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Logstash 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

Logstash
Ranking in Log Management
28th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
4
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
314
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 Logstash is 0.6%, up from 0.4% 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

Mustafa Husny - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to collect logs from various data sources, including hardware
I use Logstash primarily for connecting logs from hardware. This is the main use case. The second use case involves making correlations between logs from various sources.  I can collect logs from various data sources, including hardware. The product needs to improve its compatibility.  I rate…
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

"Everything aligns well with improving our organization."
"We have three or four Logstash servers for high availability."
"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."
"I can collect logs from various data sources, including hardware."
"Logstash has numerous plugins for inputs and outputs, allowing it to work well in environments that do not contain other Elastic components."
"If you want to understand how it can analyze or find out incidents, the visibility is good."
"It provides a lot of analytics with the underlying AI engine, and it is a lot easier than other solutions. There are some products that do automated AI-based detection and drawing up charts, but for network monitoring and all of the monitoring aspects, it is quite a nice tool. It is very convenient for business users because they get more or less a lot of data readily available. If you're familiar with the Splunk query language, you can pretty much do whatever you want."
"The most valuable feature is the custom dashboard feature."
"I like the search feature and the indexing. It's very fast and comprehensive."
"It is user-friendly. It is more effective than other solutions. The support and help for troubleshooting and the documentation from Splunk make it very effective."
"We can quickly search for almost anything across many log sources in seconds."
"Splunk has facilitated the correlation of information security logs to look for incidents which could cause damage to the company's infrastructure, as well as financial losses from leaks."
"The integration is seamless with many devices and operating systems."
 

Cons

"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."
"Elastic does not provide proper support for Logstash worldwide, and I rate their technical support as one out of ten."
"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."
"The ingestion happens quickly, so you can run up the data costs if you use the default settings. It isn't a problem for government agencies in the Saudi market, but many of the corporations in India are small or medium-sized enterprises that cannot afford that kind of ingestion system."
"Most importantly, Splunk can be outrageously expensive. That is the problem with both Splunk and Sentinel. Their pricing literally explodes based on the amount of data you feed in."
"I've noticed that onboarding data from various multi-cloud sources and diverse products, such as security network devices, can be challenging."
"In the next releases, I would like to see more pricing flexibility."
"Splunk can improve its third-party device application plugins."
"It's missing some features that other solutions have, such as the ability to upgrade the endpoint and perform endpoint universal forwarders from a deployment server instead of using a third-party solution, such as Puppet or Ansible."
"It's difficult to set up initially, and their billing model is also a bit complicated."
"The incident response technique should be available out of the box. That isn't as available as we would expect."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Licensing is a yearly, one-time cost."
"I think that most of the log analytics solutions are expensive and I'm not sure if it's worth it."
"It's a little bit expensive for a small to medium enterprise."
"In terms of pricing, I believe Splunk is unreasonably costly for the majority of mid and small-sized companies."
"Its pricing model can be improved."
"It can be expensive, especially the licensing costs. However, there is added value in what it can do, not just log aggregation."
"Splunk Enterprise Security's pricing is pretty competitive."
"The Splunk Enterprise Security license is expensive."
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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
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
10%
University
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Logstash?
I can collect logs from various data sources, including hardware.
What needs improvement with Logstash?
Logstash lacks a graphical user interface, necessitating a strong programming background to handle it effectively. It is challenging for business users who need a skilled team for its operation. Ch...
What is your primary use case for Logstash?
I am considered an expert in Elastic Observability ( /products/elastic-observability-reviews ) in the Middle East. During my experience, I have worked heavily on Logstash ( /products/logstash-38586...
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...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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 Logstash vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.