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Cribl vs Fortinet FortiAnalyzer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 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
5.6
Cribl enhances cost-effectiveness by reducing licensing costs and optimizing data management, offering up to 50% ROI.
Sentiment score
7.0
Fortinet FortiAnalyzer offers competitive pricing, high efficiency, and cost savings, making it a valuable investment for organizations.
What we've seen is really an overall reduction of just shy of 40% in our ingest into our SIM platform versus prior to having Cribl.
Senior Security Engineer at a university with 10,001+ employees
The second thing is that data aggregation, sampling, and reduction that we're able to do of the data, lowering our overall data volume, both traversing the network as well as what's being stored inside of our final solutions.
Director, Performance Engineering at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
In terms of reduction, we were able to save almost ~40% of our total cost.
Sr. Lead Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The impact of the tool is low when the functionalities are inaccessible due to resource consumption.
Pre Sales/ Cybersecurity Engineer at Contacta
Fortinet is highly efficient for moderate deployments and provides a secure platform for medium-sized networks and data centers.
Product Manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
I have seen a return on investment with Fortinet FortiAnalyzer due to its competitive pricing and straightforward licensing model based on the amount of log data processed per day.
Technical Engineer - Technical Security at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.0
Cribl's customer service is praised for responsiveness and expertise, despite needing improved customer understanding and internal logging.
Sentiment score
7.2
FortiAnalyzer's customer service is praised for responsiveness and effectiveness, though some report delays and inefficiencies with support levels.
They had extensive expertise with the product and were able to facilitate everything we needed.
Security Consultant at Riversafe Ltd
Usually, within an hour, we get a response, and we are able to work with them back and forth until we resolve the issues.
Engineering Fellow at Pegasystems
Sometimes by hearing the problem itself, they will know what the solution is, and they will let us know how to resolve it, and we do it immediately.
Senior Specialist at LTIMindtree
Customer service and support for Fortinet FortiAnalyzer are quite helpful and responsive.
Information Security Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Technical support is good, and I rate it ten out of ten.
Head of Technology at Techfruits
The support service is very slow and incompetent.
Network Security Engineer at Ensure Support Services Limited
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.7
Cribl efficiently scales to handle large data volumes, supports diverse workloads, and adapts to growing data processing needs.
Sentiment score
6.2
Fortinet FortiAnalyzer suits diverse needs with proper sizing, excelling in virtual environments but limited by hardware and cost.
The infrastructure behind Cribl Search is also scalable as it uses a CPU and just spawns horizontally more instances as it demands and requires.
Engineering Fellow at Pegasystems
Compared to other SIEM tools I use, any slight change on the operating system end impacts a lot on our SIEM tools and other things, but Cribl performs well in that regard.
Senior Software Engineer at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
It's an enterprise version, and we have a good amount of users using this solution.
SIEM Engineer at National Australia Bank (NAB)
Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is scalable, especially for the VM versions, as additional space can be provisioned from the servers as needed.
Information Security Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
FortiAnalyzer is a scalable product.
Technology Consultant at 1ware
It typically handles three to five years of expansion effectively.
Head of Technology at Techfruits
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.8
Cribl is stable and reliable, with effective support, despite minor bugs and issues at high volumes or advanced usage.
Sentiment score
7.5
Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is stable and reliable, handling large logs well, though rare performance issues may occur with OS mismatches.
Migrating from those SC4S servers to Cribl worker nodes has truly been a game-changer.
Sr. Lead Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Regarding scalability, we started with zero servers and have around 285 servers now.
Senior Specialist at LTIMindtree
I would rate the stability as ten out of ten.
SIEM Engineer at National Australia Bank (NAB)
We faced some CPU consumption issues, which caused the machine to slow down and required a restart of FortiAnalyzer.
Pre Sales/ Cybersecurity Engineer at Contacta
It remains stable during implementation for one or two years.
Head of Technology at Techfruits
It provides a reliable solution for managing network-wide data.
Technical Engineer - Technical Security at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Cribl users seek improvements in integration, documentation, AI, analytics, and cost-efficiency, alongside better support for legacy systems and downtime prevention.
Users recommend enhancing FortiAnalyzer's interface, integration, support, and AI while addressing high costs and setup complexity.
A more stringent role-based access control feature would enhance security and allow granular control over what users can see and access.
Manager for Monitoring and Logging at Velera
If we can have more internal logs and more debug logs to validate the error, that would be beneficial because instead of reaching out to Cribl support, we can troubleshoot and find the root cause ourselves.
SIEM Engineer at National Australia Bank (NAB)
In terms of large datasets—whether they originated from network inputs, virtual machines, or cloud instances—ingesting the data into the destination was relatively easy.
Security Consultant at Riversafe Ltd
When licensing, each device is licensed separately, such as the firewall, which can become expensive.
Network &Security Engineer at Natioanal Drug Authority Uganda
This would help in analyzing various security incidents and events more effectively by delivering a handful of relevant logs instead of thousands.
Product Manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Enhanced deep inspection features would make troubleshooting easier.
Head of Technology at Techfruits
 

Setup Cost

Cribl offers cost-effective enterprise pricing, simplifying usage with universal licensing and supporting scalability for large data volumes.
Enterprise buyers find Fortinet FortiAnalyzer pricing varies, with competitive rates but high costs for extensive licensing and setups.
Over time, the licensing cost has increased.
SIEM Engineer at National Australia Bank (NAB)
Cribl is very inexpensive, with enterprise pricing around 30 cents per GB, which is really decent.
Security Consultant at Riversafe Ltd
They have a universal license that allows us to consume the portions of Cribl that we want to use or flex into other portions of Cribl.
Senior Security Engineer at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Its licensing model is based on the amount of log data processed per day, making it more cost-effective compared to QRadar, which is EPS and device-based.
Technical Engineer - Technical Security at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
In terms of pricing, FortiAnalyzer is not expensive.
Technology Consultant at 1ware
In the Indian market, Fortinet's pricing is very competitive, allowing us to win most of our deals.
Product Manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

