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Graylog Enterprise vs IBM Security QRadar vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Graylog Enterprise is 2.8%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 4.2%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 6.8%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security6.8%
IBM Security QRadar4.2%
Graylog Enterprise2.8%
Other86.2%
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.
HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Have managed daily asset and alert monitoring effectively but have encountered limitations with manual processes and interface usability
It's still very manual and doesn't work on its own. It's still in an early stage and not on par where we can consider it a really successful detection system. The accuracy is not there. The UI could be better when compared to Sentinels where we can use flags and tagging. It could be much more user-friendly. IBM Security QRadar has all features and is fully competitive with other SIEM tools, but when it comes to user-friendliness, a new user takes time to get used to it. More intuitive, user-friendly interfaces and more helpful documentation would be beneficial. The query searching and data fetching could be faster. In large to very large organizations with around 5,000 or 6,000 assets or beyond, even with proper configurations and RAM and hardware backing up, the query is fairly slow.
Sathis-Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at Bank of America
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I like about Graylog is that it's real-time and you have access to the raw data. So, you ingest it, and you have access to every message and every data item you ingest. You can then build analytics on top of that. You can look at the raw data, and you can do some volumetric estimations, such as how big traffic you have, how many messages of data of a type you have, etc."
"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."
"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."
"This had increased productivity for the dev and support teams, because we are directly notifying them."
"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."
"The Graylog features that have proven to be most beneficial for our data analysis in particular are that we tend to use it as a big data store, so we have the correlation rules that, if something matches under certain conditions, it raises an alarm."
"The centralized logs where one can find bugs quicker and find the line of code that is a problem has made us more efficient."
"I like the correlation and the alerting."
"IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson is aligned with regards to what's happening in the public space in terms of the phishing attacks that we are seeing prevalent in the market, and the use cases are very practical, offering quite a bit of protection."
"The ability to correlate large amounts of data into rules that provide real-time alerting is the most valuable feature."
"The circumvention method and the patch method is perfected very well in the QRadar area."
"I suggest others to go with IBM Security QRadar because it is an IBM product and many companies and bank environments are using IBM Security QRadar because of its strong visibility and analysis capabilities."
"I am fond of IBM Security QRadar because it is very user-friendly."
"Almost every feature is useful."
"The most valuable feature is user behavior analytics (UBA)."
"It is really helpful to us from the compliance point of view."
"The integration is seamless with many devices and operating systems."
"The ability to manage large amounts of generated data and to protect all devices from unauthorized use are the most valuable features."
"We saw the granularity that we could get from Splunk far exceeded what we already had. We had the ability to have our security team really focus on the platform and stay within the platform, but they could correlate with a variety of other stakeholders, and our stakeholders were growing."
"Splunk's schema on demand is incredibly useful. I do not have to worry about what my users will need when we onboard their data."
"The security part is useful as it helps secure the entire environment."
"I have also been able to take advantage of some of the more complex statistical capabilities when analyzing logs."
"The initial deployment was straightforward."
"I like Splunk's automated threat detection and orchestration capabilities. Splunk offers a single solution for analyzing, aggregating, correlating, monitoring, reporting, visualizing, etc. You can get all of these capabilities in one place. On top of that, it provides a cloud, testing, on-premise, and hybrid solution, giving customers more flexibility for their use cases."
 

Cons

"Its scalability gets complicated when we have to update or edit multiple nodes."
"The documentation for Graylog Enterprise can be improved, as this has been a pain point."
"The biggest problem is the collector application, as we wanted to avoid using Graylog Collector Sidecar due to its architecture."
"I would rate them as a two out of 10. You are on your own without an enterprise license."
"For Python developers, it would be great if Graylog could provide a better Python package in order to make it easier to use for the Python community."
"The support from the Graylog community is helpful, but they can do better."
"More complex visualizations and the ability to execute custom Elasticsearch queries would be great."
"The technical support is a weak point in this product. It's not so easy to contact them and they don't answer immediately."
"The playbook guide which specifies the rules for security use cases needs to be provided to support in case the organization needs help."
"We actually have very few use cases and there were lots of false positives with QRadar."
"It should have built-in blocking capability."
"They need to improve their threat intelligence feed and they need to improve their user behavior analytics modules."
"I don't give it a 10 because it is something we have to request. I would love it if UBA was included out of the box like Microsoft."
"To be very frank, it's not that much help as of now. We are not getting that many insights from UVA, which we wanted, actually."
"The tech support is not that good."
"There are many limitations in using SAP, EBS, or Micro-Dynamics; a lot of things that are happening in those platforms could also be monitored and allowed from the cybersecurity risks perspective."
"More control with Splunk Cloud as it seems a bit limited. I used to manage an on-premise instance of Splunk Enterprise and really liked having more control over it."
"Official training, even CBT, is expensive so not many people are able to get certified."
"There are some premium add-ons like Splunk Enterprise Security or ITSI which makes it more expensive."
"Areas of Splunk Enterprise Security that could be improved include the need for training and certifications. We are planning to do certifications, and there are many features, such as risk-based score and score detection, where the current training doesn't provide visibility to the analyst."
"We don't have SOAR products from Splunk. I believe that's an important piece."
"Splunk Enterprise Security can be improved mainly from the user interface regarding the visualizations. They are working on it, yet there are only five to ten very basic visualizations."
"It'd be really nice if Splunk Enterprise Security had a better and solid configuration guide."
"The glass table feature does not perform as expected."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use the free version of Graylog."
"Having paid official support is wise for projects."
"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."
"It's an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."
"We're using the Community edition."
"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."
"The price could be better. I bought a subscription for three years."
"Only enterprise businesses can afford the tool."
"Customers have to purchase a license based on the number of users, devices, and applications they want to protect. It allows you to take a license on a subscription basis for three years or five years."
"We pay approximately $40,000 to use the solution annually. This solution is a lot less expensive than Splunk."
"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."
"When it comes to the initial pricing there can be a huge discount from there side and also I think they are open to competing with other products."
"QRadar's price is reasonable compared to LogRhythm."
"It's free of charge."
"There is an annual license required to use this solution."
"It is expensive, but it is a good tool. It is worth the cost."
"Further reductions would be fantastic, and I believe that more and more people would flock to it."
"You will eat up whatever you purchase quickly. The level of insights that Splunk empowers is addictive."
"It's more expensive than the other tools, but it's worth it. Every penny is worth it."
"I assume that the pricing is reasonable, because if it was too costly, there are other alternatives."
"Pricing is probably its weakest spot. As compared to some competitors, Splunk is really expensive."
"It is expensive. I used to buy it early on, but then they combined it into a higher-up organization. They buy it for multiple systems now. Last time, I paid around 60K for it. There is just the licensing fee. That's all."
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Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
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
12%
Comms Service Provider
11%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business92
Midsize Enterprise39
Large Enterprise107
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business126
Midsize Enterprise53
Large Enterprise276
 

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 handl...
What needs improvement with Graylog?
The documentation for Graylog Enterprise can be improved, as this has been a pain point. I think the visualization as...
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, w...
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, friendli...
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 a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Security QRadar?
Pricing and the license of EPS were managed by the governance team. I was not responsible for managing those. I was s...
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 ingest...
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 monitor...
What needs improvement with Splunk?
The main dislikes about Splunk Enterprise Security are that we need more highly skilled people and the license for Sp...
 

Also Known As

Graylog2
IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
No data available
 

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.
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 Splunk, Wazuh, Cribl and others in Log Management. Updated: June 2026.
899,125 professionals have used our research since 2012.