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Graylog vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 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
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
7.5
Number of Reviews
318
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

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 Splunk Enterprise Security is 7.3%, down from 10.1% 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.
ROBERT-CHRISTIAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Has many predefined correlation rules and is brilliant for investigation and log analysis
It is very complicated to write your own correlation rules without the help of Splunk support. What Splunk could do better is to create an API to the standard SIEM tools, such as Microsoft Sentinel. The idea would be to make it less painful. In ELK Stack, Kibana is the query language with which you can search log files. I believe Splunk has also a query language in which they search their log files, but once you have identified the log file that you want to use for further security correlation, you want to very quickly transport that into your SIEM tool, such as Microsoft Sentinel. That is something that Splunk could make a little bit less painful because it is a lot of effort to find that log file and forward it. An API with Microsoft Sentinel or a similar SIEM tool would be a good idea.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Graylog is very handy."
"Open source and user friendly."
"This had increased productivity for the dev and support teams, because we are directly notifying them."
"Graylog is valuable because it bridges technical knowledge to non-technical teams, presenting complex backend processes in a simple timeline."
"The ability to write custom alerts is key to information security and compliance."
"Message forwarding through the in-built module."
"The build is stable and requires little maintenance, even compared to some extremely expensive products."
"One of the most valuable features is that you are able to do a very detailed search through the log messages in the overview."
"The incident review pane is the best part of it because that is where the SOC lives. It is the heartbeat of what the SOC needs to do. You are able to start the investigative process. As you are sitting in the incident review pane, you see the alert, and from that one alert, which is called a notable alert, you can drill in and see all the different specific details that are tied to that."
"The solution is very fast and succinct."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"The tool helps with advanced reports and keeps the system scalable and flexible. It provides a clear picture of the current status of any incidents. As a CISO, I see a lot of potential for future innovation, which is interesting. I've noticed better performance, especially with the reports."
"I like the ease of setting up dashboards on Splunk. They're easy to create, manage, alter, and share. You can fine-tune them any way you see fit."
"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 product is good, it satisfies our customers."
"The scalability of the solution is amazing because it can collect a lot of data and you can have your own structure to monitor this data."
 

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."
"The area in Graylog that needs to be improved or enhanced would be the integrations."
"Lacks sufficient documentation."
"I hope to see improvements in Graylog for more interactivity, user-friendliness, and creating alerts. The initial setup is complex."
"More complex visualizations and the ability to execute custom Elasticsearch queries would be great."
"It would be great if Graylog could provide a better Python package in order to make it easier to use for the Python community."
"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 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 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. They should offer training based on the features we use."
"The GUI can be improved. Splunk has always suffered from having a kind of goofy UI, it needs some updating."
"It can be tough to get a hold of somebody in technical support depending on the complexity of the issue."
"Writing queries is a bit complicated sometimes."
"We do have to educate developers on how to not blow it up. It is a little to easy to write an expensive query and overly stress the system. This could be improved."
"There is a definite learning curve to starting out."
"Could be more user friendly."
"While scheduled reports can be embedded, Splunk dashboard can not be embedded directly without enabling cross origin."
 

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."
"I use the free version of Graylog."
"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."
"Consider Enterprise support if you have atypical needs or setup requirements.​"
"Having paid official support is wise for projects."
"We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive."
"We're using the Community edition."
"I assume that the pricing is reasonable, because if it was too costly, there are other alternatives."
"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."
"Our customers often complain that the price of Splunk is too high."
"Splunk is priced higher than other solutions."
"ROI is estimated at saving my team roughly 10 to 12 man hours per week in troubleshooting for our company as well as what our profits had been from our services of installing, configuring, and supporting other clients with the product."
"Its pricing model can be improved."
"Luckily, we come under a large federal agency, and before the pandemic, they signed a large enterprise license agreement. It worked out great and to our advantage because we are a small organization. We got a 300 gig license, and we just did not have the buying power to be able to get products cheaply. Because we all partnered together under the agency umbrella, we were able to get Splunk Enterprise Security, UBA, and ITSI for cheap. This was good considering the fact that some of these premium apps require a minimum number of users, and we do not have the number of people needed to even justify buying it."
"I remember Splunk being relatively affordable. Kibana was more reasonable, but you get more with Splunk. If I was suggesting something, I would probably suggest Splunk because it is better to pay a little bit more and get a lot more."
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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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Government
7%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

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?
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...
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 ...
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...
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 ...
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...
 

Also Known As

Graylog2
No data available
 

Overview

 

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.
Find out what your peers are saying about Graylog vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
861,390 professionals have used our research since 2012.