Cribl offers efficient data transformation, cost reduction, and seamless integration with intuitive UI and scalable, vendor-agnostic solutions.
Fortinet FortiAnalyzer offers centralized analysis with real-time logs, customizable dashboards, and automation for effective network management.
The data reduction and preprocessing capabilities make Cribl really unique.
Security Consultant at Riversafe Ltd
Cribl has a feature called JSON Unroll or Unroll function that allows you to differentiate the events; each event will come ingested as a single log instead of piling it up with multiple events.
Security Engineer at Tecplix
The Cribl UI is very simple and easy to use, particularly when working with data from various sources; it makes it very easy to create pipelines, add complex logic to those pipelines, and then gives you a preview of what your data looks like before applying that pipeline and what you get after.
Senior Security Engineer at a university with 10,001+ employees
The advanced analytics capabilities aid in threat detection by providing visibility into indicators of compromise.
Information Security Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is its ability to simplify and display logs clearly, providing details like which IPs are accessing the system, the destination, and the policies applied.
Head of Technology at Techfruits
The log management is useful as we have connected around two hundred eighty-five walls and around fifteen to twenty plus firewalls with Fortinet FortiAnalyzer, making it highly beneficial compared to logging into each individual firewall.
Senior Manager at ITX360 (Pvt) Ltd
 

Categories and Ranking

Cribl
Ranking in Log Management
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (9th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (8th), Observability Pipeline Software (1st)
Fortinet FortiAnalyzer
Ranking in Log Management
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Cribl is 2.6%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is 1.7%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cribl2.6%
Fortinet FortiAnalyzer1.7%
Other95.7%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Aman Verma - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Has helped reduce daily log volume significantly and streamline data routing across multiple destinations
Regarding complexity, as I mentioned before, Cribl is very simple to use. When I started 2.5 years ago, it was very easy to learn. I learned Cribl within a week, and even though I was a fresher at the time, it was easy to understand and not complex enough that someone would need to spend money on labs. It's not that complex to learn. Regarding cost efficiency, it's very good because nowadays the SIEM tools we use are too expensive on license, and SIEM tools base their license on how many logs get ingested. The unwanted logs, particularly firewall logs, represent a significant portion of unnecessary ingestion. Cribl saves our license by filtering out half of the firewall logs that are unwanted. Our main purpose for using Cribl is to save our license and save money. Currently, everyone is moving toward AI agents. We currently use regex, and AI agents could help us create those regex patterns to drop events or add raw data to events. Currently, we sit down, review the logs, and create regex patterns manually, which can be time-consuming. An AI agent could reduce this time. I read some articles indicating that Cribl Cloud has started using AI and considering MCPs and model context, but I'm not certain how far along they are. If Cribl asked me what they could improve, that would be my suggestion. The support is very good, and I had a few issues with Cribl where I raised support cases and received good responses, which is better than the quick response I didn't get from other SIEM tools and vendor tools I use. Compared to other SIEM tools, Cribl is cheaper than Splunk and DataDogs. However, it's still a bit expensive from my point of view, though I won't call it expensive. Overall, I think 99% of companies use Cribl before their SIEM tools, and compared to SIEM tools, Cribl is cheaper. Companies can use any SIEM tool such as Google, Splunk, or Cisco, and Cribl is cheaper than those SIEM tools. They might have a slight chance to reduce costs further, but I'm not the correct person to evaluate that since I'm more focused on the operational side. Regarding training, it was quite easy to grasp. It took me almost a week to understand the basic functionalities and what Cribl does. Getting more expertise took additional time, but basic functionalities and understanding what Cribl does took around four to five days. One point I want to mention is that Cribl could improve their labs or training materials in their Cribl Cloud or whatever portal they have.
Manikandan Kannan - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Technology at Techfruits
Simplifying log management by displaying detailed access information
The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is its ability to simplify and display logs clearly, providing details like which IPs are accessing the system, the destination, and the policies applied. This visualization and detail make managing logs more straightforward. In conjunction with our VMware setup, Fortinet FortiAnalyzer enhances organizational efficiency, meeting the standard log retention period for up to a year.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
5%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise18
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business58
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise31
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cribl?
I'm not sure of Cribl pricing because it has been procured as a package by our client, and we are not exposed to or do not have an idea of how much they have spent to get a license from Cribl. But ...
What needs improvement with Cribl?
I am not in a position to comment on how Cribl could be improved or enhanced because it is a good tool, and I have only used a small part of the entire Cribl product. As of now I am pretty happy wi...
What is your primary use case for Cribl?
My usual use cases for Cribl involve collecting logs from many endpoints, including user activities. We collect logs into either Log Analytical Workspace or Event Hub and redirect to Cribl so that ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiAnalyzer?
The pricing of Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is okay. For smaller companies, the pricing is acceptable.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiAnalyzer?
I don't know what the main room for improvement is for Fortinet FortiAnalyzer, but perhaps I don't have much experience, so I cannot answer this question comprehensively.
What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiAnalyzer?
I am using Fortinet and Red Hat myself as a consultant. I am dealing with Fortinet products and can provide information about them. I am working with Fortinet products, including firewalls and othe...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
General Directorate of Information Technology
Find out what your peers are saying about Cribl vs. Fortinet FortiAnalyzer and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.