Graylog vs syslog-ng comparison

Graylog and One Identity are both solutions in the Log Management category. Graylog is ranked #15 with an average rating of 7.0, while One Identity is ranked #17 with an average rating of 10.0. Graylog holds a 6.4% mindshare in Log Management, compared to One Identity’s 2.5% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Graylog users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of One Identity users who would recommend it.

Graylog

Read 21 Graylog reviews

8,998 Views
8,998 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

syslog-ng

Read 6 syslog-ng reviews

4,202 Views
4,202 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Graylog

syslog-ng

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Graylog and syslog-ng are key players in the log management solutions category. While Graylog stands out for integration and scalability, syslog-ng has the upper hand with advanced filtering and protocol options.

Features: Graylog offers flexibility, scalability, and easy integration with third-party tools. Syslog-ng provides comprehensive protocol support, advanced log filtering, and extensive protocol options.

Room for Improvement: Graylog could benefit from faster search speeds, enhanced reporting features, and more intuitive navigation. Syslog-ng users want a more intuitive configuration process, better documentation, and a simplified user interface.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Graylog is known for straightforward deployment and responsive support. Syslog-ng, despite a more complex setup, offers strong community backing and comprehensive support materials.

Pricing and ROI: Graylog provides cost-effective options with excellent value. Syslog-ng, while more expensive, delivers significant ROI with its robust features. Graylog's pricing is manageable, while syslog-ng's higher price is justified by its capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Graylog vs. syslog-ng Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Graylog vs. syslog-ng

July 2025

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Helped 865,295 peers since 2012

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

15th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

syslog-ng

Ranking in Log Management

17th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

2.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Graylog is 6.4%, up from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of syslog-ng is 2.5%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Log Management

Featured Reviews

Ivan Kokalovic

DevOps Engineer at Proton Technologies

Facilitates backend service monitoring with efficient log retrieval and API flexibility

Graylog is valuable because it bridges technical knowledge to non-technical teams, presenting complex backend processes in a simple timeline. It boosts the knowledge of sales and customer support teams by allowing them to see the backend operations without needing to read the code. Its API is flexible for visualization, and its powerful search engine efficiently handles large volumes of log data. Moreover, its stability, fast search capabilities, and compatibility with languages like ANSI SQL enhance its utility in IT infrastructure.

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RyanVargas

Senior Director and Senior Systems Engineer (Dual Role), IT Infrastructure and Security at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

It's a user-friendly open-source solution that can replace or augment a commercial product in some cases

I rate syslog-ng 10 out of 10. It's free and easy to use. It has built-in tools that help us index the various logs sent to it. It's a solid log product. If you're looking for a SIEM solution, syslog-ng will work as a stopgap measure at beginning of the project. It can also work as an injector for a true SIEM solution. You can send all the logs to syslog-ng and forward all the data to the SIEM solution after you've cleaned up the data and got the pertinent information. It's a good front end for a commercial SIEM solution, which becomes more expensive as you load more data into it. I would highly recommend syslog-ng for that use case. However, if you lack the expertise, you might need to go with a cloud-based SIEM instead. You need some in-house expertise or an outside consultant to manage it and set it up.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Allowing us to set up alerts and integrate with platforms we already use, such as Slack and OpsGenie to alert users of these errors proactively, is also a very useful feature."

"UDP is a fast and lightweight protocol, perfect for sending large volumes of logs with minimal overhead."

"Storing logs in Elasticsearch means log retrieval is extremely fast, and full text search is available by default."

"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."

"This had increased productivity for the dev and support teams, because we are directly notifying them."

"The build is stable and requires little maintenance, even compared to some extremely expensive products."

"The product is scalable. The solution is stable."

"I am very proud of how very stable the solution is."

More Graylog pros

"For us, the most valuable feature is the use of compound search for searching logs at a specific time, by a specific user, or specific behavior."

"Syslog-ng provides easy access to all my logs. It helps me show managers and other clients precisely where an incident occurred. I also like it because you can integrate syslog-ng with multiple solutions to allow real-time monitoring."

"Syslog-ng has a separate config file in addition to the core configuration."

