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Elastic Observability vs Grafana Loki comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

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

Elastic Observability
Ranking in Log Management
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (7th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Container Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)
Grafana Loki
Ranking in Log Management
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 1.5%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana Loki is 8.5%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Adelina Craciun - PeerSpot reviewer
Customization enables tailored monitoring and alerting across departments
The possibility to customize it has been quite useful. Whatever the other departments want to dream up, we implement. Whatever they want to monitor, the granularity of it, the changes in the threshold, and the anomalies that they want reported all require some development. So far, every single request has been fulfilled.
CarlosPimentel - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient log filtering enhances quick network troubleshooting
We use Grafana Loki for various verticals including manufacturing, finance, health, and aerospatial sectors. It primarily helps in monitoring security and access to devices. Grafana dashboards are used to track access success and failure and audit commands issued on devices Loki significantly…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have built a mini business intelligence system based on Elastic Observability."
"Elastic provides built-in features for queries and report generation. It's a very good tool for monitoring integration capabilities."
"It is very stable, and I would rate it ten out of ten based on my interaction with it."
"Machine learning is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"Good design and easy to use once implemented."
"The solution allows us to dig deep into data."
"It is scalable and supports multitenancy, which is beneficial for MSPs."
"The solution is open-source and helps with back-end logging. It is also easy to handle."
"There are new features like that pilot code and things like that for profiling."
"The most valuable features of the solution stem from the fact that it is an open-source tool that is stable and flexible."
"Grafana Loki is easy to monitor and detect errors."
"We are using Grafana Loki as a database for real-time metrics."
"The best feature of Grafana Loki is that it integrates well with our other tool."
"The most valuable feature of Grafana Loki is the dashboards which are really simple to create."
"Grafana agent is very lightweight and does not cost significant resources of our cluster."
"Loki also utilizes the same service discovery mechanism as used by Prometheus. So, whatever labeled metadata you see in Prometheus, you have the exact same metadata in the Loki system. Given this level of intricacy and the attempt to address these challenges, I firmly believe that Loki deserves praise for the work."
 

Cons

"Elastic Observability needs to improve the retrieval of logs and metrics from all the instances."
"They need more skills in the market. There are not enough skills in the market. It is not pervasive enough on the market, in my opinion. In other words, there isn't a big enough user base."
"The auto-discovery isn't nearly as good. That's a big portion of it. When you drop the agent onto the JVM and you're trying to figure things out, having to go through and manually do all that is cumbersome."
"Elastic Observability needs to have better standardization, logging, and schema."
"Improving code insight related to infrastructure and network, particularly focusing on aspects such as firewalls, switches, routers, and testing would be beneficial."
"Elastic Observability’s price could be improved."
"Simplifying the parsing of logs and manual efforts would also be beneficial."
"The solution would be better if it was capable of more automation, especially in a monitoring capacity or for the response to abnormalities."
"The solution has shortcomings regarding security monitoring-oriented features that need improvement."
"The correlation of requests is not simple in Grafana Loki and can be improved."
"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."
"My main concern is the recommended production-grade setup. They suggest using tools like Tanka or Jsonnet. They should simplify the process to increase adoption."
"We face some bugs when we install the latest version of Grafana Loki."
"The platform's stability needs improvement."
"I do not see any areas for improvement at the moment."
"The Docker container partition feature needs improvement as they do not reuse the space and goes into a pending state."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."
"The product is not that cheap."
"We will buy a premium license after POC."
"Elastic Observability is cheaper than other similar solutions, such as Dynatrace. Its license calculation is based on various factors like data volume and physical infrastructure, particularly related to RAM capacity."
"Elastic Observability's pricing could be better for small-scale users."
"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."
"The price of Elastic Observability is expensive."
"So far, there are just the standard licensing fees. Several of the components are embedded in the license or are even open source. They're even free depending on what you use, which makes it even more appealing to someone that is discussing pricing of the solution."
"I use the open-source version of the product."
"Since we are using the open-source version of Grafana Loki, we are not paying anything for the solution."
"My company doesn't need to pay for the licensing cost of the solution."
"I find the licensing structure quite reasonable, as the free license effectively meets my requirements."
"The solution is open source."
"I use the solution's open-source version. Grafana Loki is a completely free solution for me."
"We use a free version."
"The pricing structure varies based on the number of users; there might be specific taxes to pay for it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing. However, sizing and licensing information could be clearer.
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
Of course, maintenance is necessary, as with any software, requiring updates with the latest features and security enhancements. It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like netw...
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?
We use the open-source version of Loki. The cloud version is competitively priced compared to other market solutions.
What needs improvement with Grafana Loki?
It would be beneficial if Loki could directly access Windows Server logs or events directly from the servers.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Observability vs. Grafana Loki and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.