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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
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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 May 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Elastic Stack is 5.2%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana Loki is 8.7%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Mahesh Ramichetty - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable product that can be fine-tuned easily
Elastic Stack provides all sorts of things, so it provides Elasticsearch for the transformations into a specific format, and pipelines can be defined for distributed applications along with the logs that come in the JSON format, which is clean. It's only the enhancements or the security that the product lacks and needs to be enhanced. I don't think further enhancement of the features needs to be added to the solution because it is already equivalent to a monitoring or alerting system, like Dynatrace and other tools. Some developments in the area of AI, which Elastic Stack is currently working on, should be fine in terms of the enhancements. Whenever some critical issue happens, there should be some kind of a co-pilot that helps resolve the issue. The tool should learn from its own previous issues. If you take Databricks, you see that it provides a co-pilot for Python, so a similar kind of development in Elastic Stack would be a real asset for it. AI would be considered a good way to enable the tool further for more in 2024, and even a beta launch would be helpful. If you take any sort of cloud-native monitoring product, like Azure Monitor or AWS CloudWatch, you see that such products don't provide much of the insights. If you go with Azure Monitor for any sort of ML models to be there, Sentinel needs to be used from Azure, which is very costly. AI-enablement would be a big improvement in Elastic Stack. Everyone in the monitoring space, including Dynatrace and New Relic, has lately been discussing AI, but it doesn't seem to be coming out. If there is room for an ML model in Elastic Stack, then it would be good.
Arjun Pandey - PeerSpot reviewer
Effective for Logging, recovery from node failures is fast and single UI supports metrics, logs, and even tracing
If it is HelloGuard setup or doing some setup on the dev cluster, it's pretty straightforward. But when we're dealing with a heavy cluster, like 15 to 20 terabytes of data per day, we need a production-grade cluster. For that kind of scenario, we must invest time and understand the process. We could have integrated these features within their health check, but they're using processes like Tanka and Jsonnet to implement a production service. I feel this could have been better. If I use a metric solution for metrics, I'd use Grafana for metrics monitoring. For logging, I'd use a different tool, like ELK. And for tracing another tool. So, to troubleshoot a specific issue, I have to switch between three different consoles. What I see in metrics isn't the same as in logs because the metadata and collection methods differ. That's where Loki comes in. Within Grafana, you can see metrics, logs, correlations, generate metrics from logs, and also set alerts. Alerting from logs is something many companies desire. With Loki, if there's a pattern in the log, we can filter it out without altering the entire pipeline. For instance, if I had to add fields in ELK, it would require a lot of configuration changes. Loki, however, is more flexible. It uses a grep-like pattern and the metadata model from Prometheus. It's highly efficient, with compressed data and block storage like GCS bucket or AWS S3, making log storage cost-effective. Compared to other solutions, it's more economical. Loki also has a Log CLI, which is very effective. It's all on-premises. Like, it's on the cloud, but it's self-managed, not a managed service.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We can group a lot of alarms into one automation alarm supervision. The alarm supervision allows us to put the alarm under the same. It's quite helpful for us. We used that to suppress our alarms. Elastic already provides the agent. It is easy to integrate Elastic Stack with other devices and vendors."
"It supports various integrations. It's open source and has excellent community support."
"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 machine learning capabilities are valuable."
"Elastic Stack has made a positive impact as we can now see our logs."
"The tool's most powerful aspect is its search engine capability. It's a highly effective and powerful solution for searching. We use it in professional and student projects at universities, and it delivers promising results."
"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."
"I have experienced a return on investment from the use of the solution."
"Grafana Loki is easy to monitor and detect errors."
"The log collection feature is good and the solution is easily understandable. v"
"Grafana agent is very lightweight and does not cost significant resources of our cluster."
"The effectiveness of filters is pivotal for optimizing the search process and extracting the specific information we need from the extensive log data."
"Loki significantly saves time in troubleshooting by quickly pinpointing network issues."
"The tool can be used in multi-cluster environments."
"The product's most valuable features are ease of installation, management, and reporting. It has an efficient ability to set thresholds for alerts, as well."
"The most valuable feature of Grafana Loki is the dashboards which are really simple to create."
 

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."
"There could be better documentation."
"Elastic Stack should be more simplified with ready-to-use widgets."
"The main issue related to Elastic Stack is in the area of its licensing."
"It should facilitate easier manual integration."
"Elastic Stack should be more simplified with ready-to-use widgets. Also, incorporating AI capabilities is essential as monitoring and observability tools are now adding AI features."
"It lacks a clear NDR (Network Detection and Response) feature. If Elastic could enhance this aspect, it would significantly boost its capabilities."
"The Docker container partition feature needs improvement as they do not reuse the space and goes into a pending state."
"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."
"I do not see any areas for improvement at the moment."
"In Grafana Loki, the creation of metrics is not so easy, making it an area that could be made easier."
"Enhancing speed could be a game-changer, and while it might vary depending on the application, it's a factor worth exploring."
"The product must improve its UI."
"We face some bugs when we install the latest version of Grafana Loki."
"The solution has shortcomings regarding security monitoring-oriented features that need improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The product is expensive."
"We are using the open-source community version of the product."
"I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"If I compare Elastic Stack to the other products in the market, I would say that the tool is available at a competitive price."
"Ultimately, the pricing depends upon the capacity planning that the enterprise architect does."
"We use a free version."
"The pricing structure varies based on the number of users; there might be specific taxes to pay for it."
"Grafana Loki is an open-source solution."
"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."
"I use the open-source version of the product."
"I find the licensing structure quite reasonable, as the free license effectively meets my requirements."
"The solution is open source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
I may not be able to answer as this is customer-paid Elastic Stack, and I didn't handle the payment.
What needs improvement with Elastic Stack?
Elastic Stack should be more simplified with ready-to-use widgets. Also, incorporating AI capabilities is essential as monitoring and observability tools are now adding AI features. Ideally, it sho...
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

Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Stack vs. Grafana Loki and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.