Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Graylog VS Fluentd

Compare Graylog VS Fluentd and see what are their differences

Graylog logo Graylog

Graylog is an open source log management platform for collecting, indexing, and analyzing both structured and unstructured data.

Fluentd logo Fluentd

Fluentd is a cross platform open source data collection solution originally developed at Treasure Data.
  • Graylog Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-20
  • Fluentd Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30

Graylog

$ Details
Release Date
2012 January
Startup details
Country
United States
State
Texas
City
Houston
Founder(s)
Hass Chapman
Employees
10 - 19

Graylog features and specs

  • Centralized Logging
    Graylog aggregates and encodes all logs into a central location, making it easier to manage and monitor log data across distributed systems.
  • Scalability
    Graylog is designed to scale horizontally, allowing users to expand capacity by adding more servers, which is vital for growing environments.
  • Real-time Search and Analysis
    Graylog provides powerful search and filtering capabilities in real-time, enabling quick troubleshooting and root cause analysis.
  • Alerting and Notification
    Graylog can send alerts based on log data and specified conditions, helping users to proactively respond to issues and mitigate risks efficiently.
  • Extensible and Customizable
    Graylog allows for plugins and provides REST APIs for integration with other services, offering high levels of customization to fit various business needs.
  • User-friendly Interface
    Graylog offers an intuitive web-based interface that simplifies the process of managing and visualizing log data, making it accessible even for those with minimal technical knowledge.

Possible disadvantages of Graylog

  • Complex Setup
    Setting up Graylog can be complicated and time-consuming, particularly for users not familiar with log management and system administration.
  • Resource Intensive
    Graylog can be resource-intensive, requiring significant CPU, memory, and storage resources, which could be a limitation for smaller environments.
  • Steep Learning Curve
    Despite its user-friendly interface, mastering Graylog's advanced features may require a steep learning curve and significant investment in training.
  • Potential Vendor Lock-in
    Relying heavily on Graylog's ecosystem for log management can create dependencies that may be challenging to transition away from if needed.
  • Cost for Enterprise Features
    While Graylog offers a free open-source version, some advanced features and enterprise-grade capabilities are only available in the paid version, potentially increasing costs.
  • Limited Out-of-the-box Dashboards
    Graylog's default dashboard capabilities might not meet all needs, requiring additional customization or third-party tools to create comprehensive visualizations.

Fluentd features and specs

  • Open Source
    Fluentd is an open-source data collector, meaning it is free to use and has a large community of contributors and users who can provide support and plugins.
  • Unified Logging Layer
    It provides a unified logging layer that can collect, filter, and distribute logs from various sources to various destinations, simplifying log management.
  • Extensibility
    Fluentd supports a wide range of plugins for inputs, outputs, filters, and parsers, making it highly extensible and customizable to fit specific needs.
  • High Performance
    It is designed to be high-performance and can handle large volumes of logs efficiently, which is crucial for enterprise environments.
  • Flexible Configuration
    Fluentd offers flexible and straightforward configuration, allowing users to define complex data pipelines with relative ease.
  • Support for Multiple Environments
    Fluentd supports cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments, making it versatile for various deployment scenarios.

Possible disadvantages of Fluentd

  • Complexity
    The flexibility and extensibility of Fluentd can introduce complexity, requiring a steep learning curve for new users to master the tool.
  • Resource Intensive
    Fluentd can be resource-intensive, especially when dealing with large volumes of data, which may require robust infrastructure.
  • Plugin Compatibility
    While there are many plugins available, not all of them are always up-to-date or compatible with the latest versions of Fluentd, potentially causing integration issues.
  • Maintenance Overhead
    Managing Fluentd involves continuous monitoring, updating, and maintenance to ensure optimal performance and security, which could be resource-draining.
  • Documentation Gaps
    Although there is extensive documentation, some users report that it lacks deep insights and examples for advanced configurations, requiring additional research and community support.

