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Graylog vs Nagios Log Server 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

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
Nagios Log Server
Ranking in Log Management
34th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Nagios Log Server is 0.8%, up from 0.8% 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.
Syarul Idzuddin Adzmi - PeerSpot reviewer
A scalable and affordable tool for monitoring data centers
Five engineers are needed for the maintenance of the product. I would definitely recommend the solution to those planning to use it. To increase the rating for the product, Nagios should offer remote support and offer more customization in reporting while making it easy for the customers to use it. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

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."
"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."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its new interface."
"The ability to write custom alerts is key to information security and compliance."
"Open source and user friendly."
"We have scaled from a single machine installation (a VM with a Graylog + ES + MongoDB) to (2 Graylog + 2 ES + 3 MongoDB). This was done smoothly with a minimal impact on logging."
"Graylog's search functionality, alerting functionality, user management, and dashboards are useful."
"It has data adapters and lookup tables that utilize HTTP calls to APIs."
"The product is scalable."
"One of the most valuable features is the dashboard because the UI was effective and easy to use. The alert systems are good as well. We had no failovers and had high availability. We can search the queries fast as well in Nagios Log Server."
"The initial setup of Nagios Log Server was easy and straightforward."
"A great feature of the solution involves its internal portal."
 

Cons

"The infrastructure cost is the main issue. I like the rest. If the infrastructure costs could be lower, it would be fantastic."
"I hope to see improvements in Graylog for more interactivity, user-friendliness, and creating alerts. The initial setup is complex."
"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."
"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-"
"The biggest problem is the collector application, as we wanted to avoid using Graylog Collector Sidecar due to its architecture."
"I would like to see some kind of visualization included in Graylog."
"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."
"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 configurations during initial setup could be improved. If they could be agentless, as in the case of the Ansible product, it would be better. I would like to be able to analyze the network bandwidth."
"The support could be better."
"As we are talking about a product which is open to the public, the pricing makes it challenging for us to profit off of its marketing."
"The customization and dashboards have shortcomings and need to be improved to make the tool look more presentable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We're using the Community edition."
"I use the free version of 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."
"We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive."
"Having paid official support is wise for projects."
"​You get a lot out-of-the-box with the non-enterprise version, so give it a try first."
"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."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is expensive, and ten is cheap, I rate the pricing an eight or nine."
"For a single instance, the price is around $4,000."
"We found the pricing to be quite affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Government
8%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
9%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 do you like most about Nagios Log Server?
The initial setup of Nagios Log Server was easy and straightforward.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios Log Server?
My company pays around 500 to 1,000 USD per year toward the licensing cost of the solution. For support, we need to pay extra to Nagios. The solution's price is low. On a scale of one to ten, where...
What needs improvement with Nagios Log Server?
The customization and dashboards have shortcomings and need to be improved to make the tool look more presentable. The reporting side of the product should allow users to have more customized reports.
 

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
IBM, impulse, wipro, comteco
Find out what your peers are saying about Graylog vs. Nagios Log Server and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.