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IBM Security QRadar vs Splunk User Behavior Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.1
IBM Security QRadar offers high ROI through cost-effectiveness, threat mitigation, SOAR integration, and valuable data insights, satisfying users.
Sentiment score
5.5
Users report varied ROI from Splunk UBA, emphasizing productivity gains, time savings, and improved incident resolution efficiency.
With SOAR, the workflow takes one minute or less to complete the analysis.
Investing this amount was very much worth it for my organization.
The solution can save costs by improving incident resolution times and reducing security incident costs.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.1
IBM Security QRadar's customer service effectiveness varies with regional differences, personnel expertise, and response times impacting user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
6.9
Splunk User Behavior Analytics support is praised for its professionalism, extensive knowledge base, and prompt, reliable assistance despite regional limitations.
They assist with advanced issues, such as hardware or other problems, that are not part of standard operations.
Support needs to understand the issue first, then escalate it to the engineering team.
The support is really good; for instance, if a critical ticket is submitted, you will get paged right away as it gets logged, and their analyst will look into it, letting you know as soon as possible so you can work on it.
Mission-critical offering a dedicated team, proactive monitoring, and fast resolution.
From the responsiveness perspective, Splunk is very responsive with SLA-bound support for premium tiers.
I would rate their technical support as 8.5 out of 10.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
IBM Security QRadar offers strong scalability and flexibility, adapting effortlessly to diverse security needs across various industries.
Sentiment score
7.2
Splunk User Behavior Analytics excels in scalable deployment, flexible expansion, and efficient data handling, overcoming on-premises storage challenges.
For EPS license, if you increase or exceed the EPS license, you cannot receive events.
Splunk User Behavior Analytics is highly scalable, designed for enterprise scalability, allowing expansion of data ingestion, indexing, and search capabilities as log volumes grow.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
QRadar is reliable and efficient, with stability issues often linked to misconfigurations or updates rather than the software itself.
Sentiment score
7.8
Splunk User Behavior Analytics is stable, reliable, easy to configure, and effective, achieving 99.9% uptime with proper deployment.
I think QRadar is stable and currently satisfies my needs.
The product has been stable so far.
With built-in redundancy across zones and regions, 99.9% uptime is achievable.
Splunk User Behavior Analytics is a one hundred percent stable solution.
Splunk User Behavior Analytics is highly stable and reliable, even in large-scale enterprise environments with high log injection rates.
 

Room For Improvement

IBM Security QRadar users seek better third-party integration, usability, enhanced AI, reporting, support, visualization, and API/cloud features.
Splunk User Behavior Analytics needs better pricing, integration, automation, and machine learning to enhance functionality and user experience.
We receive logs from different types of devices and need a way to correlate them effectively.
If AI-related support can suggest rules and integrate with existing security devices like MD, IPS, this SIM can create more relevant rules.
IBM Security QRadar does not support Canvas, so we had to create custom scripts and workarounds to pull logs from Canvas.
Global reach allows deployment of apps and services closer to users worldwide, but data sovereignty concerns exist and region selection must align with compliance requirements.
I encountered several issues while trying to create solutions for this advanced version, which seem unrelated to query or data issues.
High data ingestion costs can be an issue, especially for large enterprises, as Splunk charges based on the amount of data processed.
 

Setup Cost

IBM Security QRadar is pricey, ideal for large enterprises, with flexible EPS-based pricing, often more costly than competitors.
Splunk User Behavior Analytics pricing is perceived as complex and expensive, influenced by data volume, licensing, and integration needs.
Splunk is more expensive than IBM Security QRadar.
It was costly mainly because of the value you can get right now compared to other solutions.
Reserved instances with one or three-year commitments offer lower rates, providing up to 70% savings.
Compared to all other products in the market, it is the most expensive one in all aspects including professional service and licenses, even the cloud version.
Comparing with the competitors, it's a bit expensive.
 

Valuable Features

IBM Security QRadar offers scalable, user-friendly security with advanced analytics, seamless integrations, and effective threat detection capabilities.
Splunk User Behavior Analytics offers advanced threat detection, real-time data collection, and customizable dashboards for enhanced monitoring and decision-making.
Recently, I faced an incident, a cyber incident, and it was detected in real time.
IBM is seeking information about IBM QRadar because a part of QRadar, especially in the cloud, has been sold to Palo Alto.
We have FortiSOAR and IBM Resilient for IBM Security QRadar orchestration.
I also utilize it for anomaly detection and behavior analysis, particularly using Splunk's machine learning environment.
The dashboards themselves are nice, very good, and very helpful, but the accuracy of the data or the information that will be presented on the dashboard is something that needs to be questioned.
Features like alerts and auto report generation are valuable.
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA)
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
211
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (7th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (4th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (18th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (8th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (11th)
Splunk User Behavior Analytics
Ranking in User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA)
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) category, the mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 9.0%, down from 12.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk User Behavior Analytics is 8.0%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Security QRadar9.0%
Splunk User Behavior Analytics8.0%
Other83.0%
User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA)
 

Featured Reviews

Mahmoud Younes - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable installation and diverse use cases provide strong value
IBM Security QRadar has some areas for improvement. We have missed some DSM components. We need to customize logs where there is no DSM or connector for certain products. We can integrate but we have missed the DSM, which is the connector to pass logs coming from different applications. For example, with a university customer, we tried onboarding Canvas service. IBM Security QRadar does not support Canvas, so we had to create custom scripts and workarounds to pull logs from Canvas.
Ahmed Naguib - PeerSpot reviewer
Dashboard design excels while prediction algorithms need improvement
Splunk User Behavior Analytics is still an immature product, so it still needs some R&D to be able to be mature in the market. The prediction, algorithms, and ML codes behind Splunk User Behavior Analytics need to be more tuned. The logic needs to be reviewed because it has many false positives. For Splunk User Behavior Analytics, it is not yet a mature product and we are not recommending this to mature customers for now. The machine learning algorithm in Splunk User Behavior Analytics is actually the core thing that needs to be updated because this feeds all the other functions inside it. If the ML functions are not good enough, that means the risk scoring and all other related information will not be correct.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) solutions are best for your needs.
870,623 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

VS
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
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business89
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise102
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

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, friendlier GUI and are not licensed based on capacity (amount of logs and information in...
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 your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Security QRadar?
The pricing, setup cost, or licensing with IBM Security QRadar was costly. It was costly mainly for the things we used to use it for. The customers used to pay the price, but it was one of the prob...
What do you like most about Splunk User Behavior Analytics?
The solution's most valuable feature is Splunk queries, which allow us to query the logs and analyze the attack vectors.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Splunk User Behavior Analytics?
In terms of setup cost, pricing, and licensing, Splunk User Behavior Analytics is not an inexpensive product. The setup requires numerous components including storage, networking, identity access, ...
What needs improvement with Splunk User Behavior Analytics?
There are improvements that could be made to Splunk User Behavior Analytics as any product will have advantages and disadvantages. Scalability is one consideration. For example, the advantages incl...
 

Also Known As

IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
Caspida, Splunk UBA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
8 Securities, AAA Western, AdvancedMD, Amaya, Cerner Corporation, CJ O Shopping, CloudShare, Crossroads Foundation, 7-Eleven Indonesia
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security QRadar vs. Splunk User Behavior Analytics and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
870,623 professionals have used our research since 2012.