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Security Onion vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 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

Security Onion
Ranking in Log Management
19th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Log Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
371
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Security Onion is 4.4%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 7.5%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security7.5%
Security Onion4.4%
Other88.1%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Jörg Kippe - PeerSpot reviewer
A mature and affordable solution that is easy to install and easy to update
The product takes time to learn, it's not that easy. In the beginning we had a lot of questions. If you want to use such a tool in an real (industrial) environment, you have to ask how to get the network data. Can we do a full packet capture? Can we provide agents to our end systems? There are no simple solutions to these questions. It's a general problem when running such systems in an industrial environment.
reviewer1469784 - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps us detect cyber threats quickly and integrate multiple feeds effectively
Overall, the product is good, but when it comes to some infrastructure issues, we have to dig into more logs. There is no straightforward indication of an issue. Health check kind of dashboards are not available. More AI would help us, and more optimization, since security products run more queries. The AI module could suggest solutions, optimizing queries or workload balancing. If the product itself advises on running queries during peak times, it would be similar to what ChatGPT currently offers. We see quite a few issues on stability. Even last week, we faced something, and identifying bottlenecks is not easy. We need more SMEs, and there is no mechanism to tell us about indexer or search head issues. Self-monitoring dashboards could be beneficial. The technical support still requires more improvement. Often, primary support takes a lot of time and forwards most solutions to the engineering side. The primary support team has very limited knowledge to provide.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Security Onion for security monitoring is its ability to find infected ports."
"We use Security Onion for internal vulnerability assessment."
"Security Onion is the most mature solution in the market."
"It is easy to use, and easy to implement."
"The ability to analyze huge amounts of sales data and accurate prediction of sales forecasting is the most valuable feature."
"They are a good partner for Google Cloud. It provides great visibility, threat detection, and proactive mitigation of risks for our mutual consumers."
"Recently, Splunk upgraded to version 9.0.02, which includes excellent data dashboards and visualization effects."
"The level of robustness on offer is very good."
"The client site login is pretty extensible and probably cost-effective."
"The ability to view all of these different logs, then drilling down into specific times or into specific data sources, has proved to be the greatest aspect in decreasing our troubleshooting overhead time."
"Splunk is user-friendly. We can easily customize the monitoring script."
 

Cons

"The product is not easy to learn."
"The initial setup of the solution is a little bit difficult."
"Security Onion's user interface could be improved."
"Splunk Enterprise Security could be improved by having better role-based access controls."
"Improving the infrastructure behind Splunk Enterprise Security is vital—enhanced cores, CPUs, and memory should be prioritized to support better processing power. When we execute heavy, resource-intensive queries over long periods, the performance dips."
"Being able to have a one-stop shop where you have the alert, but then you can generate the case right there from Splunk Enterprise Security instead of having to pivot to another tool such as Mission Control. You do not have to keep bouncing between them, so if you could do it all in one place, that would be great. The new release is supposed to start getting in that direction."
"The user access control could be much more granular, so that the admins can control r/w/x access for specific features of the product like dashboards, etc."
"The implementation and the scanning of the logs can be difficult."
"The security can be improved."
"It is a hugely complicated product."
"Deployment is not difficult but the lock sources and configurations can take time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Security Onion is a free solution."
"Security Onion is an open-source solution."
"It is an open-source solution."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is an expensive solution."
"I believe that Splunk Enterprise Security is worth the price, but it is expensive."
"It is quite expensive."
"In terms of pricing, I believe Splunk is unreasonably costly for the majority of mid and small-sized companies."
"Expensive compared to other options."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is affordable."
"The tool's licensing is good and we haven't received any complaints from the team handling it."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is expensive. I would rate the cost an eight out of ten with ten being the most 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
University
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business109
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise260
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Security Onion?
The most valuable feature of Security Onion for security monitoring is its ability to find infected ports.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Security Onion?
Security Onion is an open-source solution. On a scale from one to ten, where ten is expensive and one is cheap, I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten.
What needs improvement with Security Onion?
The initial setup of the solution is a little bit difficult.
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 Security Onion vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.
874,056 professionals have used our research since 2012.