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Cribl vs Grafana Loki comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 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

Cribl
Ranking in Log Management
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (14th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (12th), Observability Pipeline Software (1st)
Grafana Loki
Ranking in Log Management
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Cribl is 2.2%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana Loki is 8.4%, up from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Joe Cicero - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates seamless log integration and reduces data costs with efficient compression
My favorite feature is Cribl Stream. That's probably the only Cribl product I have a lot of experience with, and Cribl Stream makes it very easy to identify where all the customer's log sources are and to quickly connect them to a destination source such as Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Azure Data Storage. Cribl Stream does two things: not only does it make it easy to connect one log source or one dataset to multiple storage locations, but it also has compression features, which greatly reduce the storage cost for that data. It strips out and compresses data so that only the absolute information remains and not any duplicates. Dual destination and compression are the two top features.
Volodymyr Bondarchuk - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrations enhance monitoring but problem-solving proves challenging
Different types of integrations with various sources are the most helpful and useful features of Grafana Loki that I found for myself. As part of Kubernetes technology, I noticed benefits from using this product such as availability, configuration balancing, high availability solutions for high performance, and failover clustering. It provides a clear picture about the state of the system and gives needed information for taking action and quickly fixing problems.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cribl offers other valuable features. For instance, you can replay data from an edge device, store your daily data in a stream, and replay specific event data into Splunk if a security incident occurs"
"Features such as Cribl Stream, Cribl LogStream, and Cribl Edge have been the most beneficial. The Cribl LogStream, in particular, is valuable for routing data, creating firewalls on pipelines, and putting security measures in place to ensure data reaches its destination without issues."
"Cribl definitely helps with the complexity because you don't have to push for deployment—they provide the interface where you can mimic what the output will look like, and you can see that in real time when setting up the Cribl configuration, which definitely helps considerably."
"The support team was very helpful and managed to get everything production-ready."
"My favorite option in Cribl is the Stream product."
"When it comes to the product's installation phase, it is not tough for people who have good knowledge...The tool is worth the investment."
"The capability to reduce logs in a user-friendly manner is a standout feature. Cribl allows us to view logs live as they are being processed, giving us quick feedback on the changes made."
"The product's most valuable features include the internal management of events, coding perspective, data processing, and serialization."
"Grafana Loki is easy to monitor and detect errors."
"The log collection feature is good and the solution is easily understandable. v"
"We are using Grafana Loki as a database for real-time metrics."
"I appreciate the capability to process logs from microservices and seamlessly integrate them into Grafana."
"The tool can be used in multi-cluster environments."
"Loki significantly saves time in troubleshooting by quickly pinpointing network issues."
"There are new features like that pilot code and things like that for profiling."
"The most valuable feature of Grafana Loki is the dashboards which are really simple to create."
 

Cons

"Cribl could improve by offering easier integrations with enterprise products, similar to what Splunk provides."
"There is room for improvement in the documentation and knowledge base, particularly regarding configurations like sources where logs are being ingested"
"There have been several administrative issues. Another point is that the browsing functions aren't very intuitive."
"Perhaps more flexibility in terms of metrics would be helpful."
"Cribl should consider adding more features that are applicable to smaller firms, allowing broader access to their data migration through Cribl."
"Cribl doesn't have as many packs available"
"There is no alerting mechanism for the leader/worker nodes status."
"The sys logging could be enhanced to make it easier to identify errors, especially when dealing with multiple functions."
"Visualization-wise, Grafana Loki's dashboard looks a little outdated compared to other open-source visualization tools like Chronograf."
"Enhancing speed could be a game-changer, and while it might vary depending on the application, it's a factor worth exploring."
"It's not intended for proprietary services, so you have to struggle with configuration a lot."
"The platform's stability needs improvement."
"We encountered certain limitations when it came to alerting, particularly when dealing with specific data sources."
"We had a well-structured dashboard with a functional query. However, an issue arose when the Kubernetes pod restarted. The statistics from our Grafana query would reset, dropping to zero and starting anew. This was particularly noticeable with linear graphs, which are expected to show consistent growth."
"It would be beneficial if Loki could directly access Windows Server logs or events directly from the servers."
"The solution has shortcomings regarding security monitoring-oriented features that need improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would not say it is a cheaply priced tool as it has been doing wonders in the market. The tool has been budget-friendly for organizations."
"The product pricing is reasonable compared to other solutions."
"Since we are using the open-source version of Grafana Loki, we are not paying anything for the solution."
"Grafana Loki is an open-source solution."
"I find the licensing structure quite reasonable, as the free license effectively meets my requirements."
"I use the open-source version of the product."
"We use a free version."
"You can use the free version of Grafana Loki on-premises."
"Grafana Loki is a free, open-source solution."
"The cost is less than other paid services like CloudWatch."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cribl?
Something that Cribl could do better is processing time. There is not enough customization to improve performance. An example would be with AWS Lambda functions, the way we were doing it before. Th...
What is your primary use case for Cribl?
Our use cases that we are exploring Cribl for right now are for data parsing and data manipulation.
What do you like most about Grafana Loki?
We are using Grafana Loki as a database for real-time metrics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana Loki?
Since it is an open source tool, there are no charges or fees.
What needs improvement with Grafana Loki?
I have no ideas at this moment about what could be improved in Grafana Loki.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Cribl vs. Grafana Loki and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.