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Elastic Stack 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 Stack
Ranking in Log Management
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Grafana Loki
Ranking in Log Management
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Stack is 4.0%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana Loki is 6.3%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Grafana Loki6.3%
Elastic Stack4.0%
Other89.7%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

LB
Senior Consultant at Skillfield
Offers robust out-of-the-box integrations and streamlines logging processes effortlessly
There are improvements needed for Elastic Stack. It is mostly based on Lucene, and the heart of Elastic Stack is Lucene, which has some limitations. Anything built on top of Lucene often feels an add-on, and that includes vector databases. Elastic Stack can store vector embeddings as well and perform AI and machine learning tasks out of the box without excessive configuration. The main improvements involve increasing speed and compression capabilities; I have seen databases that claim to achieve significantly better compression. While Elastic Stack can manage vast amounts of data, if the mapping is not specified correctly, the indexing time can be slow, especially with many events per second. Improper mapping usually means that every document received gets indexed for all fields, which is not desired. Elastic consultants typically optimize this, but out of the box, as data volume increases, scaling becomes necessary. They are working on these improvements in new versions.
reviewer2350791 - PeerSpot reviewer
Regional Associate & Engineer at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Offers cost-effective log management with strong correlation features across observability tools
Grafana Loki's open-source capability is a significant benefit. Grafana has invested in making their enterprise tools competitive with other APM tools, facilitating cross-correlation with Mimir and Tempo for metrics and tracing. The tool offers good search functionality, and its on-premises capability is advantageous. The indexing performance is strong, making it a robust log management tool. Grafana Loki is notably cost-effective.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution's technical support is good...Elastic Stack offers good value for value for money based on the product's features and what they offer."
"The only beneficial aspect of Elastic Stack is that it's open source."
"It supports various integrations. It's open source and has excellent community support."
"The biggest strength of Elastic Stack is its brilliant archiving capabilities."
"The detection rules in Elastic Stack are the most valuable feature. The search capabilities are excellent and fast. As we collect logs from workstations and devices, the detection rules run on top of the logs and detect any suspicious activity, raising alerts accordingly. Integration with Elastic Stack depends on the specific integration. Elastic provides some bridging integrations that make it easy, but require custom integration. Most integrations are simple, but customization can be challenging because we need to do some parsing. There's something called Elastic Common Schema, and we need to parse the source logs to match this schema, which can be a bit challenging."
"It is a very scalable solution...I didn't face any problem with this scalability part of the solution since we only have a few pieces of equipment in our company."
"The machine learning capabilities are valuable."
"I have benefited from the security features provided by X-Pack in Elastic Stack, particularly the SIEM capability, which is very good for checking security issues."
"We are using Grafana Loki as a database for real-time metrics."
"The most valuable part of Loki is the ability to filter logs by keywords and devices."
"Different types of integrations with various sources are the most helpful and useful features of Grafana Loki that I found for myself."
"The best feature of Grafana Loki is that it integrates well with our other tool."
"I appreciate the capability to process logs from microservices and seamlessly integrate them into Grafana."
"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."
"The effectiveness of filters is pivotal for optimizing the search process and extracting the specific information we need from the extensive log data."
"The tool can be used in multi-cluster environments."
 

Cons

"When people try to move the data from another source to Elastic Stack for visualization, they face challenges when connecting to Elastic Stack from such different sources."
"Improvements are needed in the solution in areas like SOAR and TIP, where there are certain shortcomings."
"The implementation of dashboards in the solution needs to be made easier...I had some issues with the ports and configuration since it was kind of complex to implement with Docker."
"The solution is expensive, particularly the training and certification. If customers want to increase their use of Elastic Stack, they should consider reducing the cost of certification and training."
"Agent deployment is a little tough in the on-premise version."
"Elastic Stack should be more simplified with ready-to-use widgets."
"There could be better documentation."
"AI-enablement would be a big improvement in Elastic Stack...If there is room for an ML model in Elastic Stack, then it would be good."
"The correlation of requests is not simple in Grafana Loki and can be improved."
"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 encountered certain limitations when it came to alerting, particularly when dealing with specific data sources."
"In Grafana Loki, the creation of metrics is not so easy, making it an area that could be made easier."
"Improvements could be made in the enablement of the product, addressing the complexity of implementing these tools."
"I would rate Grafana Loki a seven out of ten because it is open source, and sometimes there can be problems that are difficult to fix without official support."
"Improvements could be made in the enablement of the product, addressing the complexity of implementing these tools."
"Improvements could be made in the enablement of the product, addressing the complexity of implementing these tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"If I compare Elastic Stack to the other products in the market, I would say that the tool is available at a competitive price."
"The product is expensive."
"It depends on the specifics, but generally, Elastic is economical for certain use cases."
"I used the open-source version of Elastic Stack, because of which I did not have to pay anything."
"We are using the open-source community version of the product."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Ultimately, the pricing depends upon the capacity planning that the enterprise architect does."
"You can use the free version of Grafana Loki on-premises."
"The solution is open source."
"I use the solution's open-source version. Grafana Loki is a completely free solution for me."
"Grafana Loki is a free, open-source solution."
"The pricing structure varies based on the number of users; there might be specific taxes to pay for it."
"I find the licensing structure quite reasonable, as the free license effectively meets my requirements."
"We use a free version."
"I use the open-source version of the product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Elastic Stack?
The tool is huge, and it performs brilliantly. I tested it for malware, and within two weeks of launching, the product alerted me about a network intrusion. This was a tough test for it, but it per...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Stack?
My experience with Elastic Stack pricing indicates that it is node-based. While I do not have complete pricing details, they are available online. If I choose Elastic Cloud, it includes licensing a...
What needs improvement with Elastic Stack?
I would like to improve Elastic Stack by addressing the current big problem we face with importing logs and log files, such as syslogs. To import these log files, we need to design the ingest pipel...
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?
Improvements could be made in the enablement of the product, addressing the complexity of implementing these tools.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

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