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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
24th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Wazuh
Ranking in Log Management
2nd
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Security Onion is 1.8%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Wazuh is 4.4%, down from 13.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Wazuh4.4%
Security Onion1.8%
Other93.8%
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

"We use Security Onion for internal vulnerability assessment."
"Security Onion is a completely open-source and free platform, making it a cost-effective solution that works smoothly and effectively for our organization."
"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."
"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."
"We found the MITRE framework mapping and the agent enrollment service to be the most valuable features of Wazuh."
"The reporting and attractive dashboard are the most valuable features."
"Wazuh is simple to use for PCI compliance."
"The product’s interface is intuitive."
"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."
"Overall, I rate Wazuh a nine out of ten."
"It has efficient SCA capabilities."
"I like that the solution is on top of the Kubernetes stack."
 

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 can be made easier to set up initially, as it is somewhat difficult at the start, but once configured, it becomes a great tool to use."
"The initial setup of the solution is a little bit difficult."
"The product is not easy to learn."
"Security Onion's user interface could be improved."
"Since it's an open-source tool, scalability is the main issue."
"The only challenge we faced with Wazuh was the lack of direct support."
"Integration with Vyara could be better."
"The support team could be more responsive and provide quicker replies during our working hours in Indonesia, which would be a significant improvement."
"There's not much I like about Wazuh. Other products I've used were a lot more functional and user friendly."
"I have yet to find the same capability in Wazuh to get logs from different sources into the system"
"Wazuh doesn't have native support for some enterprise solutions."
"I think that the next release should be more suitable for large enterprises, because currently they are not because large companies do not rely on open source solutions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Security Onion is a free solution."
"It is an open-source solution."
"Security Onion is an open-source solution."
"The product is cheaper compared to other tools."
"There is not a license required for Wazuh."
"It is a cost-effective solution."
"Wazuh is an open-source tool, which means it is freely available for use."
"The solution's cost is above the average."
"Wazuh is a good tool, but the open-source version has scalability limitations."
"The solution's pricing is very competitive."
"Wazuh has a community edition, and I was using that. It's free and open source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
University
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Government
10%
Construction Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
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 Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Security Onion?
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. The specific challenges that make t...
What advice do you have for others considering Security Onion?
The advice I would give to others looking into using Security Onion is that it works well for setting up within a Linux environment, bringing a new platform to run and maintain. The application its...
What is your primary use case for Security Onion?
My main use case for Security Onion is its integration with multiple platforms and its function as a centralized system to visualize logs and events.
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?
I expected one thing from the dashboard in Wazuh. In ManageEngine, when you use ManageEngine, you can assign a unique ID to all employees. Then with the unique ID, if you search any unique ID in th...
What is your primary use case for Wazuh?
Our organization is focusing on the integrity part for implementing Wazuh. We were checking solutions for File Integrity Monitoring systems that are available online. Wazuh caught my attention as a...
 

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: August 2026.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.