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Graylog Enterprise vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

Graylog and Splunk are both solutions in the Log Management category. Graylog is ranked #15 with an average rating of 7.0, while Splunk is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3. Graylog holds a 6.0% mindshare in Log Management, compared to Splunk’s 7.7% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Graylog users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Splunk users who would recommend it.
Graylog Enterprise
Read 21 Graylog Enterprise reviews
  • 8,356 Views
  • 8,356 Comparison Views
95% willing to recommend
Splunk Enterprise Security
Read 369 Splunk Enterprise Security reviews
  • 23,960 Views
  • 13,418 Comparison Views
93% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 8, 2025

Splunk Enterprise Security and Graylog Enterprise both operate in the domain of log management and data analytics. Based on feature depth, Splunk appears to have an upper hand, boasting extensive capabilities, especially for large-scale operations.

Features: Splunk Enterprise Security provides robust features including log aggregation, log management, and advanced threat hunting. It integrates seamlessly with various tools, supports large-scale operations, and offers comprehensive data analytics. In contrast, Graylog Enterprise focuses on simplicity and is open-source, offering core functionalities like log management and basic search capabilities, making it user-friendly and affordable.

Room for Improvement: Splunk is critiqued for its high costs, complex data processing, and the need for better user interface updates. Archival data management and AI integrations are additional areas for enhancement. Meanwhile, Graylog needs improvements in alerting and visualization capabilities, with users desiring more intuitive dashboards and flexible alert thresholds.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk supports wide-ranging deployments across on-premises and cloud setups but comes with a steep learning curve and a complex initial setup. Customer support is mixed, with reports of delays. Graylog is straightforward to deploy, especially on-premises, but relies heavily on community support, which can be challenging for users needing immediate assistance.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk's pricing is based on data volume, which can be prohibitive to smaller organizations despite extensive capabilities justifying the cost for larger entities. Graylog, being open-source, is more cost-effective, offering a reasonable ROI for smaller organizations needing efficient log management without the extensive features of Splunk.

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Buyer's Guide
Graylog Enterprise vs. Splunk Enterprise Security
September 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

Graylog Enterprise
Ranking in Log Management
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
21
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
369
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Graylog Enterprise is 6.0%, up from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 7.7%, down from 9.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security7.7%
Graylog Enterprise6.0%
Other86.3%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Ivan Kokalovic - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates backend service monitoring with efficient log retrieval and API flexibility
Graylog is valuable because it bridges technical knowledge to non-technical teams, presenting complex backend processes in a simple timeline. It boosts the knowledge of sales and customer support teams by allowing them to see the backend operations without needing to read the code. Its API is flexible for visualization, and its powerful search engine efficiently handles large volumes of log data. Moreover, its stability, fast search capabilities, and compatibility with languages like ANSI SQL enhance its utility in IT infrastructure.
Read full review
Kyle Vernham - PeerSpot reviewer
Built-in searches and unified data access streamline alert investigation and boosts analyst efficiency
The two features I appreciate the most in Splunk Enterprise Security are the built-in searches, which have been very easy for us to get started with right out of the box, and the fact that it accesses all of our other systems. You can access it as a pane of glass rather than having to search individually. We also have the option to compare our analysts from our service to service. Splunk Enterprise Security helps our SOC team prioritize and investigate high-fidelity alerts more effectively by providing a more in-depth look and the ability to access a lot more of our data. Instead of jumping from several segmented systems, it allows us to have everything brought together in one place. For example, you have to move from our purview to our build system and to Splunk Enterprise Security, and it enables us to streamline that process. The built-in features of Splunk Enterprise Security, which we recently procured, have given us a good starting point and demonstrated the value of the product, providing an easy way to sell it to our company. The ease of getting everything into our purview helps us, and it serves as a good start for the investigation part in one location rather than what we usually have, which is jumping from system to system to system. Splunk Enterprise Security plays a role in our company's strategy to combat insider threats and advanced persistent threats by currently being in its technical test phase. We are still rolling it out, and it should help us find any insider threats based on information that our policy states should not be present in our system. Splunk Enterprise Security's risk-based alerting (RBA) has impacted our alert volume and analyst productivity because we've got many different systems feeding into it. However, it has helped to make it easier for our analysts to go through a set of events rather than 100 alerts. RBA allows us to streamline the process and customize it for our analysts. When it comes to leveraging Splunk Enterprise Security's dashboards and visualizations to communicate security posture to executives, it's pretty straightforward for any type of information. The visualization is easy to understand, but I haven't had any direct conversations with our executives.
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

