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Elastic Stack vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Log Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
375
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

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 Splunk Enterprise Security is 7.1%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security7.1%
Elastic Stack4.0%
Other88.9%
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.
reviewer1469784 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Helps us detect cyber threats quickly and integrate multiple feeds effectively
Overall, the product is good, but when it comes to some infrastructure issues, we have to dig into more logs. There is no straightforward indication of an issue. Health check kind of dashboards are not available. More AI would help us, and more optimization, since security products run more queries. The AI module could suggest solutions, optimizing queries or workload balancing. If the product itself advises on running queries during peak times, it would be similar to what ChatGPT currently offers. We see quite a few issues on stability. Even last week, we faced something, and identifying bottlenecks is not easy. We need more SMEs, and there is no mechanism to tell us about indexer or search head issues. Self-monitoring dashboards could be beneficial. The technical support still requires more improvement. Often, primary support takes a lot of time and forwards most solutions to the engineering side. The primary support team has very limited knowledge to provide.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The centralized logging capabilities of Elastic Stack have helped me streamline my logging processes significantly because there are many open-source tools available, such as Filebeat and Logstash, to collect the logs."
"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 biggest strength of Elastic Stack is its brilliant archiving capabilities."
"The only beneficial aspect of Elastic Stack is that it's open source."
"The machine learning capabilities are valuable."
"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."
"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 performed admirably. The alerting system is excellent, and searching through logs is incredibly efficient. What's impressive is that all three products or options are integrated into one solution. This means I don't need separate logging, monitoring, or antivirus solutions."
"It's standardized and easy to use, so you don't have to have a lot of top-tier analysts to do the same job."
"Splunk's advantage is its search capability. Its search is notably faster. With Splunk, I can search easily on keywords. That is great."
"The benefits my company has seen from the use of Splunk Enterprise Security revolve around the speed of detection it offers."
"Splunk incorporates a lot of elements that help to reduce security risks. For it to reach certain compliance, we need to have some security insight. Splunk is a very good SIEM, it’s a top solution, but the best feature is its cost of visibility. We have all the most important features to detect vulnerabilities or risks."
"The risk-based alerting (RBA) is one of the valuable features."
"The solution's most valuable features are its ability to transact in the cloud and its ability to onboard data easily with minimum connectors."
"The solution is very fast and succinct."
"I evaluate customer service and technical support as excellent."
 

Cons

"The main issue related to Elastic Stack is in the area of its licensing."
"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."
"Support could be improved. The error code is not helpful. We have to ask for it or pass it on to community forums."
"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 tool's pricing can be improved."
"I would rate the technical support by Elastic as five or six out of ten. They should improve their response time and first-level support, particularly knowledge, which is very important for using Elasticsearch."
"Elastic Stack's search capabilities can be challenging, especially when searching for precise data from past years, such as two or ten years ago. Its indexing performance for exact data retrieval may decrease as the data volume grows. Therefore, I believe there is room for improvement in the product's search functionality. It needs to improve its pricing as well."
"It lacks a clear NDR (Network Detection and Response) feature. If Elastic could enhance this aspect, it would significantly boost its capabilities."
"Splunk is more expensive than other solutions."
"The GUI, now called Mission Control, which serves as issue management or ticket management, falls below what would be considered industry standards."
"The way Splunk Enterprise Security could improve is by pulling in and mapping my DHCP data and tracking users' IP addresses as it changes throughout sessions, and being able to keep track of who is actually assigned to what IP address more natively."
"On-premises scaling of the solution is a bit more limited than it is on the cloud."
"The algorithms customization of Splunk could improve. They have limited algorithms for machine learning support. If they can allow the user to add more machine learning algorithms, such as the ability to choose the algorithm that a user might want. Additionally, they should provide the required libraries for those algorithms, and then analyzes the data for use."
"A lot of people are averse to using new tools so if they make it even more user-friendly than it already is, I think that could go a long way."
"The pricing of Splunk Enterprise Security is not very affordable, and I have seen many companies planning to leave because of cost concerns."
"If you monitor too much, you can lose performance on your systems."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the open-source community version of the product."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"It depends on the specifics, but generally, Elastic is economical for certain use cases."
"I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"I used the open-source version of Elastic Stack, because of which I did not have to pay anything."
"The product is expensive."
"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."
"Regarding the product's pricing, I think it has always been difficult to have a conversation with Splunk."
"The pricing modules could be improved."
"Further reductions would be fantastic, and I believe that more and more people would flock to it."
"You will eat up whatever you purchase quickly. The level of insights that Splunk empowers is addictive."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is expensive."
"The Splunk licensing is high."
"Splunk Enterprise Security incurs a significant cost because of the amount of data we send, but we are fine with the value we're getting for that price."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is cheaper than competitors, but I do not know whether it is just our contract."
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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
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

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 Business109
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise264
 

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 SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Stack vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
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