Logstash vs. Splunk Enterprise

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Logstash
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
N/AN/A
Splunk Enterprise
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Splunk is software for searching, monitoring, and analyzing machine-generated big data, via a web-style interface. It captures, indexes and correlates real-time data in a searchable repository from which it can generate graphs, reports, alerts, dashboards and visualizations.N/A
Pricing
LogstashSplunk Enterprise
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
LogstashSplunk Enterprise
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
LogstashSplunk Enterprise
Considered Both Products
Logstash

No answer on this topic

Splunk Enterprise
Chose Splunk Enterprise
I didn't get to fully evaluate Logstash as our corporation was already using Logstash, but both seemed like viable solutions to the problem that we were having. I wanted to evaluate Logstash some more, both did seem like they would work for the business needs that we had, we …
Chose Splunk Enterprise
Both Logstash and Greylog are open-source solutions that provide similar capabilities to Splunk. They are excellent products in their own right but tend to follow versus lead. Splunk is definitely a leader in the field.
Chose Splunk Enterprise
Splunk is all inclusive, you don't need 3 products to do what Splunk did 4 previous major versions.
Chose Splunk Enterprise
We reviewed a number of different platforms and found Splunk to be the more mature product across the board. Splunk is the market leader and the rest of the industry chances them. We needed a platform from a company with the resources to continue development and meet new …
Chose Splunk Enterprise
Splunk offers a simple out of the box setup. The enterprise installation was completed in less than four hours. Pricing for Splunk is high, but the benefits far out way the price impact. Other tools were good but did not offer the various types of integration. Support for the …
Chose Splunk Enterprise
Apart from cost, Splunk overcomes and supersedes all other products considering all the features and user experience. Splunk is fast as compared to other products. The results shown in the form of various types of graphs are really helpful while doing comparison with other …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
LogstashSplunk Enterprise
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
Comparison of Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) features of Product A and Product B
Logstash
-
Ratings
Splunk Enterprise
7.4
54 Ratings
5% below category average
Centralized event and log data collection00 Ratings6.553 Ratings
Correlation00 Ratings6.052 Ratings
Event and log normalization/management00 Ratings6.153 Ratings
Deployment flexibility00 Ratings7.549 Ratings
Integration with Identity and Access Management Tools00 Ratings7.549 Ratings
Custom dashboards and workspaces00 Ratings8.554 Ratings
Host and network-based intrusion detection00 Ratings7.037 Ratings
Data integration/API management00 Ratings8.35 Ratings
Behavioral analytics and baselining00 Ratings7.74 Ratings
Rules-based and algorithmic detection thresholds00 Ratings7.84 Ratings
Response orchestration and automation00 Ratings6.94 Ratings
Reporting and compliance management00 Ratings7.94 Ratings
Incident indexing/searching00 Ratings8.95 Ratings
Best Alternatives
LogstashSplunk Enterprise
Small Businesses
SolarWinds Papertrail
SolarWinds Papertrail
Score 8.8 out of 10
AlienVault USM
AlienVault USM
Score 8.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SolarWinds Papertrail
SolarWinds Papertrail
Score 8.8 out of 10
InsightIDR
InsightIDR
Score 8.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Splunk Log Observer
Splunk Log Observer
Score 8.7 out of 10
Microsoft Sentinel
Microsoft Sentinel
Score 8.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
LogstashSplunk Enterprise
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(3 ratings)
7.0
(70 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(17 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.4
(17 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
LogstashSplunk Enterprise
Likelihood to Recommend
Elastic
Perfect for projects where Elasticsearch makes sense: if you decide to employ ES in a project, then you will almost inevitably use LogStash, and you should anyways. Such projects would include: 1. Data Science (reading, recording or measure web-based Analytics, Metrics) 2. Web Scraping (which was one of our earlier projects involving LogStash) 3. Syslog-ng Management: While I did point out that it can be a bit of an electric boo-ga-loo in finding an errant configuration item, it is still worth it to implement Syslog-ng management via LogStash: being able to fine-tune your log messages and then pipe them to other sources, depending on the data being read in, is incredibly powerful, and I would say is exemplar of what modern Computer Science looks like: Less Specialization in mathematics, and more specialization in storing and recording data (i.e. Less Engineering, and more Design).
Read full review
Splunk
Pros: Splunk is very well suited if you have multiple log sources of related data. All of them can be correlated and tasks can be automated based on the requirement. Other than alerts, Splunk can also run a specific script of your choice, based on some defined conditions. Cons: If you have a few logs but a large number of log sources, Splunk can be very expensive.
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Pros
Elastic
  • Logstash design is definitely perfect for the use case of ELK. Logstash has "drivers" using which it can inject from virtually any source. This takes the headache from source to implement those "drivers" to store data to ES.
  • Logstash is fast, very fast. As per my observance, you don't need more than 1 or 2 servers for even big size projects.
  • Data in different shape, size, and formats? No worries, Logstash can handle it. It lets you write simple rules to programmatically take decisions real-time on data.
