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Grafana Loki vs IBM Security QRadar comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

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

Grafana Loki
Ranking in Log Management
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Log Management
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
209
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (4th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (18th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (9th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Grafana Loki is 8.4%, up from 5.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 3.6%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Grafana Loki8.4%
IBM Security QRadar3.6%
Other88.0%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Volodymyr Bondarchuk - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrations enhance monitoring but problem-solving proves challenging
Different types of integrations with various sources are the most helpful and useful features of Grafana Loki that I found for myself. As part of Kubernetes technology, I noticed benefits from using this product such as availability, configuration balancing, high availability solutions for high performance, and failover clustering. It provides a clear picture about the state of the system and gives needed information for taking action and quickly fixing problems.
Mahmoud Younes - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable installation and diverse use cases provide strong value
IBM Security QRadar has some areas for improvement. We have missed some DSM components. We need to customize logs where there is no DSM or connector for certain products. We can integrate but we have missed the DSM, which is the connector to pass logs coming from different applications. For example, with a university customer, we tried onboarding Canvas service. IBM Security QRadar does not support Canvas, so we had to create custom scripts and workarounds to pull logs from Canvas.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Different types of integrations with various sources are the most helpful and useful features of Grafana Loki that I found for myself."
"The most valuable part of Loki is the ability to filter logs by keywords and devices."
"There are new features like that pilot code and things like that for profiling."
"The solution's stability has never been a problem. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine to ten out of ten."
"The best feature of Grafana Loki is that it integrates well with our other tool."
"The effectiveness of filters is pivotal for optimizing the search process and extracting the specific information we need from the extensive log data."
"The most valuable feature of Grafana Loki is the dashboards which are really simple to create."
"The most valuable feature is the capability to set up alerts, which becomes necessary when we need to receive notifications for specific events."
"The rule engine is very easy to use — very flexible."
"There are more than 120 extensions in QRadar, which are easy to install and configure. These can improve your analysis of events."
"When it comes to QRadar, they can do the correlation and not only in networks but also endpoints. This is one of the good features that we have noticed."
"Flexible and valuable product that is modular, so you can easily set up a roadmap for your clients."
"It has a lot of good correlation rules. From a customer's point of view, it is one of the best solutions because you don't need to create correlation rules from scratch. You just review them and customize them as you want."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is its artificial intelligence component, Watson. Its contribution is pretty good from a machine-learning artificial intelligence perspective. This compliments the orchestration automation component, as well."
"The scalability is awesome, because QRadar includes other solutions in the same console."
"The product can scale."
 

Cons

"We had a well-structured dashboard with a functional query. However, an issue arose when the Kubernetes pod restarted. The statistics from our Grafana query would reset, dropping to zero and starting anew. This was particularly noticeable with linear graphs, which are expected to show consistent growth."
"The platform's stability needs improvement."
"We encountered certain limitations when it came to alerting, particularly when dealing with specific data sources."
"Visualization-wise, Grafana Loki's dashboard looks a little outdated compared to other open-source visualization tools like Chronograf."
"Enhancing speed could be a game-changer, and while it might vary depending on the application, it's a factor worth exploring."
"The solution's scalability depends on the team managing the Grafana instance."
"It's not intended for proprietary services, so you have to struggle with configuration a lot."
"In Grafana Loki, the creation of metrics is not so easy, making it an area that could be made easier."
"Its architecture is very complicated."
"Whenever we are upgrading or installing any type of patch, at that time we have some delays."
"There is room for improvement in IBM QRadar in integrating features for SOC maturity and security levels directly into QRadar."
"IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics could improve machine learning use cases because they are limited and most of the use cases are rule-based. They should develop more use cases, such as in Securonix or Exabeam because they will detect a threat. Using machine learning is mainly on the correlation rules, but if you think about Exabeam or Securonix, they detect using machine learning or machine learning-based algorithms."
"We sometimes experience downtime, but it depends on the version. There is some variability."
"The advanced planning management (APM) features should be included."
"The tool is very complicated. One place for improvement would be to have a more user-friendly interface. Having better support in Spanish would be cool."
"IBM Security QRadar lacks automated response. With this feature, there's no need to visit VirusTotal or other sites for IP reputation. There should be a small plug-in where users can click to retrieve details about the reputation and organization of public IP."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Since we are using the open-source version of Grafana Loki, we are not paying anything for the solution."
"We use a free version."
"You can use the free version of Grafana Loki on-premises."
"The solution is open source."
"I use the solution's open-source version. Grafana Loki is a completely free solution for me."
"Grafana Loki is a free, open-source solution."
"The cost is less than other paid services like CloudWatch."
"My company doesn't need to pay for the licensing cost of the solution."
"This price is a little high, so it's an expensive product."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate IBM Security QRadar's pricing a five out of ten."
"There is a license required for this solution."
"found other solutions, with more features at the same cost or less. You don’t have to leave the Gartner Magic Quadrant to beat their price."
"The solution's pricing is based on the EPS model."
"The pricing needs to be such that they are more competitive with other vendors."
"There is a license to use this solution, which is paid annually. However, there are subscription options available."
"It could be cheaper, but the value itself is far more important for us than the price. Typically, our clients have yearly subscriptions."
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Comparison Review

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business88
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise101
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Grafana Loki?
We are using Grafana Loki as a database for real-time metrics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana Loki?
Since it is an open source tool, there are no charges or fees.
What needs improvement with Grafana Loki?
I have no ideas at this moment about what could be improved in Grafana Loki.
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, friendlier GUI and are not licensed based on capacity (amount of logs and information in...
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 your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Security QRadar?
When comparing with Splunk, IBM Security QRadar's cost is reasonable. Splunk is more expensive than IBM Security QRadar.
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Find out what your peers are saying about Grafana Loki vs. IBM Security QRadar and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,985 professionals have used our research since 2012.