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Grafana Loki vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
1.0
Companies gain significant ROI with Grafana Loki's quick setup, cost-effectiveness, and efficiency in resolving issues, enhancing operational insights.
Sentiment score
6.4
Organizations achieve time savings, enhanced security visibility, and reduced costs with Splunk Enterprise Security, despite some cost concerns.
Loki leads to significant cost savings by reducing server downtime and aiding engineers in prompt issue resolution.
The documentation for Splunk Enterprise Security is outstanding. It is well-organized and easy to access.
We couldn't calculate what would have been the cost if they had actually gotten compromised; however, they were in the process, so every investment was returned immediately.
On average, my SecOps team takes probably at least a quarter of the time, if not more, to remediate security incidents with Splunk Enterprise Security compared to our previous solution.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Grafana Loki support is praised, but many prefer community resources and forums over official channels for problem-solving.
Sentiment score
6.3
Splunk Enterprise Security offers knowledgeable support, but response times vary; community forums and higher-tier experts provide valuable help.
We have not had to open any tickets yet, as we solve issues through forums and wikis.
I usually do not use official support; I typically rely on community blogs and forums for support of Grafana Loki.
We have paid for Splunk support, and we’re not on the free tier hoping for assistance; we are a significant customer and invest a lot in this service.
I have had nothing but good experiences with Splunk support, receiving timely and helpful replies.
We've had great customer success managers who have helped us navigate scaling from 600 gigs to 30 terabytes.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.5
Grafana Loki is praised for its scalability, effectively managing diverse user bases and handling extensive log data seamlessly.
Sentiment score
7.3
Splunk Enterprise Security effectively scales with data volume, excelling in performance, though cloud deployments ease scalability more than on-premise.
Loki offers great scalability, allowing us to manage and compress logs extensively.
We currently rely on disaster recovery and backup recovery, which takes time to recover, during which you're basically blind, so I'm pushing my leadership team to switch over to a clustering environment for constant availability.
They struggle a bit with pure virtual environments, but in terms of how much they can handle, it is pretty good.
It is easy to scale.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Grafana Loki is stable and reliable, though some report issues like outdated authentication and log retrieval difficulties.
Sentiment score
7.5
Splunk Enterprise Security is reliable and stable, efficiently handling data with minimal downtime and requires proper configuration for optimal performance.
They test it very thoroughly before release, and our customers have Splunk running for months without issues.
Splunk has been very reliable and very consistent.
We need more SMEs, and there is no mechanism to tell us about indexer or search head issues.
 

Room For Improvement

Grafana Loki needs improved usability, integration, and features like customizable reports, better UI, security, and machine learning analytics.
Splunk Enterprise Security needs UI improvements, better scalability, integration support, documentation, performance, and cost-effective licensing.
Improvements could be made in the enablement of the product, addressing the complexity of implementing these tools.
It would be beneficial if Loki could directly access Windows Server logs or events directly from the servers.
Improving the infrastructure behind Splunk Enterprise Security is vital—enhanced cores, CPUs, and memory should be prioritized to support better processing power.
Splunk Enterprise Security is not something that automatically picks things; you have to set up use cases, update data models, and link the right use cases to the right data models for those detections to happen.
For any future enhancements or features, such as MLTK and SOAR platform integration, we need more visibility, training, and certification for the skilled professionals who are working.
 

Setup Cost

Grafana Loki's open-source and affordable cloud options make it appealing to cost-conscious enterprises seeking scalable logging solutions.
Splunk Enterprise Security's advanced features and scalability justify its high cost, though pricing challenges smaller businesses.
The cloud version is competitively priced compared to other market solutions.
Since it is an open source tool, there are no charges or fees.
I saw clients spend two million dollars a year just feeding data into the Splunk solution.
The platform requires significant financial investment and resources, making it expensive despite its comprehensive features.
I find it to be affordable, which is why every industry uses it.
 

Valuable Features

Grafana Loki offers cost-effective log management, strong integration, and user-friendly features, ideal for Kubernetes and real-time metrics.
Splunk Enterprise Security excels with rapid search, scalability, flexible integrations, and robust analytics, enhancing security and operational efficiency.
It provides a clear picture about the state of the system and gives needed information for taking action and quickly fixing problems.
Grafana Loki is notably cost-effective.
The most valuable part of Loki is the ability to filter logs by keywords and devices.
This capability is useful for performance monitoring and issue identification.
I assess Splunk Enterprise Security's insider threat detection capabilities for helping to find unknown threats and anomalous user behavior as great.
Splunk Enterprise Security provides the foundation for unified threat detection, investigation, and response, enabling fast identification of critical issues.
 

Categories and Ranking

Grafana Loki
Ranking in Log Management
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
19
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
371
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Grafana Loki is 7.6%, up from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 7.5%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security7.5%
Grafana Loki7.6%
Other84.9%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2350791 - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers cost-effective log management with strong correlation features across observability tools
Grafana Loki's open-source capability is a significant benefit. Grafana has invested in making their enterprise tools competitive with other APM tools, facilitating cross-correlation with Mimir and Tempo for metrics and tracing. The tool offers good search functionality, and its on-premises capability is advantageous. The indexing performance is strong, making it a robust log management tool. Grafana Loki is notably cost-effective.
reviewer1469784 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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Comparison Review

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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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business109
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise260
 

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 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 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 ...
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...
 

Overview

 

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.
Find out what your peers are saying about Grafana Loki vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.
873,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.