"The solution's most valuable feature is its new interface."
"Real-time UDP/GELF logging and full text-based searching."
"Graylog is very handy."
"Everything stands out as valuable, including the fact that I can quantify and qualify the logs, create pipelines and process the logs in any way I like, and create charts or data maps."
"We have scaled from a single machine installation (a VM with a Graylog + ES + MongoDB) to (2 Graylog + 2 ES + 3 MongoDB). This was done smoothly with a minimal impact on logging."
"Message forwarding through the in-built module."
"The product is scalable. The solution is stable."
"The ability to write custom alerts is key to information security and compliance."
More Graylog Enterprise pros
"I like the search feature and the indexing. It's very fast and comprehensive."
"It allows the centralization of data and makes possible new sorts of correlations that were previously impossible using traditional SIEMs such as ArcSight or QRadar."
"Great platform with user-friendly interface and GUI."
"Its dashboard is valuable. If you have a good knowledge of how to create a dashboard, you can create any dashboard related to cybersecurity. If fine-tuned, the alarms that are triggered for instant review are also very valuable and useful."
"It is a one stop shop as a full monitoring and alerting solution for operations and application analysis for most of our back-end systems."
"The search function for spam is like a google search. You just enter and it will quickly show you the results."
"It gives us good visibility into multiple environments, including cloud, on-premises, and hybrid; irrespective of platform."
"I appreciate the integrations with the SOAR architectures and the expandability that can be used throughout the entire ecosystem of Splunk Enterprise Security."
More Splunk Enterprise Security pros
 

Cons

"The biggest problem is the collector application, as we wanted to avoid using Graylog Collector Sidecar due to its architecture."
"Graylog can improve the index rotation as it's quite a complex solution."
"It would be great if Graylog could provide a better Python package in order to make it easier to use for the Python community."
"I hope to see improvements in Graylog for more interactivity, user-friendliness, and creating alerts. The initial setup is complex."
"With technical support, you are on your own without an enterprise license."
"More customization is always useful."
"I would like to see a default dashboard widget that shows the topology of the clusters defined for the graylog install."
"Over six months, I had two similar issues where searches were performed on field "messages". It exhausted all the memory of the ES node causing an ES crash and a Graylog halt."
More Graylog Enterprise cons
"The first thing that comes to mind is a little bit of UI improvement. It sometimes can be a little bit buggy or it can be a little bit slow, but that varies from customer to customer."
"There are limitations with Splunk not detecting all user activity, especially on mainframes and network devices."
"A lot of people are averse to using new tools so if they make it even more user-friendly than it already is, I think that could go a long way."
"It does not give us permission to implement on-premise so we implement them on the cloud."
"The historical data extraction needs improvement. I would like the capability of taking data and having it trend longer."
"I would definitely improve the risk-based alerts in Splunk Enterprise Security, helping SOC analysts to get to the drill-down searches."
"It needs more formatting control without having to be an admin."
"It would be nice if Splunk reduced the cost of training. Their training sessions are way too costly."
More Splunk Enterprise Security cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Having paid official support is wise for projects."
"​You get a lot out-of-the-box with the non-enterprise version, so give it a try first."
"We're using the Community edition."
"If you want something that works and do not have the money for Splunk or QRadar, take Graylog.​​"
"I am using a community edition. I have not looked at the enterprise offering from Graylog."
"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."
"We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive."
More Graylog Enterprise pricing and cost advice
"Splunk Enterprise becomes extremely expensive after the 20GB/month license."
"Splunk can be an expensive solution. It all depends on how we configure the alerts and the events from the endpoints. You can save some money if you do that correctly. If not, it becomes an expensive solution."
"While some clients find the cost of Splunk Enterprise Security to be on the higher end, its pricing is comparable to other SIEM solutions."
"Splunk Enterprise Security incurs a significant cost because of the amount of data we send, but we are fine with the value we're getting for that price."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is a bit expensive overall, but it provides good value."
"Splunk Enterprise Security's pricing is competitive."
"It is a pretty high cost solution, but if your organization has the funds, it can bring many benefits."
"The price of Splunk is too high for our market."
More Splunk Enterprise Security pricing and cost advice
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Comparison Review

