Graylog vs syslog-ng comparison

Graylog and One Identity are both solutions in the Log Management category. Graylog is ranked #16 with an average rating of 6.5, while One Identity is ranked #19 with an average rating of 9.3. Graylog holds a 6.6% mindshare in Log Management, compared to One Identity’s 2.6% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Graylog users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of One Identity users who would recommend it.

Graylog

Read 20 Graylog reviews

9,555 Views
8,400 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

syslog-ng

Read 5 syslog-ng reviews

4,498 Views
3,635 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Graylog

syslog-ng

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Graylog and syslog-ng are key players in the log management solutions category. While Graylog stands out for integration and scalability, syslog-ng has the upper hand with advanced filtering and protocol options.

Features: Graylog offers flexibility, scalability, and easy integration with third-party tools. Syslog-ng provides comprehensive protocol support, advanced log filtering, and extensive protocol options.

Room for Improvement: Graylog could benefit from faster search speeds, enhanced reporting features, and more intuitive navigation. Syslog-ng users want a more intuitive configuration process, better documentation, and a simplified user interface.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Graylog is known for straightforward deployment and responsive support. Syslog-ng, despite a more complex setup, offers strong community backing and comprehensive support materials.

Pricing and ROI: Graylog provides cost-effective options with excellent value. Syslog-ng, while more expensive, delivers significant ROI with its robust features. Graylog's pricing is manageable, while syslog-ng's higher price is justified by its capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Graylog vs. syslog-ng Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Graylog vs. syslog-ng

April 2025

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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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

syslog-ng

Ranking in Log Management

19th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Graylog is 6.6%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of syslog-ng is 2.6%, down from 2.7% 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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RyanVargas

Senior Director and Senior Systems Engineer (Dual Role), IT Infrastructure and Security at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

It's a user-friendly open-source solution that can replace or augment a commercial product in some cases

I rate syslog-ng 10 out of 10. It's free and easy to use. It has built-in tools that help us index the various logs sent to it. It's a solid log product. If you're looking for a SIEM solution, syslog-ng will work as a stopgap measure at beginning of the project. It can also work as an injector for a true SIEM solution. You can send all the logs to syslog-ng and forward all the data to the SIEM solution after you've cleaned up the data and got the pertinent information. It's a good front end for a commercial SIEM solution, which becomes more expensive as you load more data into it. I would highly recommend syslog-ng for that use case. However, if you lack the expertise, you might need to go with a cloud-based SIEM instead. You need some in-house expertise or an outside consultant to manage it and set it up.

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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

"Open source and user friendly."

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

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

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

"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."

"One of the most valuable features is that you are able to do a very detailed search through the log messages in the overview."

"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."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its new interface."

More Graylog pros

"For us, the most valuable feature is the use of compound search for searching logs at a specific time, by a specific user, or specific behavior."

"Syslog-ng has a separate config file in addition to the core configuration."

"Syslog-ng provides easy access to all my logs. It helps me show managers and other clients precisely where an incident occurred. I also like it because you can integrate syslog-ng with multiple solutions to allow real-time monitoring."

"The ability to extract and store the logs is the most valuable feature of syslog-ng."

"Syslog-ng has built-in features that we can use to create alerts for a SIEM solution. It isn't a true SIEM solution, but it's sufficient for the time being."

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."

"Over six months, I had two similar issues where searches were performed on field "messages". It exhausted all the memory of the ES node causing an ES crash and a Graylog halt."

"There should be some user groups and an auto sign-in feature."

"More complex visualizations and the ability to execute custom Elasticsearch queries would be great."

"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."

"Graylog can improve the index rotation as it's quite a complex solution."

"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."

"I would like to see some kind of visualization included in Graylog."

More Graylog cons

"It's hard to find people who know how to use syslog-ng. I often find problems with configurations, and solutions aren't integrated correctly with syslog-ng. For example, there might be data with extra decimals, or the collector agents are incorrectly named. It isn't a problem with the solution; it's a lack of professionals."

"There is always the potential for additional integration and protocol extensions."

"The filtering has room for improvement."

"There is room for improvement in terms of observability."

"Syslog-ng has built-in features that we can use to create alerts for a SIEM solution. It isn't a true SIEM solution, but it's sufficient for the time being."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive."

"I use the free version of Graylog."

"Consider Enterprise support if you have atypical needs or setup requirements."

"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."

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

More Graylog pricing and cost advice

"Syslog-ng is open-source."

"Syslog-ng is a free open-source solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Educational Organization

Government

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

13%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

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?

We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about syslog-ng?

For us, the most valuable feature is the use of compound search for searching logs at a specific time, by a specific user, or specific behavior.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for syslog-ng?

The pricing is in the middle. I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with one being expensive and ten being cheap.

See all answers

What needs improvement with syslog-ng?

There is room for improvement in terms of observability. Additionally, a possible new feature could be Kafka integration.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 39% of the time

Wazuh vs Graylog

Compared 24% of the time

Security Onion vs Graylog

Compared 5% of the time

Seq vs Graylog

Compared 3% of the time

Fortinet FortiAnalyzer vs Graylog

Compared 3% of the time

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SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server vs syslog-ng

Compared 26% of the time

Grafana Loki vs syslog-ng

Compared 13% of the time

Elastic Stack vs syslog-ng

Compared 5% of the time

Cribl vs syslog-ng

Compared 4% of the time

Logstash vs syslog-ng

Compared 3% of the time

More syslog-ng Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Graylog

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Log Management

April 2025

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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

Optimizing SIEM
syslog-ng is the log management solution that improves the performance of your SIEM solution by reducing the amount and improving the quality of data feeding your SIEM.

Rapid search and troubleshooting
With syslog-ng Store Box, you can find the answer. Search billions of logs in seconds using full text queries with Boolean operators to pinpoint critical logs.

Meeting compliance requirements
syslog-ng Store Box provides secure, tamper-proof storage and custom reporting to demonstrate compliance.

Big data ingestion
syslog-ng can deliver data from a wide variety of sources to Hadoop, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, and Kafka as well as many others.

Universal log collection and routing
syslog-ng flexibly routes log data from X sources to Y destinations. Instead of deploying multiple agents on hosts, organizations can unify their log data collection and management.

Secure data archive
syslog-ng Store Box provides automated archiving, tamper-proof encrypted storage, granular access controls to protect log data. The largest appliance can store up to 10TB of raw logs.

One Identity

Sample Customers

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

Tecnocom, University of Victoria, University of Exeter, Datapath

Buyer's Guide

Graylog vs. syslog-ng

April 2025

Free Report: Graylog vs. syslog-ng

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