  • You can change your data on the fly! This is the CORE power of Logstash. The concept is similar to Kafka streams, the difference being the source and destination are application and ES respectively.
Read full review
Splunk
  • Real-time + Scheduled alerts - i-e you can set up alerts which are actively monitoring your logs
  • Pretty good response time for search results. With our key/value logging, Splunk makes it blazing fast to query the data.
  • Dashboards provide insights into historical data
  • Love how Splunk indexes all of the data and provides keys to search on
Read full review
Cons
Elastic
  • Since it's a Java product, JVM tuning must be done for handling high-load.
  • The persistent queue feature is nice, but I feel like most companies would want to use Kafka as a general storage location for persistent messages for all consumers to use. Using some pipeline of "Kafka input -> filter plugins -> Kafka output" seems like a good solution for data enrichment without needing to maintain a custom Kafka consumer to accomplish a similar feature.
  • I would like to see more documentation around creating a distributed Logstash cluster because I imagine for high ingestion use cases, that would be necessary.
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Splunk
  • At times some queries can run slowly if indices are not on a portion of the query you use.
  • Setup time initially can be difficult if your logs aren't stored in common locations or in a common way to write the log.
  • Ability to ingest logs from different locations without having to change code to put logs in a certain place (pro and con).
  • Searches can be a bit more difficult to look through if your log isn't pulled in a manner that is easy to read through splunk.
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Likelihood to Renew
Elastic
No answers on this topic
Splunk
We are using Splunk extensively in our projects and we have recently upgraded to Splunk version 6.0 which is quite efficient and giving expected results. We keep track of updates and new features Splunk introduces periodically and try to introduce those features in our day to day activities for improvement in our reporting system and other tasks.
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Usability
Elastic
No answers on this topic
Splunk
You can literally throw in a single word into Splunk and it will pull back all instances of that word across all of your logs for the time span you select (provided you have permission to see that data). We have several users who have taken a few of the free courses from Splunk that are able to pull data out of it everyday with little help at all.
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Reliability and Availability
Elastic
No answers on this topic
Splunk
When properly setup and configured, Splunk is extremely reliable.
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Support Rating
Elastic
No answers on this topic
Splunk
Splunk maintains a well resourced support system that has been consistent since we purchased the product. They help out in a timely manner and provide expert level information as needed. We typically open cases online and communicate when possible via e-mail and are able to resolve most issues with that method.
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Online Training
Elastic
No answers on this topic
Splunk
The online course was simple clear and described the main capabilities of the solution. There is also an initial module that can be done for free so anyone can familiarize themselves with the functionality of this solution. On the other hand, however, there could be more free online courses. Maybe even with a certificate, this would broaden the group of people who are familiar with the platform while increasing familiarity with the solution itself.
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Implementation Rating
Elastic
No answers on this topic
Splunk
Smooth without too many major issues.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Elastic
MongoDB and Azure SQL Database are just that: Databases, and they allow you to pipe data into a database, which means that alot of the log filtering becomes a simple exercise of querying information from a DBMS. However, LogStash was chosen for it's ease of integration into our choice of using ELK Elasticsearch is an obvious inclusion: Using Logstash with it's native DevOps stack its really rational
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Splunk
I wanted to learn a new language that I can quickly master and implement. Splunk is easy, fun to use and best of all, it can be developed in hours not days or weeks. Splunk is fundamentally a programming language that is minimal but yet powerful enough to collect, analyze and visualize data.
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Scalability
Elastic
No answers on this topic
Splunk
Splunk can scale in to the petabyte per day range which of course is awesome
Read full review
Return on Investment
Elastic
  • Positive: Learning curve was relatively easy for our team. We were up and running within a sprint.
  • Positive: Managing Logstash has generally been easy. We configure it, and usually, don't have to worry about misbehavior.
  • Negative: Updating/Rehydrating Logstash servers have been little challenging. We sometimes even loose data while Logstash is down. It requires more in-depth research and experiments to figure the fine-grained details.
  • Negative: This is now one more application/skill/server to manage. Like any other servers, it requires proper grooming or else you will get in trouble. This is also a single point of failure which can have the ability to make other servers useless if it is not running.
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Splunk
  • Overall very positive. It has provided visibility to what is going on within our network.
  • One drawback is the time it takes to get up to speed with the application, but this is up to the user, and Splunk education is excellent.
  • In my field, IT Security, there are few other friends to have in your back pocket better than Splunk. They are just that good.
Read full review
ScreenShots