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Cribl vs Logstash 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:
 

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)
Logstash
Ranking in Log Management
26th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
5
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 Logstash is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cribl2.6%
Logstash0.8%
Other96.6%
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.
Mohammed-Abdelalim - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Exploring resilience and integration capabilities while navigating complexity and technical challenges
Logstash lacks a graphical user interface, necessitating a strong programming background to handle it effectively. It is challenging for business users who need a skilled team for its operation. Changing pipelines is not easy because Logstash requires pipelines to be programmed and cannot just be dragged and dropped like other data solutions. Additionally, Logstash does not automatically make actions based on the data it receives; integrating automation tools is required.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We save about 75% percent of our costs by processing network and firewall logs through Cribl."
"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, and those ingest costs have basically canceled out the pricing of Cribl licensing for us based on the volume of data that we have."
"Enhancing those events to optimize, to add new fields or to remove the extra fields that are of no use helps us in log reduction by dumping the raw logs and only ingesting the interested fields, which helps us in 50 to 60% volume reduction."
"When we had Cribl in place, it provided a vision and a platform for us to control what we send and how we send it in terms of data passing, data enrichment, and many more things, with massaging the data."
"Cribl does a really great job of making sure that no matter how crazy the data set is, we're able to see that data and understand it, and then perform advanced functions against the data to make sure that it is in the ready state for whatever the end place is in which we wish to send it."
"I'd rate the solution ten out of ten."
"Cribl has been instrumental in containing our data costs, especially as we use leading log aggregation and SIEM tools known for their heavy licensing costs by ingest."
"The features of Cribl that I appreciate the most are the vendor agnosticism and the ability to send data almost anywhere you want, regardless of the data type, the format, or the destination."
"The functionality of Logstash is quite easy to implement and the plugin ecosystem of Logstash is great, with plugins for shell script monitoring and SQL monitoring working well with the tool."
"Everything aligns well with improving our organization."
"We have three or four Logstash servers for high availability."
"The transformation means we ship the logs in the way that we want them to be presented in Kibana, which is the main function we use Logstash for."
"Logstash has numerous plugins for inputs and outputs, allowing it to work well in environments that do not contain other Elastic components."
"I can collect logs from various data sources, including hardware."
 

Cons

"There have been several administrative issues. Another point is that the browsing functions aren't very intuitive."
"There are opportunities for AI to be incorporated more tightly into Cribl to help build out those pipelines and apply some more complex logic to those transformations could be useful."
"Cribl doesn't have as many packs available"
"Improvement could be made in the logging area, as sometimes we encounter issues in a pipeline or something, and it's not immediately obvious when you look at the logs that the pipeline is failing."
"Currently, Cribl Search is dedicated to one bucket at a time in the case of S3 buckets. The ability to search for multiple buckets would be awesome."
"The sys logging could be enhanced to make it easier to identify errors, especially when dealing with multiple functions."
"Perhaps more flexibility in terms of metrics would be helpful."
"It would be really nice to be able to see Cribl gain insights from the data as the data is in stream, in flight, on the way to wherever its final storage destination is."
"There can be a UI to implement with Logstash. Currently, I have to work with config files and everything."
"We still have a problem with importing the log system."
"The product needs to improve its compatibility."
"Elastic does not provide proper support for Logstash worldwide, and I rate their technical support as one out of ten."
"Almost all the research can be very bad. We still have a problem with importing the log system."
"An enhancement we could implement is the ability to cluster Logstash to exist in more than one node."
 

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."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise18
No data available
 

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 do you like most about Logstash?
I can collect logs from various data sources, including hardware.
What needs improvement with Logstash?
Customization can be automated with Logstash, but it is at the developer's disposal. The developer has to do it, not the tool as such. There is scope for optimization, but that is all outside the t...
What is your primary use case for Logstash?
The purposes for which I am using Logstash largely include log aggregation and application monitoring.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Cribl vs. Logstash and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.