"Syslog-ng has built-in features that we can use to create alerts for a SIEM solution. It isn't a true SIEM solution, but it's sufficient for the time being."

"The ability to extract and store the logs is the most valuable feature of syslog-ng."

Cons

"I would like to see a date and time in the Graylog Grok patterns so that I can save time when searching for a log. I like how the streams and the search query work, but adding a date and time will allow me to pull out a log in a milli-second."

"Graylog can improve the index rotation as it's quite a complex solution."

"The infrastructure cost is the main issue. I like the rest. If the infrastructure costs could be lower, it would be fantastic."

"There should be some user groups and an auto sign-in feature."

"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 biggest problem is the collector application, as we wanted to avoid using Graylog Collector Sidecar due to its architecture."

"Graylog needs to improve their authentication. Also, the fact that Graylog displays logs from the top down is just ridiculous."

"More customization is always useful."

More Graylog cons

"There is room for improvement in terms of observability."

"The filtering has room for improvement."

"Syslog-ng has built-in features that we can use to create alerts for a SIEM solution. It isn't a true SIEM solution, but it's sufficient for the time being."

"It's hard to find people who know how to use syslog-ng. I often find problems with configurations, and solutions aren't integrated correctly with syslog-ng. For example, there might be data with extra decimals, or the collector agents are incorrectly named. It isn't a problem with the solution; it's a lack of professionals."

"There is always the potential for additional integration and protocol extensions."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive."

"There is an open source version and an enterprise version. I wouldn't recommend the enterprise version, but as an open source solution, it is solid and works really well."

"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."

"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 am using a community edition. I have not looked at the enterprise offering from Graylog."

"If you want something that works and do not have the money for Splunk or QRadar, take Graylog."

"I use the free version of Graylog."

More Graylog pricing and cost advice

"Syslog-ng is open-source."

"Syslog-ng is a free open-source solution."

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865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Government

University

Government

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

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.

See all answers

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...

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What needs improvement with Graylog?

An improvement I would suggest is in Graylog's user interface, such as allowing for font size adjustments. A potential enhancement could be the integration with Ollama to run large language models ...

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What do you like most about syslog-ng?

For us, the most valuable feature is the use of compound search for searching logs at a specific time, by a specific user, or specific behavior.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for syslog-ng?

The pricing is in the middle. I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with one being expensive and ten being cheap.

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What needs improvement with syslog-ng?

Something could potentially be improved, though it works effectively for me. In the early stages, over 10 years ago, syslog-ng was lacking some features, so I created a patch for it. I used a patch...

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Graylog

August 2025

Download Graylog product report

Buyer's Guide

Log Management

July 2025

Download syslog-ng product report

Also Known As

Graylog2

No data available

Overview

Graylog is purpose-built to deliver the best log collection, storage, enrichment, and analysis. Graylog is:

Considerably faster analysis speeds.
More robust and easier-to-use analysis platform.
Simpler administration and infrastructure management.
Lower cost than alternatives.
Full-scale customer service.
No expensive training or tool experts required.

Graylog

Optimizing SIEM
syslog-ng is the log management solution that improves the performance of your SIEM solution by reducing the amount and improving the quality of data feeding your SIEM.

Rapid search and troubleshooting
With syslog-ng Store Box, you can find the answer. Search billions of logs in seconds using full text queries with Boolean operators to pinpoint critical logs.

Meeting compliance requirements
syslog-ng Store Box provides secure, tamper-proof storage and custom reporting to demonstrate compliance.

Big data ingestion
syslog-ng can deliver data from a wide variety of sources to Hadoop, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, and Kafka as well as many others.

Universal log collection and routing
syslog-ng flexibly routes log data from X sources to Y destinations. Instead of deploying multiple agents on hosts, organizations can unify their log data collection and management.

Secure data archive
syslog-ng Store Box provides automated archiving, tamper-proof encrypted storage, granular access controls to protect log data. The largest appliance can store up to 10TB of raw logs.

One Identity

Sample Customers

Blue Cross Blue Shield, eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn, SAP, King.com, Twilio, Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Tecnocom, University of Victoria, University of Exeter, Datapath

Buyer's Guide

Graylog vs. syslog-ng

July 2025

Free Report: Graylog vs. syslog-ng

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