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Security Onion vs Wazuh comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 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

Security Onion
Ranking in Log Management
29th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Wazuh
Ranking in Log Management
2nd
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Security Onion is 2.0%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Wazuh is 4.8%, down from 14.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Wazuh4.8%
Security Onion2.0%
Other93.2%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

HJ
Manager at teshama
Centralized threat monitoring has improved visibility but demands complex setup and configuration
The best features Security Onion offers include acting as the intrusion detection system in my organization and helping me to address traffic, logs, and events happening within the organization. Since Security Onion is an open-source system that integrates with tools like Suricata and Zeek with the ELK stack, it enables threat detection and response capabilities, delivering high-level security measures at a cost, making it suitable for businesses of varying skill levels. These integrations with Suricata and Zeek have greatly impacted our workflow and our team's effectiveness by helping us address issues such as identifying intrusions, evaluating threats, and overseeing log files. This tool is very cost-effective, making it suitable for any size of organization wanting to use it.
RS
Engineer Information Security at N-Able (Pvt) Ltd
Has faced limitations in AI capabilities and pricing flexibility
Pricing-wise, Wazuh stands out, along with deployment flexibility and its documentation which is extremely good in comparison to Forti. The community support is also incredible. They have helped quite a bit because previously, we had a separate tool and management dashboard to do our compliance. With Wazuh, we receive that information without having to do anything extra. We just set up the SIEM and all of that information was automatically populated. The dashboards are very easy to understand and very quick with no lag or delay. I have experienced delays on Forti's dashboards, but not with Wazuh. Wazuh is quite good. In comparison to Forti, they are quite similar. They are very good at detection.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Security Onion has positively impacted my organization by greatly improving our security posture, making alert triage easier to handle, simplifying the analysis of threats, and decreasing the cost of threat analysis and detection."
"We use Security Onion for internal vulnerability assessment."
"Security Onion is the most mature solution in the market."
"The most valuable feature of Security Onion for security monitoring is its ability to find infected ports."
"Integrates with various open-source and paid products, allowing for flexibility in customization based on use cases."
"The product’s interface is intuitive."
"The most valuable features are the modules and metrics."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"Wazuh's logging features integrate seamlessly with AWS cloud-native services. There are also Wazuh agent configurations for different use cases, like vulnerability scanning, host-based intrusion detection, and file integrity monitoring."
"I recommend Wazuh to everyone and believe more platforms, not just SIEM and XDR capability platforms, should be open source, allowing people to leverage these tools for the greater good."
"Wazuh has very flexible and robust features."
"Stability-wise, Wazuh seems to have fixed all the past issues, and the latest version is possibly the most stable."
 

Cons

"For Security Onion, setting up and configuring the system can be quite challenging for newcomers due to the need for a grasp of networking and security concepts."
"Security Onion's user interface could be improved."
"The initial setup of the solution is a little bit difficult."
"The product is not easy to learn."
"I have yet to find the same capability in Wazuh to get logs from different sources into the system"
"Wazuh requires substantial maintenance. The indexer frequently times out, requiring system restarts. When it comes to errors, debugging takes considerable time."
"The implementation is very complex."
"The tool doesn't detect anomalies or new environments."
"The tool does not provide CTI to monitor darknet."
"There's not much I like about Wazuh. Other products I've used were a lot more functional and user friendly."
"Some features, like alerting, are complex with Wazuh."
"There could be a hardware monitoring tool for the solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an open-source solution."
"Security Onion is an open-source solution."
"Security Onion is a free solution."
"Wazuh is open-source, but you must consider the total cost of ownership. It may be free to acquire, but you spend a lot of time and effort supporting the product and getting it to a point where it's useful."
"Wazuh is not an expensive solution."
"When I contacted customer care, they mentioned bundling options, that I found to be overall affordable."
"There is not a license required for Wazuh."
"My client uses the open-source version of Wazuh."
"Wazuh is a good tool, but the open-source version has scalability limitations."
"The current pricing is open source."
"We use the free version of Wazuh."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
University
12%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Wazuh?
Wazuh is its flexibility and open-source nature, which allows us to tailor threat detection and response across diverse client environments. Its integration capabilities with SOAR, cloud platforms,...
What needs improvement with Wazuh?
Regarding compliance, I find it not stable. I do not recommend it for that purpose. It can comply with Wazuh NCA, which we have here in Saudi Arabia. Wazuh NCA has many frameworks starting with ECC...
What is your primary use case for Wazuh?
I have been working with Wazuh for two years, and I can explain how I use Wazuh. I did not use Wazuh as a SIEM solution. I use Wazuh as a tool for services we provide. This service is called compro...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Wazuh All-In-One Deployment
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Security Onion vs. Wazuh and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.