Splunk competitors are SIEM and IT monitoring platforms that security and IT operations teams adopt to replace Splunk or to add a second platform for log sources that cost too much to ingest. We compared 12 of these platforms, nine for security and three for IT monitoring, to see which is best for your organization.
Splunk is a Cisco-owned platform for collecting, indexing, and searching machine data. Splunk sells three products, and this guide covers alternatives to two of them.
We scored every platform on cost model, log parsing, investigation quality, operational load, and how a security team reaches the log sources it currently excludes. Our sources were vendor pricing pages, cloud marketplace listings, Vendr procurement data, and G2 and Gartner Peer Insights ratings.
Disclosure: Strike48 publishes this guide and appears first on the list. We scored our platform on the same criteria as the others, and each entry names at least one limitation.
Strike48 is an agentic log intelligence platform from Devo Technology, launched in January 2026. Strike48 queries logs that security teams already store via federated search and assigns narrowly scoped AI agents to investigate the results.
Splunk use cases covered: Alert triage, phishing investigation, patient-zero discovery, forensic evidence collection, and threat hunting across Splunk and every other log store the team runs.
Key features:
What we like: Security teams keep every log source in scope and keep Splunk running underneath. In our early deployments, MTTD dropped below eight minutes.
Watch out for: Strike48 has a smaller deployed base than the other vendors on this list, so buyers will find fewer industry-specific reference customers. Queries against logs searched in place can run slower than queries against centrally ingested data, so security teams use Smart Collection, our AI-assisted collector, for sources with hard real-time requirements.
Pricing: We do not list prices publicly. Buyers get a quote through a demo request.
Reviews: Strike48 launched in January 2026 and has no G2 or Gartner Peer Insights reviews yet.
Microsoft Sentinel is the Microsoft cloud-native SIEM. Microsoft bills Sentinel on an analytics tier for real-time detection and a cheaper data lake tier for long-term retention.
Splunk use cases covered: Log correlation across Microsoft 365, Azure, AWS, and on-premises systems, MITRE ATT&CK-based investigations, and automated response playbooks built in Azure Logic Apps.
Key features:
What we like: Security teams can keep lower-priority sources in the cheaper data lake tier instead of dropping them.
Watch out for: Engineers have to rewrite every custom Splunk detection, dashboard, and correlation search from SPL into KQL (Kusto Query Language). Sentinel runs no real-time analytics on data lake tier sources until an engineer moves those sources to the analytics tier.
Pricing: Microsoft bills the analytics tier pay-as-you-go or on commitment tiers from 100 GB/day to 50,000 GB/day, and commitment tiers save up to 52%. Per-GB rates vary by region.
Reviews: G2 rates Sentinel 4.4/5 (296 reviews).
Google Security Operations, which many security teams still call Chronicle, maps every log into a unified data model at ingestion. Google sells capacity in annual packages sized by ingestion volume.
Splunk use cases covered: Cross-source threat detection, YARA-L detection engineering mapped to MITRE ATT&CK, and indicator enrichment with Google threat intelligence.
Key features:
What we like: Each package includes 12 months of hot retention, 700+ parsers, and 300+ SOAR integrations, so finance teams budget against a fixed annual price.
Watch out for: Google normalizes logs at ingestion, so the team still decides which sources to onboard. The Standard package caps detection content at 1,000 single-event and 75 multi-event rules.
Pricing: Google publishes the Standard package terms, and the Google sales team quotes higher tiers.
Reviews: G2 rates Google Security Operations 4.4/5.
Panther stores logs in a Snowflake-backed security data lake, and engineers write Panther detections in Python and SQL. Databricks now owns Panther and is combining Panther with Lakewatch, the Databricks SIEM.
Splunk use cases covered: Detection engineering in version control, long-term log retention in a data lake, and cloud security monitoring for engineering-led security teams.
Key features:
What we like: Engineers review, version, and roll back detections in the same workflow they use for application code.
Watch out for: Panther needs dedicated security engineers to write Python detections, run deployment pipelines, and tune Snowflake query performance. Buyers should ask Databricks how Lakewatch affects the Panther roadmap and pricing.
Pricing: Panther offers a free community tier and a custom Enterprise tier. The Panther AWS Marketplace listing shows $50,000 a year for 1 TB/month of ingestion on a 12-month contract.
Reviews: G2 rates Panther 4.7/5 (49 reviews).
CrowdStrike Falcon Next-Gen SIEM runs on the LogScale engine, which stores logs without an index. Security teams already running Falcon get endpoint, identity, and network data in the SIEM without separate connectors.
Splunk use cases covered: Endpoint-led threat detection, AI-assisted triage with Charlotte AI, and investigation of Falcon process, file, and network telemetry.
Key features:
What we like: Charlotte AI investigates with the full process and network detail the Falcon sensor records for each endpoint.
Watch out for: The Falcon sensor does not collect firewall, DNS, SaaS, custom application, or non-CrowdStrike endpoint logs. Security teams bring those logs in through connectors with less context, and CrowdStrike bills each connected source at the third-party rate.
