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Graylog Enterprise vs Logstash comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 15, 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

Graylog Enterprise
Ranking in Log Management
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Logstash
Ranking in Log Management
27th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Graylog Enterprise is 4.1%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Logstash is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Graylog Enterprise4.1%
Logstash0.9%
Other95.0%
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.
reviewer2727468 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Application Engineer at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
Transforms logs for real-time insights and seamless reporting
Logstash is used for transforming logs, and you can use many plugins in Logstash. Logstash works with configuration files that contain three main parts: an input part, a filter part, and an output part. In the input part, we can take logs from many sources such as Beats, files, or Kafka. The filter part is used to filter the logs that are shipped from Beats. From my understanding and experience with Logstash, it is usually used for processing logic, meaning I can control what fields should be transferred to Elastic and what fields shouldn't be transferred. This is the main function I use Logstash for. Elastic is a famous open-source searching engine that helps operation teams speed up the investigation process and provides real-time insights for performance reporting.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Storing logs in Elasticsearch means log retrieval is extremely fast, and full text search is available by default."
"Everything stands out as valuable, including the fact that I can quantify and qualify the logs, create pipelines and process the logs in any way I like, and create charts or data maps."
"One of the most valuable features is that you are able to do a very detailed search through the log messages in the overview."
"I am very proud of how very stable the solution is."
"It has data adapters and lookup tables that utilize HTTP calls to APIs."
"Graylog is valuable because it bridges technical knowledge to non-technical teams, presenting complex backend processes in a simple timeline."
"Logstash has numerous plugins for inputs and outputs, allowing it to work well in environments that do not contain other Elastic components."
"The functionality of Logstash is quite easy to implement and the plugin ecosystem of Logstash is great, with plugins for shell script monitoring and SQL monitoring working well with the tool."
"We have three or four Logstash servers for high availability."
"The transformation means we ship the logs in the way that we want them to be presented in Kibana, which is the main function we use Logstash for."
"Everything aligns well with improving our organization."
"I can collect logs from various data sources, including hardware."
 

Cons

"We ran into problems with Elasticsearch throwing a circuit-breaking exception due to field data size being too large. It turned out that the heap size directly impacted this size in a high-throughput environment, causing unexplained instability in Graylog. We were able to troubleshoot on the Elasticsearch size, but we should have been able to reference some minimum requirements for Graylog to know that our settings weren't sufficient."
"There are many other applications in the market that influenced my rating reduction."
"Graylog can improve the index rotation as it's quite a complex solution."
"Lacks sufficient documentation."
"Elasticsearch recommendations for tuning could be better. Graylog doesn't have direct support for running the system inside of Kubernetes, so it can be challenging to fill in the gaps and set up containers in a way that is both performant and stable."
"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."
"The area in Graylog that needs to be improved or enhanced would be the integrations."
"Dashboards, stream alerts and parsing could be improved."
"There can be a UI to implement with Logstash. Currently, I have to work with config files and everything."
"Almost all the research can be very bad. We still have a problem with importing the log system."
"We still have a problem with importing the log system."
"The product needs to improve its compatibility."
"Elastic does not provide proper support for Logstash worldwide, and I rate their technical support as one out of ten."
"An enhancement we could implement is the ability to cluster Logstash to exist in more than one node."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use the free version of Graylog."
"It's an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."
"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."
"Consider Enterprise support if you have atypical needs or setup requirements.​"
"I am using a community edition. I have not looked at the enterprise offering from Graylog."
"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."
"Having paid official support is wise for projects."
"We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
University
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise10
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Graylog?
I am not sure about the pricing, setup cost, and licensing because that was dealt with by a different team that handled the licensing and procurement.
What needs improvement with Graylog?
The documentation for Graylog Enterprise can be improved, as this has been a pain point. I think the visualization aspect of Graylog Enterprise can be made more rich, similar to what we have in Gra...
What is your primary use case for Graylog?
I remember using Graylog Enterprise in the past at a software house where we used it for logging. During that time, we were using Graylog Enterprise as a log aggregator, collecting logs from multip...
What do you like most about Logstash?
I can collect logs from various data sources, including hardware.
What needs improvement with Logstash?
Customization can be automated with Logstash, but it is at the developer's disposal. The developer has to do it, not the tool as such. There is scope for optimization, but that is all outside the t...
What is your primary use case for Logstash?
The purposes for which I am using Logstash largely include log aggregation and application monitoring.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Graylog2
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blue Cross Blue Shield, eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn, SAP, King.com, Twilio, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Graylog Enterprise vs. Logstash and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.