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Graylog vs LogRhythm SIEM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 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
Ranking in Log Management
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
LogRhythm SIEM
Ranking in Log Management
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
173
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Graylog is 6.6%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of LogRhythm SIEM is 2.2%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Andrey Mostovykh - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time analysis, easy setup, and open source
We stopped using it for analytics because of its price, and at the moment, we are using it mostly for log centralization. If you use it with high traffic for analytical purposes, as well as for the logs, the infrastructure costs are unbelievable. Graylog is a great product backed by Elasticsearch as the storage and query engine. It is just an interface on top of Elasticsearch and some Elasticsearch management. The indexes that are kept in Elasticsearch are managed by Graylog software. Elasticsearch is a decent product, but it's very infrastructure-heavy. It requires lots of resources, and if you make a mistake with provisioning, you are likely to not get a cluster back. We had a couple of outages like that, and we hated that. So, we ended up over-provisioning resources just to avoid such situations from happening. If you have a whole team trying to fix the Graylog instance for two days, that's a bit too much. That may be my Norwegian take on it, but the engineering resources are expensive. It's better to just provision the infrastructure. Overall, the product is great, and the features are just fine, but the infrastructure cost is what is killing it. The infrastructure cost is the main issue. I like the rest. If the infrastructure costs could be lower, it would be fantastic. I'm not sure if they can improve the infrastructure cost with the way Elasticsearch is. If they keep using Elasticsearch, maybe there are some opportunities there, or they can support other backends with cheaper storage. They could have a different backend to replace Elasticsearch or do some tweaks to Elasticsearch to reduce the costs. There could be partial parsing of logs or parsing on demand so that when you write data through Graylog to Elasticsearch, it doesn't need to crunch in every detail requiring that much CPU.
Mokhammad Rakhman - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly dashboard and machine learning capabilities improve threat hunting efficiency
LogRhythm SIEM has strong machine-learning capabilities with behavioral rules and analysis. The seamless integration for case management, along with a user-friendly dashboard user interface, makes tasks like threat hunting more efficient. Analytics and behavioral analysis help me save time with rule creation. Its scalability allows me to add components as needed. Overall, LogRhythm SIEM offers end-to-end visibility with a reasonable price.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This had increased productivity for the dev and support teams, because we are directly notifying them."
"It is used as a log manager/SIEM. It provides visibility into the infrastructure and security related events."
"We run a containerized microservices environment. Being able to set up streams and search for errors and anomalies across hundreds of containers is why a log aggregation platform like Graylog is valuable to us."
"Storing logs in Elasticsearch means log retrieval is extremely fast, and full text search is available by default."
"The ability to write custom alerts is key to information security and compliance."
"The product is scalable. The solution is stable."
"Message forwarding through the in-built module."
"Graylog is very handy."
"The user interface is good."
"The ability to investigate a particular period of time where you can analyze logs is its most valuable feature."
"LogRhythm SIEM has strong machine-learning capabilities with behavioral rules and analysis."
"NextGen SIEM's best feature is how it presents logs."
"The product is great for medium to large-scale organizations."
"The Web Console is my favorite. It enables me, at a glance, to see the health of the environments."
"Their customer support is friendly and willing to help."
"The ability for me to go into the Web UI, and just learn what's going on in my environment."
 

Cons

"Its scalability gets complicated when we have to update or edit multiple nodes."
"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."
"More complex visualizations and the ability to execute custom Elasticsearch queries would be great."
"I would like to see some kind of visualization included in Graylog."
"Graylog can improve the index rotation as it's quite a complex solution."
"There should be some user groups and an auto sign-in feature.​"
"Since container orchestration systems are popular and Graylog fits the niche well, perhaps they could officially support running in docker containers on Kubernetes as a StatefulSet as a use case. That way, the declarative nature of Kubernetes config files would document their best case deployment scenario-"
"Graylog could improve the process of creating rules. We have to create them manually by doing parses and applying them. Other SIEM solutions have basic rules and you can create and get more events of interest."
"The console installation is an area with a shortcoming in the solution that needs improvement. If LogRhythm SIEM can offer a web console, it would be great."
"We've tried to work with a couple of engineering department guys there. We've called them and called them but we never hear anything back."
"I have Windows administrators who will remove the agent when they think that that's what's fouling up their upgrade or their install or their reconfiguration, etc. The first thing they do is to turn off the antivirus, turn down the firewall, and take off anything else. They don't realize that the LogRhythm agent is just sitting there monitoring. Most antivirus products have application protection features built-in where, if I'm an admin on a box, I can't uninstall antivirus. I need to have to the antivirus admin password to do that."
"One area for improvement in LogRhythm NextGen SIEM is that it's a Windows-based tool, and I feel it should be on the Linux operating system instead. Another area for improvement in the tool is the UI. There should be minor changes in the UI to make it better, though I like the dashboards in LogRhythm NextGen SIEM."
"More detail in the alerts given to avoid additional searches, as often the source or destination associated with the alert is not evidenced."
"We're still struggling to get a real return on it and finding something that isn't false noise."
"The log storage capacity should be increased."
"I don't think the cloud model in LogRhythm is developed enough."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you want something that works and do not have the money for Splunk or QRadar, take Graylog.​​"
"Having paid official support is wise for projects."
"It's an open-source solution that can be used free of charge."
"We're using the Community edition."
"​You get a lot out-of-the-box with the non-enterprise version, so give it a try first."
"We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive."
"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."
"Consider Enterprise support if you have atypical needs or setup requirements.​"
"I would rate the pricing 4 out of 5. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing fees."
"The setup and licensing for small and medium size businesses is straightforward, though when it comes to the enterprise it pays to keep in mind the possibility for complications given all the extras and add-ons that may be required."
"In comparison to the competition, they are more affordable. This allows us to do more with less."
"The pricing is very reasonable and accessible compared to other products in the market but I am not very sure about the exact licensing cost per year for our company."
"The nice thing about LogRhythm is you can either use the agents, getting a certain number of agents with your license depending on how you want to go, and those agents do a lot of cool things, or you can use CIS Log host, then you have like an unlimited number of them."
"I would recommend talking to the rep. That's the biggest thing because they will know what questions to ask."
"Look closely at the cost of licensing of other products. This should include setups and the need for support services. I did a RFQ to 2 other vendors before choosing this product."
"It is a very cost-effective solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Government
8%
University
7%
Educational Organization
44%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Graylog?
The product is scalable. The solution is stable.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Graylog?
We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive.
What needs improvement with Graylog?
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. P...
What is the difference between log management and SIEM?
Rony, Daniel's answer is right on the money. There are many solutions for each in the market, a lot depends upon your ability to manage such tools and your budget. A small operation may be best s...
What needs improvement with LogRhythm NextGen SIEM?
The SOAR capabilities need improvements as they currently require programming knowledge. A more user-friendly user interface with drag-and-drop features, similar to key competitors like Splunk, wou...
What do you like most about LogRhythm SIEM?
I find LogRhythm's log management capabilities to be beneficial.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Graylog2
LogRhythm NextGen SIEM, LogRhythm, LogRhythm Threat Lifecycle Management, LogRhythm TLM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blue Cross Blue Shield, eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn, SAP, King.com, Twilio, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Macy's, NASA, Fujitsu, US Air Force, EY, Abbott, HD Supply, SAB Miller, UCLA, Raytheon, Amtrak, Cargill
Find out what your peers are saying about Graylog vs. LogRhythm SIEM and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,485 professionals have used our research since 2012.