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

Graylog Enterprise vs IBM Security QRadar comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 14, 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

Graylog Enterprise
Ranking in Log Management
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Log Management
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
219
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (17th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (7th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Graylog Enterprise is 5.0%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 3.7%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Security QRadar3.7%
Graylog Enterprise5.0%
Other91.3%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

NC
Security Officer at JSC "Moldtelecom" S.A.
Log analysis has become clearer and faster but visualization and extensibility still need work
The problem was with the complexity and the cost to add extensions. We found this very expensive to buy another version with additional features. I think that Graylog Enterprise does not have customizable dashboards. I did not see them in Graylog Enterprise because most of the time we used the open source free version, which is limited. I think Graylog Enterprise should improve some things that they have in the paid version and perhaps provide users with a menu that gives examples of parsing logs and draws graphics so that people do not need to improve another system such as Grafana. This would be interesting. When it comes to functionalities, I found the log management in Graylog Enterprise acceptable. It is very simple to use and to collect logs. It has support for different protocols and different ports, and the sidecar is easy to use. However, in visualization, I think it needs to be much better.
HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Have managed daily asset and alert monitoring effectively but have encountered limitations with manual processes and interface usability
It's still very manual and doesn't work on its own. It's still in an early stage and not on par where we can consider it a really successful detection system. The accuracy is not there. The UI could be better when compared to Sentinels where we can use flags and tagging. It could be much more user-friendly. IBM Security QRadar has all features and is fully competitive with other SIEM tools, but when it comes to user-friendliness, a new user takes time to get used to it. More intuitive, user-friendly interfaces and more helpful documentation would be beneficial. The query searching and data fetching could be faster. In large to very large organizations with around 5,000 or 6,000 assets or beyond, even with proper configurations and RAM and hardware backing up, the query is fairly slow.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has data adapters and lookup tables that utilize HTTP calls to APIs."
"Graylog's search functionality, alerting functionality, user management, and dashboards are useful."
"The ability to write custom alerts is key to information security and compliance."
"Message forwarding through the in-built module."
"The product is scalable. The solution is stable."
"UDP is a fast and lightweight protocol, perfect for sending large volumes of logs with minimal overhead."
"The build is stable and requires little maintenance, even compared to some extremely expensive products."
"This had increased productivity for the dev and support teams, because we are directly notifying them."
"We get events and make the correlation, or rules. In IBM, we can implement our customer's rules. We can have very clear status threats and severity of antigens."
"It has a lot of good correlation rules. From a customer's point of view, it is one of the best solutions because you don't need to create correlation rules from scratch. You just review them and customize them as you want."
"The query search and log fetching are really helpful in IBM Security QRadar when compared to other tools."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with the GRD, for banking."
"Blocks of predefined conditions can be used to configure detection rules without having to write complicated script."
"The most valuable feature is the searching capability and real-time operational use."
"I am fond of IBM Security QRadar because it is very user-friendly."
"Currently, it is very stable."
 

Cons

"The problem was with the complexity and the cost to add extensions."
"More complex visualizations and the ability to execute custom Elasticsearch queries would be great."
"With technical support, you are on your own without an enterprise license."
"There are many other applications in the market that influenced my rating reduction."
"Lacks sufficient documentation."
"I hope to see improvements in Graylog for more interactivity, user-friendliness, and creating alerts. The initial setup is complex."
"It would be great if Graylog could provide a better Python package in order to make it easier to use for the Python community."
"When it comes to configuring the processing pipeline, writing the rules can be very tedious, especially since the documentation isn't extensive on how the functions provided for these rules work."
"IBM needs to invest more into the collaboration with other vendors."
"I have noticed the interface has room for improvement."
"The price of IBM Security QRadar is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Their technical support is not good. We opened a lot of cases and from my experience, they are not complicated issues but it takes forever to get an answer."
"If you have too many events that occur, then the storage capacity becomes a problem. You need to have more storage."
"With IBM Security QRadar, my company faced issues with the support we received for the product."
"The solution could improve by having more out-of-the-box use cases."
"This solution is on-premise and many customers are moving to the cloud base solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Graylog is a free open-source solution. The free version has a capacity limitation of 2 GB daily, if you want to go above this you have to purchase a license."
"It's open source and free. They have a paid version, but we never looked into that because we never needed the features of the paid version."
"I use the free version of Graylog."
"It's an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."
"If you want something that works and do not have the money for Splunk or QRadar, take Graylog.​​"
"Consider Enterprise support if you have atypical needs or setup requirements.​"
"​You get a lot out-of-the-box with the non-enterprise version, so give it a try first."
"Having paid official support is wise for projects."
"Most of the time, it is easier and cheaper to buy a new product or the QRadar box."
"Its price is good in terms of efficiency and the number of people required for implementing various things. You might pay more in terms of money, but you might save on the number of people. For example, if you are using Kibana, you have to pay more for people or experts, which is not the case with IBM QRadar."
"It is costlier as compared to the other alternatives available in the market."
"There is a license required for this solution."
"It's too expensive. The licensing is also a little bit difficult to understand because you have to license it per event and per number of flows."
"As for licensing costs, I haven't seen the exact figures, but it is considered somewhat costly. On a scale from one to ten, where one is very expensive and ten is very cheap, I would rate it a six—it’s costly but worth the money."
"IBM's Qradar is not for small companie. Unfortunately, it would be 'overkill' to place it plainly. The pricing would be too much."
"I feel that the price is reasonable but compared to other products that are on the market, such as an offering by Microsoft, it is more expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Log Management solutions are best for your needs.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jun 28, 2015
Qradar vs. ArcSight
Continuing with the SIEM posts we have done at Infosecnirvana, this post is a Head to head comparison of the two Industry leading SIEM products in the market – HP ArcSight and IBM QRadar Both the products have consistently been in the Gartner Leaders Quadrant. Both HP and IBM took over niche SIEM…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
University
8%
Government
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business91
Midsize Enterprise39
Large Enterprise105
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Graylog?
I am not familiar with the pricing details of Graylog, as I was not responsible for that aspect. It was determined that we didn't need an enterprise plan, which is more suited for clients with less...
What needs improvement with Graylog?
I do not have any specific examples or numbers, such as time saved or incidents to share. Currently, I have no suggestions for how Graylog Enterprise can be improved, as there are no pain points or...
What is your primary use case for Graylog?
Graylog Enterprise is the logging and management tool we initially used, but later we stopped using it and switched to Loki, Grafana Loki for the logs. Eventually, we moved back to Graylog Enterpri...
What are the biggest differences between Securonix UEBA, Exabeam, and IBM QRadar?
It mostly depends on your use-cases and environment. Exabeam and Securonix have a stronger UEBA feature set, friendlier GUI and are not licensed based on capacity (amount of logs and information in...
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 your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Security QRadar?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is great compared to the other vendor.
 

Also Known As

Graylog2
IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blue Cross Blue Shield, eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn, SAP, King.com, Twilio, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Find out what your peers are saying about Graylog Enterprise vs. IBM Security QRadar and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.