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Graylog vs IBM Security QRadar comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 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

Graylog
Ranking in Log Management
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Log Management
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
208
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (4th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (17th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (9th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Graylog is 6.7%, up from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 3.7%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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.
Md. Shahriar Hussain - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time incident detection and user-friendly dashboard benefit daily operations
There are many types of AI, and this AI is very limited in SQL and features. There may be potential for improvement. So far, it seems very limited. It shows some good features in the correlation part, but I think there is room for improvement. For instance, when creating rules, it can suggest more rules, reducing the effort needed. If AI-related support can suggest rules and integrate with existing security devices like MD, IPS, this SIM can create more relevant rules. Sometimes logs I receive don't mean anything, and I need technical stakeholders to share or forward logs, but these are sometimes inadequate. Keywords can help identify insufficient logs. I often lack time to verify logs. Sharing false positive results could be reduced to help my team.

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."
"The product is scalable. The solution is stable."
"The best feature of Graylog is the Elasticsearch integration. We can integrate and we can run filters, such as an event of interest, and those logs we can send to any SIEM tool or as an analytic. Additionally, there are clear and well-documented implementation instructions on their website to follow if needed."
"It has data adapters and lookup tables that utilize HTTP calls to APIs."
"Allowing us to set up alerts and integrate with platforms we already use, such as Slack and OpsGenie to alert users of these errors proactively, is also a very useful feature."
"The build is stable and requires little maintenance, even compared to some extremely expensive products."
"I am very proud of how very stable the solution is."
"Real-time UDP/GELF logging and full text-based searching."
"This is a distributed application, meaning that a customer can stack small and then scale it so that they can expand pretty effectively. You can use, basically, the same product in an SMB or a large enterprise."
"The most valuable feature is the machine learning module."
"We are using the platform version, which I like."
"I have used IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics in a Cloud Pak on Amazon, and there it runs on top of it and is easy to assess. Additionally, I have installed processes and characters."
"It's quite scalable. We have upgraded some solutions from 1000 APS up to 3500 APS to 5000 APS. It's a good solution, they have no scalability issues."
"Log correlation is very useful for processing alerts. It serves to follow up alerts in real-time, building an entire workflow."
"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."
"IBM QRadar has improved my organization by introducing many functions. It collects logs from all of our systems in the organization and has functioned very well. It alerts and correlates the aggregate events or offenses we receive through all the applications we use."
 

Cons

"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."
"Graylog needs to improve their authentication. Also, the fact that Graylog displays logs from the top down is just ridiculous."
"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."
"The biggest problem is the collector application, as we wanted to avoid using Graylog Collector Sidecar due to its architecture."
"More customization is always useful."
"I would like to see some kind of visualization included in Graylog."
"There should be some user groups and an auto sign-in feature.​"
"Lacks sufficient documentation."
"If you have too many events that occur, then the storage capacity becomes a problem. You need to have more storage."
"What needs to be improved in IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics is the user experience. It's not optimal. Some screens are a bit clunky. The solution needs to be more user-friendly."
"QRadar needs to be more specialized, along the lines of what other SIEM solutions are."
"The reporting system could use some upgrading."
"They have to build more quantitative monitoring, profiling, and make it more predictive."
"The solution lacks vendor support."
"I think QRadar is very complex. It's a distributed system and IBM QRadar has an all-in-one solution which is not like that distributed solution but it's a good product. IBM needs to consider the user interface because if we compare it with AlienVault, the AlienVault user interface is fantastic but the IBM QRadar user interface is very complex. They should focus on how to make it easier for the client."
"QRadar needs a lot of fine tuning"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use the free version of Graylog."
"If you want something that works and do not have the money for Splunk or QRadar, take Graylog.​​"
"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."
"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."
"We're using the Community edition."
"​You get a lot out-of-the-box with the non-enterprise version, so give it a try first."
"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."
"It's an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."
"The license is not subscription-based."
"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 are different types of subscriptions available. We were on an annual subscription, but our customers typically choose the two years subscription option."
"IBM has subscriptions plans that run for one year."
"It's not expensive for the resources that it gives you."
"The tool is priced in a competitive manner. The tool's price is dependent on the installation and the product size, but it is competitive in the marketplace."
"There is a license required for this solution."
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Comparison Review

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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
Computer Software Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Educational Organization
7%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Graylog?
The product is scalable. The solution is stable.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Graylog?
We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive.
What needs improvement with Graylog?
When it comes to configuring the processing pipeline, writing the rules can be very tedious, especially since the documentation isn't extensive on how the functions provided for these rules work. P...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Graylog2
IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blue Cross Blue Shield, eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn, SAP, King.com, Twilio, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Find out what your peers are saying about Graylog vs. IBM Security QRadar and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.