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AlienVault OSSIM vs IBM Security QRadar 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

AlienVault OSSIM
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
11th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
209
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (5th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (18th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (9th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 3.2%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 7.4%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
An open-source solution that provide good detection and more visibility
The solution is not scalable. It impacts so hard. In the initial stages, AlienVault OSSIM can be suitable for small environments. There may be limitations if the customer expresses a desire to expand and add more devices. In such cases, we would need to either explore additional solutions or work within the constraints of the existing setup. We have set up alerts and configured everything in AlienVault OSSIM. It actively monitors for any security incidents. It provides us with regular updates and notifications about any ongoing activities. Only one person is using the solution. It is the perfect solution for small businesses. I rate the solution’s scalability a three out of ten.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is very stable. Compared to Qradar and Splunk, it's very stable."
"Inbuilt IDS, inbuilt integration with threat intelligence platform and with vulnerability assessment modules."
"The most valuable feature is the logging capability."
"AlienVault OSSIM's GUI is very user-friendly."
"The solution is free to use."
"The threat policies of the solution are always very advanced and the best in the market. They are very persistent in terms of keeping up with security protocols."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the data correlation and vulnerability assessment."
"The dashboard is the solution's most valuable aspect. It brings everything into one central point where I can actually look at it and go, "Okay, I understand what's going on.""
"IBM Qradar's ability to simplify the number of events, not only on a technical level but by making that information easy to pan through the orchestration deduplication. It is very impressive given that we have hundreds of devices that send event logs through."
"The most valuable features of IBM Security QRadar are flexibility, IBM support, and scalability."
"The feature that I find the most useful is that IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics is free of charge. It's a fully free product that can be installed on top of IBM QRadar SIEM."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson is a stable solution."
"I would rate IBM Security QRadar nine out of ten."
"No doubt about it, the solution is extremely stable."
"I like the graphical interface. It's so good and easy."
 

Cons

"AlienVault OSSIM could improve by having better integration with some of the newer tools."
"AlienVault OSSIM’s configuration and integration could be a little easier."
"The incidence reporting could be better."
"They can add more compliance templates."
"AlienVault OSSIM on-premise version is more difficult to implement than the cloud version. Additionally, they should add integration between several different environments at once and improve their online knowledge base."
"Lacking in depth of reporting."
"There are somewhat more false positives with the user behavior analytics, which could benefit from an additional machine learning model to detect user patterns more rapidly."
"It takes some time. It does not give me a prompt response for any such [malicious] traffic. It takes time to get that alert from the AlienVault system."
"This solution is on-premise and many customers are moving to the cloud base solution."
"IBM Qradar could improve the reporting. The tool is not designed to report. It's a great operational monitoring tool. You put it on a screen and you watch it. If you want to have analytics out of it, that's a whole different story. You're going to need more people and tools. What should be added is reporting and integration into Power BI, into some capability that produces analytical reports from the source data. IBM does not seem to care to add these features."
"The pricing of the solution is a bit high. If they could lower it, that would be ideal."
"Needs better visualization options beyond the time series charts and a few other options that they have."
"The initial setup requires that you have somebody with the proper skill set, and it would help if the configuration were easier."
"With IBM Security QRadar, my company faced issues with the support we received for the product."
"The product does not have a team for investigating malware."
"There should be an extension where we can get the reports. This could be an extension to the dashboard with the Guardian or another product with limited technology, for example IPS. Now, we only have IBM. Basically, it needs more and more integration models."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"OSSIM is open source, and USM is the paid license. So, if you want, you can switch to USM. There you will have to buy a license, and they have a support team that helps you out on issues you face."
"The licensing fees for the non-community edition are paid on an annual basis, and there are no costs in addition to this."
"AlienVault OSSIM is an open-source solution."
"The price of AlienVault OSSIM is too high sometimes for us to present to our customers. The price should be lower. We are on a three-year license to use the solution. We had to pay extra for the support."
"We are using the community version, which can be used for free."
"The solution is open source, so it's free to use."
"OSSIM is free."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"I feel that the price is reasonable but compared to other products that are on the market, such as an offering by Microsoft, it is more expensive."
"think the pricing is quite flexible."
"The tool is priced in a competitive manner. The tool's price is dependent on the installation and the product size, but it is competitive in the marketplace."
"The solution is costly and the price differs depending on the vendor you use."
"The licensing is also overly complex, as there is a need to buy the work load performance monitoring separately."
"On a scale of one to ten, I rate the price a one, where one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is a cheap product."
"There is a license required for this solution."
"It is costlier as compared to the other alternatives available in the market."
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Comparison Review

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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
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
University
8%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AlienVault OSSIM?
It depends. I would need to review their cost models, but generally, they are on a scaled basis based on throughput usage. Because it's a software as a service solution for their core product for U...
What needs improvement with AlienVault OSSIM?
Scaling for USM is always challenging for any product unless it is purpose-built or overbuilt at the front end. They will use Palo Alto and its competitors, and LevelBlue will manage that implement...
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?
When comparing with Splunk, IBM Security QRadar's cost is reasonable. Splunk is more expensive than IBM Security QRadar.
 

Also Known As

OSSIM
IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Council Rock School District
Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Find out what your peers are saying about AlienVault OSSIM vs. IBM Security QRadar and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.