Pricing: On the CrowdStrike AWS Marketplace listing, CrowdStrike prices third-party data at $5.95/GB with 13-month retention. Falcon Insight XDR customers get a 10 GB/day free tier for third-party data.
Reviews: G2 rates Falcon Next-Gen SIEM 4.2/5 (21 reviews).
Exabeam builds its New-Scale platform around UEBA (User and Entity Behavior Analytics), which baselines each user's and device's normal behavior. Exabeam merged with LogRhythm in 2024 and still sells LogRhythm as a self-hosted SIEM.
Splunk use cases covered: Insider threat detection, credential misuse detection, risk-scored alert triage, and on-premises SIEM for regulated or air-gapped environments through LogRhythm.
Key features:
What we like: Analysts work from timelines that show the full attack chain instead of triaging disconnected alerts.
Watch out for: Exabeam needs weeks of historical data before its baselines are reliable. An attacker working in an unmonitored SaaS application leaves nothing in the timeline.
Pricing: Exabeam publishes no rates and quotes through a demo request.
Reviews: Gartner Peer Insights rates Exabeam New-Scale Fusion 4.4/5 (278 ratings).
IBM QRadar is a mature enterprise SIEM with connectors for mainframes, industrial control systems, and AS/400. IBM sold the QRadar SaaS business to Palo Alto Networks in 2024 and still sells the on-premises product.
Splunk use cases covered: Real-time event correlation across on-premises and hybrid estates, insider threat detection with UEBA, and compliance reporting.
Key features:
What we like: Teams running decades-old systems next to cloud workloads get connectors that other vendors leave to custom integration work.
Watch out for: Under EPS licensing, the team still decides which sources justify license capacity. Palo Alto Networks is moving QRadar SaaS customers to Cortex XSIAM, so a QRadar quote today covers the on-premises product.
Pricing: IBM publishes the EPS and FPM model but no dollar figures, so buyers need an IBM quote.
Reviews: Gartner Peer Insights rates IBM Security QRadar SIEM 4.4/5 (672 ratings).
Elastic Security runs on Elasticsearch and combines SIEM, endpoint protection, and cloud security. Security teams deploy Elastic Security serverless, hosted, or self-managed.
Splunk use cases covered: Full-text search over large log volumes, threat hunting across timelines, and endpoint data collection with Elastic Agent.
Key features:
What we like: Security teams in regulated industries get a level of data control that SaaS-only vendors cannot offer.
Watch out for: Security teams that run Elastic pay lower license fees and spend more engineering time. Someone has to size nodes, allocate shards, set index lifecycle policies, and tune parsers.
Pricing: Elastic prices hosted deployments by resources, serverless deployments by usage, and self-managed licenses by node count.
Reviews: G2 rates Elastic Security 4.5/5 (22 reviews).
Datadog Cloud SIEM adds security detection to the Datadog monitoring platform. Security and engineering teams see security alerts in the same dashboards as operational alerts.
Splunk use cases covered: Correlating security logs with application and infrastructure metrics, MITRE ATT&CK-based detection for cloud-native workloads, and shared incident workflows for DevSecOps teams.
Key features:
What we like: Datadog publishes its security pricing, so a security team can build a first cost model without a sales call.
Watch out for: Datadog offers less SOC-specific depth, such as compliance reporting and forensics tooling, than dedicated SIEM platforms. Datadog bills Cloud SIEM and log ingestion separately, so a security team that models only the SIEM rate misses the ingestion cost.
Pricing: Cloud SIEM costs $5 per million analyzed events per month on annual billing. Log ingestion costs about $0.10 to $0.12 per GB on top of that rate.
Reviews: Gartner Peer Insights rates Datadog Cloud SIEM 4.6/5 (86 ratings).
SOC analysts use security tools to detect and investigate threats. Engineering teams use IT monitoring tools to keep applications and infrastructure running. Both kinds of tools ingest the same logs, but security teams ask whether an attacker is in the environment, and monitoring teams ask whether a service is healthy. Entries 10 through 12 cover the platforms IT operations teams compare against Splunk Observability Cloud.
New Relic is an observability platform that collects metrics, events, logs, and traces into one data store. Engineers query that data in NRQL (New Relic Query Language).
Splunk use cases covered: Application performance monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, log management, and browser and mobile monitoring.
Key features:
What we like: An engineering team can instrument production on the free tier and measure its real data volume before signing a contract.
Watch out for: New Relic charges for each full platform user, so costs grow with the number of engineers who debug production. New Relic has no SIEM detection or investigation features.
Pricing: After the free 100 GB, New Relic charges $0.40/GB for original data and $0.60/GB for Data Plus. Core users cost $49 per user.
Reviews: G2 rates New Relic 4.4/5 (586 reviews).
Dynatrace is an observability platform built around OneAgent, a single agent engineers install on each host. Dynatrace bills through an annual Dynatrace Platform Subscription at published rate-card prices.