Graylog videos

Graylog 3 0 OpenSource Demo

More videos:

  • Review - Graylog, Open Source Log Management
  • Review - 22. Graylog 3.0 Sidecar Windows Configuration

Fluentd videos

How-to Ship Logs to Grafana Loki with Promtail, FluentD & Fluent-bit

More videos:

  • Review - OpenShift Commons Briefing #72: Cloud Native Logging with Fluentd
  • Review - Fluentd, the Open Source Data Collection tool

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Graylog and Fluentd)
Monitoring Tools
63 63%
37% 37
Log Management
65 65%
35% 35
Performance Monitoring
77 77%
23% 23
Security & Privacy
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Graylog and Fluentd

Graylog Reviews

The Top 14 Free and Open Source SIEM Tools For 2022
Our last tool but by no means the least is Graylog. It is a log management platform that gathers data from different locations across your network infrastructure.
Source: logit.io
Top 10 Log Management Services
Graylog is a well-known log management tool because of its services. It provides a user interface just like some other log management tools. Almost all of the provided features are the same other than reading from Syslog files. Here you cannot read directly read from the Syslog files. It is inconvenient because you have to send your messages to Graylog.
Best Log Management Tools: Useful Tools for Log Management, Monitoring, Analytics, and More
Graylog is a free and open-source log management tool that supports in-depth log collection and analysis. Used by teams in Network Security, IT Ops and DevOps, you can count on Graylog’s ability to discern any potential risks to security, lets you follow compliance rules, and helps to understand the root cause of any particular error or problem that your apps are experiencing.
Source: stackify.com

Fluentd Reviews

11 Best Splunk Alternatives
The CloudFront-log plugin, for example, can be used to ingest logs from Amazon CloudFront, while the elasticsearch plugin can be used to route logs to Elasticsearch. Fluentd only provides ingestion and routing services, so you'll have to develop your log management solution from the ground up. Fluentd has become a popular alternative to Logstash, transforming ELK into EFK....
Top 15 Kafka Alternatives Popular In 2021
Inputs and outputs have inbuilt support to buffer, load balance, timeout and retry instances. It has a unified logging layer in between the data sources. There are over 5000+ companies that rely on Fluentd and approximately collect logs from over 50000+ servers. It scraps logs from sources and sends them across to services like object storage, Elasticsearch, etc. it is...
Best Log Management Tools: Useful Tools for Log Management, Monitoring, Analytics, and More
Fluentd collects events from various data sources and writes them to files, RDBMS, NoSQL, IaaS, SaaS, Hadoop and so on. Fluentd helps you unify your logging infrastructure. Fluentd’s flagship feature is an extensive library of plugins which provide extended support and functionality for anything related to log and data management within a concise developer environment.
Source: stackify.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Graylog seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 2 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Graylog mentions (2)

  • Enhancing API Observability Series (Part 2): Log Analysis
    Graylog: Supports various log sources and formats, providing real-time search, analysis, and visualization functionalities. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Join us June 24 at 11:00 AM EDT: "All Things Configured” Discord Show with our founder, Lennart Koopman
    Join our new Graylog Community Discord channel for our new chat/call-in show, “All Things Configured”. Our founder, Lennart Koopman, will host the show with Jeff Darrington, Senior Technical Marketing Manager, as his guest. Jeff’s well-known to many of you as the star of our Graylog How-To series of videos and blog posts on Graylog.org. Get a jump on the event, which will be live on Friday, June 24 at 11:00 AM EDT. Source: almost 3 years ago

Fluentd mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Fluentd yet. Tracking of Fluentd recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Graylog and Fluentd, you can also consider the following products

Sumo Logic - Sumo Logic is a secure, purpose-built cloud-based machine data analytics service that leverages big data for real-time IT insights

logstash - logstash is a tool for managing events and logs.

Datadog - See metrics from all of your apps, tools & services in one place with Datadog's cloud monitoring as a service solution. Try it for free.

rsyslog - Rsyslog is an enhanced syslogd supporting, among others, MySQL, PostgreSQL, failover log...

Logz.io - Logz.io provides log analysis software with alerts, role-based access, unlimited scalability and free ELK apps. Index, search & visualize your log data!

Sentry.io - From error tracking to performance monitoring, developers can see what actually matters, solve quicker, and learn continuously about their applications - from the frontend to the backend.