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Cribl vs NetWitness Platform 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
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (8th), Observability Pipeline Software (1st)
NetWitness Platform
Ranking in Log Management
35th
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
32nd
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Cribl is 2.6%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetWitness Platform is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cribl2.6%
NetWitness Platform0.7%
Other96.7%
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.
MOTASHIM Al Razi - PeerSpot reviewer
CISO at One Bank Limited
It is a stable solution, but they should make the user interface easier to understand
The solution's initial setup takes work. We have to organize multiple paths and many features. The deployment process takes less than a week. But it takes a month to complete if we want to make the solution smarter by integrating it with various devices. I rate the process as a six out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"What I appreciate the most about Cribl is the free training, the free access to all the training, and how easy it is to learn it."
"We save around 2.2 TB every day using Cribl by filtering out unwanted logs coming from syslog devices and other networking devices, which saves our license."
"Cribl offers easy plugin configurations and source collection settings, allowing us to collect logs from any source."
"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."
"Cribl search has affected us greatly, and it has optimized our operations teams' time and efficiency; they're able to troubleshoot and find issues for our customers in a minimal amount of time."
"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"
"It gives the ability to investigate into network traffic in the Net and the organization what we couldn't do before."
"The most valuable features are the threat prediction and network forensics."
"The most valuable features are the integration and ease of use."
"Offers a good wireless feature."
"It's fully scalable. There is no limit. Of course, the license limits per day the number of terabytes. In my opinion, it's very flexible."
"Setting up NetWitness is straightforward. There are multiple connectors, including standard and specialized connectors. One purpose of the connectors is the enhanced capability integrate the custom applications. NetWitness comes with E6 appliances and application images that we use for the initial configurations and for the OS stack information. From there, you can consider the correlation rules, integrate the different log sources, and easily create correlation rules and backlog reports."
"The most valuable feature is the security that it provides."
"What we are mainly using are the RSA concentrator, RSA Decoder, Archiver, Broker, and Log Decoder."
 

Cons

"Currently, we sit down, review the logs, and create regex patterns manually, which can be time-consuming."
"From my perspective of the stability and reliability of the solution, there have been times where certain releases have bugs inside of them that we have to work around in order to make the solution work as intended."
"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."
"We encountered some issues with the syslog data stream, particularly with handling large databases and extensive data logs."
"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."
"Cribl doesn't have as many packs available"
"Perhaps more flexibility in terms of metrics would be helpful."
"When I explored the endpoint, I found myself wishing for clearer instructions presented in a sequential manner."
"Lots of competing products have vulnerability protection built into their products, and this solution would be improved by including that support."
"The initial setup was complex because it takes a lot of time to complete the implementation."
"The log system is a bit complex and has room for improvement."
"It should have a monitoring feature. It would help us analyze the current state of attacks faster from a single platform."
"Log aggregation is an issue with this solution because there are a huge number of alerts in a single instance."
"Sometimes, it gives me static when integrating Windows-based systems. It should produce a precise log of sorts as to where the problem is. For example, a few days ago because of the McAfee application firewall, I couldn't get access to the particular Windows machine. So, my team and I had to figure out by ourselves that there was a virus responsible for the obstacle. This solution should trigger a meaningful log or message indicating the reason the user or implementer can't get into the machine."
"If we have the ability to run a dynamic analysis through malware in the same suite, it would be great to have a sandbox solution to analyze malware through dynamic analysis."
"They should implement algorithms to digest that data and produce additional, more advanced reporting, alerting and support of internal security teams."
 

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."
"Compared to the competition, the is price is not that high."
"This is a pricey solution; it's not cheap."
"It’s cheaper to run virtual machines in a VMware environment."
"We are on an annual license for the use of the solution."
"We have a perpetual license, so the total cost of ownership is not very expensive. It's a good investment."
"In comparison to other SIEM solutions such as Splunk, NetWitness is less costly."
"The product is expensive."
"We have yearly licensing costs. The license fee can be based on the volume of EPS. Some organizations may have, as a gentlemanly gesture, 10,000 EPS and get a 3,000 EPS license but actually use 5,000 EPS."
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Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Feb 26, 2015
HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. ​McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm
We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Performing Arts
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise20
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cribl?
I am not aware of the pricing because I was not a part of it. We were developers. But as far as I understood, I think it is a bit expensive. I am no one to complain, but there was this person on Li...
What needs improvement with Cribl?
In Cribl, I feel that maybe I am not aware of it, or maybe it is already there, but I think if there was a way to learn more about it. There are a lot of areas to explore. For example, if my work i...
What is your primary use case for Cribl?
I was not regularly using the same tool, but there was a time when our team needed to migrate some data from one tool to another, and during that data migration phase, we used Cribl for six to seve...
What do you like most about NetWitness Platform?
The product's initial setup phase was not at all difficult.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetWitness Platform?
The pricing is comparable to others, and I consider the cost to be intermediate. Specific cost details are unknown to me.
What needs improvement with NetWitness Platform?
There is currently no need for improvement in the SIEM ( /categories/security-information-and-event-management-siem ), though there could be potential enhancements by integrating with AI.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
RSA Security Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Los Angeles World Airports, Reply
Find out what your peers are saying about Cribl vs. NetWitness Platform and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.