Graylog vs Logstash comparison

Graylog and Elastic are both solutions in the Log Management category. Graylog is ranked #15 with an average rating of 7.0, while Elastic is ranked #25 with an average rating of 9.3. Graylog holds a 6.5% mindshare in Log Management, compared to Elastic’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Graylog users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 75% of Elastic users who would recommend it.

Graylog

Read 21 Graylog reviews

9,223 Views
9,223 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Logstash

Read 5 Logstash reviews

772 Views
772 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

Graylog

Logstash

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Graylog and Logstash based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Log Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Graylog vs. Logstash Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Graylog vs. Logstash

July 2025

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Helped 864,053 peers since 2012

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

15th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Logstash

Ranking in Log Management

25th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Graylog is 6.5%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Logstash is 0.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Log Management

Featured Reviews

Ivan Kokalovic

DevOps Engineer at Proton Technologies

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.

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PRANIL CHANDARKAR

Associate Consultant at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Open-source accessibility and ease of implementation empower adaptable log management

As both a customer and an integrator, I think the best features in Logstash are that people prefer it because it is open to all, as it is an open-source version. The functionality of Logstash is quite easy to implement. I can say that the plugin ecosystem of Logstash is great. I have used some plugins for shell script monitoring and for SQL monitoring, and these are all working well with Logstash. The real-time processing capabilities of Logstash are also pretty fine with the tool. When I use the community edition, I have to do many things manually. If I am using enterprise Elastic, then that is taken care of by the Elastic native machine learning.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 build is stable and requires little maintenance, even compared to some extremely expensive products."

"We run a containerized microservices environment. Being able to set up streams and search for errors and anomalies across hundreds of containers is why a log aggregation platform like Graylog is valuable to us."

"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."

"It is used as a log manager/SIEM. It provides visibility into the infrastructure and security related events."

"UDP is a fast and lightweight protocol, perfect for sending large volumes of logs with minimal overhead."

"Graylog is valuable because it bridges technical knowledge to non-technical teams, presenting complex backend processes in a simple timeline."

"Graylog is very handy."

More Graylog pros

"I can collect logs from various data sources, including hardware."

"Everything aligns well with improving our organization."

"The transformation means we ship the logs in the way that we want them to be presented in Kibana, which is the main function we use Logstash for."

"We have three or four Logstash servers for high availability."

"Logstash has numerous plugins for inputs and outputs, allowing it to work well in environments that do not contain other Elastic components."

Cons

"Its scalability gets complicated when we have to update or edit multiple nodes."

"It would be great if Graylog could provide a better Python package in order to make it easier to use for the Python community."

"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."

"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."

"Graylog needs to improve their authentication. Also, the fact that Graylog displays logs from the top down is just ridiculous."

"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."

"I hope to see improvements in Graylog for more interactivity, user-friendliness, and creating alerts. The initial setup is complex."

"Lacks sufficient documentation."

More Graylog cons

"There can be a UI to implement with Logstash. Currently, I have to work with config files and everything."

"The product needs to improve its compatibility."

"Almost all the research can be very bad. We still have a problem with importing the log system."

"An enhancement we could implement is the ability to cluster Logstash to exist in more than one node."

"We still have a problem with importing the log system."

"Elastic does not provide proper support for Logstash worldwide, and I rate their technical support as one out of ten."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"I am using a community edition. I have not looked at the enterprise offering from Graylog."

"It's an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."

"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."

"You get a lot out-of-the-box with the non-enterprise version, so give it a try first."

"Having paid official support is wise for projects."

"If you want something that works and do not have the money for Splunk or QRadar, take Graylog."

More Graylog pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Government

University

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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 do you like most about Logstash?

I can collect logs from various data sources, including hardware.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Logstash?

An enhancement we could implement is the ability to cluster Logstash to exist in more than one node.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Logstash?

A use case for using Logstash that we have involves integration servers that log in files in a non-transformed way. We have more than four servers that log in files, and when we have an issue, we c...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 35% of the time

Wazuh vs Graylog

Compared 24% of the time

syslog-ng vs Graylog

Compared 11% of the time

Security Onion vs Graylog

Compared 5% of the time

Fortinet FortiAnalyzer vs Graylog

Compared 3% of the time

More Graylog Competitors

Cribl vs Logstash

Compared 42% of the time

syslog-ng vs Logstash

Compared 17% of the time

Grafana Loki vs Logstash

Compared 17% of the time

Wazuh vs Logstash

Compared 13% of the time

More Logstash Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Graylog

July 2025

Download Graylog product report

Buyer's Guide

Log Management

July 2025

Download Logstash product report

Also Known As

Graylog2

No data available

Overview

Graylog is purpose-built to deliver the best log collection, storage, enrichment, and analysis. Graylog is:

Considerably faster analysis speeds.
More robust and easier-to-use analysis platform.
Simpler administration and infrastructure management.
Lower cost than alternatives.
Full-scale customer service.
No expensive training or tool experts required.

Graylog

Logstash is a versatile data processing pipeline that ingests data from multiple sources, transforms it, and sends it to preferred destinations, enabling seamless data utilization across systems.

Logstash provides an efficient and flexible way to manage data flow, supporting diverse input sources and offering a rich set of plugins. Its real-time processing capability and ease of integration with Elasticsearch make it advantageous for businesses looking to enhance data analytics. While valuable, Logstash can benefit from improvements like scalability enhancements and more robust error-handling mechanisms.

What are the key features of Logstash?

Input Plugin Support: Connects to a wide range of data sources for seamless ingestion.
Filter Plugin: Processes and enriches logs before output.
Output Plugin Flexibility: Delivers data to various endpoints efficiently.
Real-Time Pipeline: Processes data in real-time for immediate insights.

What benefits does Logstash provide?

Enhanced Data Processing: Streamlines data ingestion and transformation workflows.
Improved Analytics: Facilitates deeper insights through seamless Elasticsearch integration.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces total expenses by optimizing data handling processes.
Scalability: Adapts to diverse data volumes and use cases.

Industries like finance and e-commerce leverage Logstash for managing extensive log data and improving decision-making by feeding enriched data into analytics platforms. Its ability to handle diverse formats and integrate with Elastic Stack has proven crucial in implementing comprehensive data strategies.

Elastic

Sample Customers

Blue Cross Blue Shield, eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn, SAP, King.com, Twilio, Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Graylog vs. Logstash

July 2025

Free Report: Graylog vs. Logstash

Find out what your peers are saying about Graylog vs. Logstash and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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