VS
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
16%
Comms Service Provider
10%
University
8%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business110
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise257
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Graylog?
The product is scalable. The solution is stable.
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Graylog?
I am not familiar with the pricing details of Graylog, as I was not responsible for that aspect. It was determined that we didn't need an enterprise plan, which is more suited for clients with less...
See all answers
What needs improvement with Graylog?
An improvement I would suggest is in Graylog's user interface, such as allowing for font size adjustments. A potential enhancement could be the integration with Ollama to run large language models ...
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
 

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Compared 2% of the time
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Compared 6% of the time
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Compared 6% of the time
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Compared 4% of the time
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Compared 4% of the time
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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Graylog Enterprise
October 2025
Graylog Enterprise reportDownload Graylog Enterprise product report
Buyer's Guide
Splunk Enterprise Security
September 2025
Splunk Enterprise Security reportDownload Splunk Enterprise Security product report
 

Also Known As

Graylog2
No data available
 

Overview

Graylog Enterprise, recognized for log collection, real-time search, and enriched data handling, offers an open-source framework that integrates seamlessly with Elasticsearch. Its user-centric interface streamlines data correlation and log aggregation, supporting both backend services and comprehensive monitoring needs.

Graylog Enterprise stands out for its stability and powerful log management capabilities, facilitating efficient log aggregation, real-time updates, and data analytics. Users benefit from its plugin-based alerting, user-friendly interface, and support for microservices, including Docker integration. The ability to search in detail, flexible API integration, and data enrichment features are highly valued. Challenges include collector application issues, desired visualization enhancements, and authentication integration improvements. Users seek advancements in UI customization, backup functions, and easier rule creation.

What are Graylog Enterprise's most important features?
  • Log Collection: Efficiently aggregates and handles diverse logs.
  • Real-Time Search: Provides immediate log data access.
  • Custom Alerts: Plugin-based alerting for tailored notifications.
  • Dashboard Enhancements: Improved visualization for data insights.
  • Data Enrichment: Adds value through detailed log analysis.
What benefits and ROI can users expect?
  • Audit Trail Support: Essential for compliance in financial sectors.
  • Security Event Correlation: Enables incident analysis and response.
  • Faster Issue Identification: Speeds up troubleshooting with detailed visualization.
  • API Flexibility: Seamless integration across systems and environments.
  • Comprehensive Monitoring: Centralized log management enhances oversight.

In industrial use, Graylog Enterprise is crucial for audit trailing in financial sectors, facilitating security event identification and error monitoring. Backend teams leverage real-time analytics for swift issue resolution, while developers appreciate the comprehensive log visualization enabled by Docker integration for microservice management.

Graylog

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

Blue Cross Blue Shield, eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn, SAP, King.com, Twilio, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
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
Graylog Enterprise vs. Splunk Enterprise Security
September 2025
Free Report: Graylog Enterprise vs. Splunk Enterprise Security
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