
"I want to find an automatic security system in the tool, like a SOAR solution. I am looking forward to seeing a SOAR system in the tool."
"The threat detection needs improvement, they have many false positives."
"We would like to see better instrumentation for debugging changes in the log flow."
"The product can be a bit complex."
"The solution can be improved by lowering the cost and bettering their technical support."
"The product does not have a team for investigating malware."
"I would like for Yara to be supported by all components."
"There are many types of AI, and this AI is very limited in SQL and features. There may be potential for improvement."
"There is a lot of manual configuration required in order for the product to run smoothly, and I think that it could be made more automatic."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Affordable but with additional costs"
"It's a monthly cost with Elastic SIEM, but I am not sure of the exact cost."
"The base product is open-source but if you need advanced security features then you need to pay for the subscription. Elastic Security's price is reasonable in some cases and in other cases it's not."
"The price is reasonable. It probably costs the same as ArcSight and LogRhythm SIEM. FortiSIEM might cost less than Elastic Security. There are no hidden or additional costs."
"I find it better than Splunk in terms of cost-effectiveness. For cost-effectiveness, I would rate it a nine out of 10."
"The pricing is in the middle. I think it is not an expensive experience if we compare it with big names, for example, QRadar, and also Oxide. I think Elastic Security is quite cheap. I would rate the pricing of this solution a five out of ten."
"Compared to other tools, Elastic Security is a cheaper solution."
"I can say that the product is cheaply priced."
"think the pricing is quite flexible."
"There is a license required for this solution and it is an annual payment. I have found all solutions in the category to be expensive, including Splunk."
"IBM's Qradar is not for small companie. Unfortunately, it would be 'overkill' to place it plainly. The pricing would be too much."
"The tool's on-premise version is expensive. However, it is cheaper than Splunk. The hybrid model offers shared instances for customers, which is not expensive. Customers with a limited budget can opt for it. You can get premium support with licenses. However, if you need customized integration, you need to buy it."
"The price of this solution is reasonable."
"IBM has subscriptions plans that run for one year."
"I feel that the price is reasonable but compared to other products that are on the market, such as an offering by Microsoft, it is more expensive."
"It's too expensive."
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Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jun 28, 2015
Qradar vs. ArcSight
Continuing with the SIEM posts we have done at Infosecnirvana, this post is a Head to head comparison of the two Industry leading SIEM products in the market – HP ArcSight and IBM QRadar Both the products have consistently been in the Gartner Leaders Quadrant. Both HP and IBM took over niche SIEM…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business91
Midsize Enterprise39
Large Enterprise105
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Torq?
From our research and testing with the tool, we determined there need to be modifications and changes to train the LL...
What is your primary use case for Torq?
I used Torq for conducting one of the proof of evaluations for a vendor we are connected with. I am currently working...
What advice do you have for others considering Torq?
One of our members uses AWS, and we receive their feed. This involves triaging AWS-related logs. While I do not have ...
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 time...
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 con...
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 are the biggest differences between Securonix UEBA, Exabeam, and IBM QRadar?
It mostly depends on your use-cases and environment. Exabeam and Securonix have a stronger UEBA feature set, friendli...
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 a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Security QRadar?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is great compared to the other vendor.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Elastic SIEM, ELK Logstash
IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Texas A&M, U.S. Air Force, NuScale Power, Martin's Point Health Care
Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Security vs. IBM Security QRadar and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.