Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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
7.6
Number of Reviews
312
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Graylog is 6.7%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 7.3%, down from 10.4% 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

"The product is scalable. The solution is stable."
"This had increased productivity for the dev and support teams, because we are directly notifying them."
"Graylog's search functionality, alerting functionality, user management, and dashboards are useful."
"Open source and user friendly."
"Message forwarding through the in-built module."
"The ability to write custom alerts is key to information security and compliance."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its new interface."
"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 data representation options in the dashboards are excellent."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the incident review, which gives a good overview of our security incidents."
"One key advantage of Splunk over competitors like IBM QRadar is its superior device integration capabilities."
"The solution has plenty of features that are good."
"Easy to deploy and simple to use."
"The initial setup is simple, not very complex. Initial deployment takes around 10 to 15 minutes to set up the entire base for Splunk including all three tiers."
"The most valuable features in Splunk are the search function and the ability to run selected session reports. The session reports are important because I can use them to see what is going on in our environment weekly. Additionally, we can use the graph to see how often that particular event is happening."
"You can use it to gather syslog messages from anything."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"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."
"Since container orchestration systems are popular and Graylog fits the niche well, perhaps they could officially support running in docker containers on Kubernetes as a StatefulSet as a use case. That way, the declarative nature of Kubernetes config files would document their best case deployment scenario-"
"There should be some user groups and an auto sign-in feature.​"
"Its scalability gets complicated when we have to update or edit multiple nodes."
"More complex visualizations and the ability to execute custom Elasticsearch queries would be great."
"Graylog can improve the index rotation as it's quite a complex solution."
"Splunk could improve its default machine-learning models. Also, Splunk Enterprise's native threat intelligence isn't that good. I prefer a custom threat intelligence model."
"Previously, they developed custom connectors or add-ons for a lot of applications. But that number can be upgraded still. There are a lot of applications in the world that are not supported."
"The pricing can be better."
"DMC should be a little more intuitive with better dashboarding. Seeing the cause of data flow can be tough to track down."
"It needs more thoroughly tested releases. Every new big version (6, 7, etc.) has had so many bugs that it makes me wary of customers upgrading right away."
"Splunk could be improved by reducing the cost. The cost is one of the biggest challenges for us in keeping to our production requirements."
"I do not like the pricing model. It is expensive."
"The solution could improve by making it more business analysis oriented. The way it is now is designed more for developers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am using a community edition. I have not looked at the enterprise offering from 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."
"We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive."
"Consider Enterprise support if you have atypical needs or setup requirements.​"
"If you want something that works and do not have the money for Splunk or QRadar, take Graylog.​​"
"It's an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."
"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."
"Most people share the same thought that the ingestion rates can get pretty pricey. There is a lot of work we do to curate the data that we send to Splunk so that it is not too noisy or too expensive."
"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."
"While Splunk offers generous developer licenses and obtaining annual licenses is straightforward, the cost is a major consideration."
"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 worthwhile investment given the comprehensive range of features it offers."
"It's a little bit expensive for a small to medium enterprise."
"It is expensive. I work for multiple clients. I am working for more than five clients, but most of the clients are switching from Splunk to Sentinel because of the cost. Even though Sentinel is very limited, clients are moving to Sentinel."
"The licensing is good, but the pricing absolutely needs some work. It is very high."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Log Management solutions are best for your needs.
856,874 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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%
Educational Organization
7%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
15%
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.
856,874 professionals have used our research since 2012.