Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Cribl vs WhatsUp Gold 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 Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
8th
Ranking in Log Management
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (8th), Observability Pipeline Software (1st)
WhatsUp Gold
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
29th
Ranking in Log Management
32nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (26th), Server Monitoring (16th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (24th), Configuration Management (19th), Cloud Monitoring Software (23rd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Cribl is 1.2%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cribl1.2%
WhatsUp Gold1.1%
Other97.7%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

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.
EC
Technical Manager at Quan Hung Gourmet
Efficient monitoring with detailed customization, yet complexity remains
The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless. I have used the automated device discovery with this topology feature. The interactive map feature helps me manage the topology because sometimes we cannot draw the topology correctly, so we need to manually edit the connections. The alerting system is very tunable and customizable, but it's a little complicated to use. Many customers cannot manage it by themselves and need support from us, the provider. We always use the dashboards in the SOC, where we constantly display a dashboard or multiple dashboards. This allows us to know immediately if the connection or bandwidth is full or if the connection is broken.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ease of management and configuration of Cribl Edge features is highly beneficial—I have many thousands of Cribl Edge nodes deployed, and it's very easy to make configuration changes across the board or update the agent."
"I'd rate the solution ten out of ten."
"We reduce cost by using Cribl to control what data we need to be sent over to the SIEM, and we were able to use their functionality, specifically aggregation and also some of the drop functions within Cribl to cut down this noise, send a full copy of the data to S3 or a different data lake, and then send the reduced log over to the SIEM."
"Cribl's interface is user-friendly and easy to learn, making it simple to teach new users how to use it."
"The ease of management and configuration of Cribl Edge features is highly beneficial."
"Cribl's ability to handle high volumes of diverse data types is exactly the purpose that we took it for, and as far as I have seen for the last nine months, it is handling well without issues."
"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."
"Cribl offers easy plugin configurations and source collection settings, allowing us to collect logs from any source."
"It handles the basics of monitoring."
"The most valuable feature is the auto-discovery function."
"The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless."
"The installation and configuration process are easy."
"It is easy to access and discover devices, as well as monitor them automatically. The topology discover is also a useful feature."
"The interface in the last few years it has been a lot greater, they are much more user-friendly. I like the interface."
"It is stable."
"The solution effectively monitors network devices and servers."
 

Cons

"We encountered some issues with the syslog data stream, particularly with handling large databases and extensive data logs."
"It's very difficult to aggregate low-volume logs because the worker processes don't share state."
"Regarding Cribl's ability to contain data cost and complexity, if they can reduce their cost, that will make them more competitive."
"There is no alerting mechanism for the leader/worker nodes status."
"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."
"However, the endpoint plug-in tool can use some refinement, as it tends to hit system resources and can sometimes be detrimental to systems to the point where it must be turned off and a scan restarted when a user is offline."
"I think Cribl can be improved because I do not believe it is a mature product. It has gone down many times and when we are doing upgrades, many things break and we face a lot of issues, especially with scaling."
"The pricing for this solution has gone up quite recently, which has led some of our customers to buy an alternative product."
"The initial setup of WhatsUp Gold is a medium range of difficulty levels. However, if it is your first time it could be difficult."
"The licensing model could be improved. Right now, the levels are too far apart. This causes the solution to be more expensive than it needs to be."
"One of the biggest things that made us start to look at another product is we're not able to have an end to end monitoring from a user perspective throughout the system and back to the user. All the monitoring is from inside out, we need something that also can give us from outside in."
"We can never achieve or get a good picture of the network topology."
"I would like to see better integration with switches so that you can see what is connected to each port, what the traffic is, and have a network map automatically generated."
"Regional product team support is not very good."
"Integrations with other devices. I want to have a product that has full integration with my active directory so I can track user activity. I want to track my complete user activity, so I'm looking for a product to implement in the near future, which will have full integration with my network and active directory users. It became very difficult to track user activity."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product pricing is reasonable compared to other solutions."
"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 tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."
"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."
"The pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."
"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."
"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."
"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."
"This is a well priced solution."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

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 Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

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 WhatsUp Gold?
The interactive mapping interface for scrolling, zooming, and drilling down on an element to learn about a network issue is good. When we see a network there will sometimes be a spot that has one l...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WhatsUp Gold?
Clients find the licensing calculator confusing, but we simplify this for them by collecting relevant information first. The licensing is based on devices, providing better cost-effectiveness than ...
What needs improvement with WhatsUp Gold?
It would be great if WhatsUp Gold could add features that simplify management with AI, as it is currently too complicated to manage.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Artoni Trasporti, Austin Independent School District, Banca Marche, Burke County North Carolina, Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, Clayco, Community Integrated Care, Desca, Deutsche Bergbau, Flexi-Van, Gropper, Hamleys, Hammonds Furniture, Knowledge IT, Idras S.P.A., Sibeg, Swann Engineering, Trivium Lindenhof
Find out what your peers are saying about Cribl vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.