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Graylog Enterprise vs Security Onion comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 15, 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

Graylog Enterprise
Ranking in Log Management
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Security Onion
Ranking in Log Management
29th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Graylog Enterprise is 3.1%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Security Onion is 2.3%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Graylog Enterprise3.1%
Security Onion2.3%
Other94.6%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

NC
Security Officer at JSC "Moldtelecom" S.A.
Log analysis has become clearer and faster but visualization and extensibility still need work
The problem was with the complexity and the cost to add extensions. We found this very expensive to buy another version with additional features. I think that Graylog Enterprise does not have customizable dashboards. I did not see them in Graylog Enterprise because most of the time we used the open source free version, which is limited. I think Graylog Enterprise should improve some things that they have in the paid version and perhaps provide users with a menu that gives examples of parsing logs and draws graphics so that people do not need to improve another system such as Grafana. This would be interesting. When it comes to functionalities, I found the log management in Graylog Enterprise acceptable. It is very simple to use and to collect logs. It has support for different protocols and different ports, and the sidecar is easy to use. However, in visualization, I think it needs to be much better.
Jörg Kippe - PeerSpot reviewer
Scientist at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees
A mature and affordable solution that is easy to install and easy to update
The product takes time to learn, it's not that easy. In the beginning we had a lot of questions. If you want to use such a tool in an real (industrial) environment, you have to ask how to get the network data. Can we do a full packet capture? Can we provide agents to our end systems? There are no simple solutions to these questions. It's a general problem when running such systems in an industrial environment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to write custom alerts is key to information security and compliance."
"Troubleshooting is straightforward with Graylog Enterprise."
"I like the correlation and the alerting."
"The centralized logs where one can find bugs quicker and find the line of code that is a problem has made us more efficient."
"Graylog is very handy."
"It is used as a log manager/SIEM. It provides visibility into the infrastructure and security related events."
"Graylog Enterprise has positively impacted my organization by significantly minimizing our workload and making it easier to identify any issues in a service."
"Graylog's search functionality, alerting functionality, user management, and dashboards are useful."
"The most valuable feature of Security Onion for security monitoring is its ability to find infected ports."
"Security Onion is the most mature solution in the market."
"We use Security Onion for internal vulnerability assessment."
 

Cons

"The documentation for Graylog Enterprise can be improved, as this has been a pain point."
"I would like to see a date and time in the Graylog Grok patterns so that I can save time when searching for a log. I like how the streams and the search query work, but adding a date and time will allow me to pull out a log in a milli-second."
"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."
"Elasticsearch recommendations for tuning could be better. Graylog doesn't have direct support for running the system inside of Kubernetes, so it can be challenging to fill in the gaps and set up containers in a way that is both performant and stable."
"I would like to see some kind of visualization included in Graylog. The report is plain, they could be improved."
"Graylog doesn't have direct support for running the system inside of Kubernetes, so it can be challenging to fill in the gaps and set up containers in a way that is both performant and stable."
"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."
"The product is not easy to learn."
"Security Onion's user interface could be improved."
"The initial setup of the solution is a little bit difficult."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Consider Enterprise support if you have atypical needs or setup requirements.​"
"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."
"Having paid official support is wise for projects."
"I use the free version of Graylog."
"We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive."
"We're using the Community edition."
"There is an open source version and an enterprise version. I wouldn't recommend the enterprise version, but as an open source solution, it is solid and works really well."
"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."
"Security Onion is a free solution."
"It is an open-source solution."
"Security Onion is an open-source solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
11%
University
8%
Government
8%
University
12%
Government
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise10
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Graylog?
I am not sure about the pricing, setup cost, and licensing because that was dealt with by a different team that handled the licensing and procurement.
What needs improvement with Graylog?
The documentation for Graylog Enterprise can be improved, as this has been a pain point. I think the visualization aspect of Graylog Enterprise can be made more rich, similar to what we have in Gra...
What is your primary use case for Graylog?
I remember using Graylog Enterprise in the past at a software house where we used it for logging. During that time, we were using Graylog Enterprise as a log aggregator, collecting logs from multip...
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Also Known As

Graylog2
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blue Cross Blue Shield, eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn, SAP, King.com, Twilio, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Graylog Enterprise vs. Security Onion and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.