Splunk use cases covered: Automated service discovery and dependency mapping, root-cause analysis across distributed applications, and user experience monitoring.
Key features:
What we like: Dynatrace publishes a price for every capability, so an IT operations team can model each charge before a sales call.
Watch out for: Dynatrace bills host memory, Kubernetes pods, log ingest, retention, and queries on separate meters, so forecasting one bill takes several estimates. Dynatrace requires an annual commitment and offers no permanent free tier.
Pricing: The Dynatrace rate card lists Full-Stack Monitoring at $0.01 per memory-GiB-hour and log ingest at $0.20 per GiB.
Reviews: G2 rates Dynatrace 4.5/5 (1,365 reviews).
Grafana Cloud is the managed version of the open-source Grafana stack, with Grafana for dashboards, Loki for logs, Tempo for traces, and Mimir for metrics. Engineering teams can also run those projects on their own servers.
Splunk use cases covered: Dashboards across many data sources, Prometheus-compatible metrics, and log aggregation with Loki.
Key features:
What we like: An engineering team can start free and keep the same dashboards when it moves to a paid tier.
Watch out for: Grafana Cloud splits log pricing into process, write, and retain charges and bills metrics by active series. Grafana Cloud has no SIEM detection or investigation features.
Pricing: The Grafana Cloud Pro tier costs $19 a month plus usage, with logs from $0.40/GB to write. Enterprise contracts carry a $25,000 annual minimum.
Reviews: G2 rates Grafana Labs 4.5/5 (164 reviews).
Splunk is proprietary software. Splunk Free lets a team index up to 500 MB a day but has no alerting or user roles, so security teams cannot use Splunk Free as a SIEM.
Security teams that run these tools pay for servers, storage, and engineers instead of license fees, and they still write their own detection rules.
Self-hosted Splunk Enterprise costs about $1,800 to $2,700 per GB ingested per day, according to Vendr procurement data. A security team ingesting 500 GB/day pays $900,000 to $1.35 million a year before adding Enterprise Security.
To control that bill, security teams exclude lower-priority log sources. In our May 2026 survey of 100 security leaders, 65% reported that an investigation stalled because their tools could not access the data. An attacker who moves through systems whose logs the team excluded raises no alert and leaves no trail.
Since Cisco bought Splunk, procurement teams heading into a renewal cannot see where Cisco will take the product, and many run a full market review before signing again.
Most platforms on this list still parse logs at ingestion. A lower per-GB rate lets a security team afford more sources, but the team still has to pick which sources to drop, and a team that moves to a SIEM that excludes the same sources keeps the same blind spots.
Federated search is a method of querying logs where they are already stored. The security team leaves logs raw in existing stores, and the platform parses only the fields an investigation needs, so analysts can query a source the team collected but never parsed. Our search-in-place connectors read S3, Splunk, and Elastic without data migration.
An AI agent reasons only over the data the security team gives the agent access to, so the agent misses any sources the team excludes. We build Strike48 agents with small, specific jobs because agents scoped that way hallucinate less. In our early deployments, agents found active phishing campaigns that legacy SIEM tooling had missed.
Before signing, buyers should factor in analyst time alongside license fees, since the median information security analyst earns $129,180 per year. Buyers should also count what share of their current log sources the new platform will monitor.
A Splunk migration moves log sources, detections, dashboards, and retained data to a new platform while the SOC keeps monitoring. Teams run the migration in five steps.
Buyers should run each proof of concept on their own logs, since vendors demo on clean sample data. Security teams that run Strike48 on top of Splunk skip the cutover for the sources they leave in Splunk.
Every log source a security team leaves out of Splunk to save money is part of the network an attacker can move through without raising an alert. A cheaper SIEM that still charges at ingestion lowers the bill and keeps those blind spots.
Yes. Splunk earned its eleventh consecutive Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader designation in 2025, and years of custom SPL searches make switching expensive. Security teams getting strong value from Splunk should price migration work into any comparison.
Yes. Cisco completed its $28 billion acquisition of Splunk in March 2024.
Splunk sells both. Splunk Enterprise Security is the SIEM, and Splunk SOAR is a separate product that runs response playbooks on Enterprise Security alerts.
Sentinel fits Microsoft shops, Google Security Operations fits Google Cloud teams, Falcon Next-Gen SIEM fits CrowdStrike customers, and Strike48 fits security teams that want every log source in scope without leaving Splunk. New Relic, Dynatrace, and Grafana Cloud replace Splunk Observability Cloud.
Security teams deploy cloud-native SIEMs such as Sentinel in days to weeks, then spend longer rewriting SPL detections. Behavioral platforms such as Exabeam need weeks of data to build baselines. Strike48 shared SaaS deployments go live in minutes because our connectors query Splunk data in place, and Smart Collection covers about 80% of log sources in under a day.
A SIEM ingests and indexes logs and raises alerts for analysts to investigate. An agentic log intelligence platform like Strike48 searches logs where they are stored and uses AI agents to run investigations, with analysts approving critical actions.
