Better Stack vs Graylog Pricing (2026)
How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.
| Better Stack | Graylog | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | Custom | Custom |
| Number of plans | 1 | 3 |
| Free plan | ||
| Free trial | — | |
| Pricing model | hybrid | usage-based |
Free for personal projects
- 10 monitors & heartbeats, 1 status page
- Slack & e-mail alerts
- 100,000 exceptions per month
- 5,000 session replays
- 3 GB logs retained for 3 days
- 3 GB traces retained for 3 days
- 30 GB metrics
- 3 GB web events retained for 3 days
Graylog Open
- Support for Syslog, CEF, GELF, BEATS, HTTP JSON, IPFIX, Netflow, Plain Text
- Log Collection
- Sidecar Central Log Collector Management
- Index Field Type Profiles
- Pipelines & Streams
- Data Normalization
- Distinguish Illuminate vs. User-Created Entities
- Visualization Widgets
- Save to Dashboard
- Guided Search
- Save & Share
- Favorite Fields
- Drill Down from Aggregation Widgets
- Widget Thresholds and Labels
- Text Widgets with Markdown
- Revert Changes When Canceling Widget Edit
- Data Table Row Numbers
- Customizable Visualization Widgets
- Save & Share
- Input Wizard
- Illuminate Content Hub
- Illuminate Content
- Graylog Schema
- REST API
- Content Pack Import/Export
- Distinguish Illuminate vs. User-Created Entities
- TCP RAW & TCP Syslog Outputs
- Data Enrichment Connectors
- IPinfo + MaxMind GeoIP (vendor subscription required)
- Lookup Tables
- MCP Server Integration for Natural Language Tools
- Notifications
- Role-based Access
- Cluster Metrics for Graylog Node, Graylog Data Node and MongoDB
- Multi Cluster
- Data Node (OpenSearch 2.19)
- Data Pipeline Management and Routing
- Documentation
- Graylog Academy
- Graylog Community
Graylog Enterprise
- Support for Syslog, CEF, GELF, BEATS, HTTP JSON, IPFIX, Netflow, Plain Text
- Log Collection
- Sidecar Central Log Collector Management
- Index Field Type Profiles
- Pipelines & Streams
- Data Normalization
- Collections
- Distinguish Illuminate vs. User-Created Entities
- Visualization Widgets
- Save to Dashboard
- Guided Search
- Save & Share
- Filters
- Parameters
- Favorite Fields
- Drill Down from Aggregation Widgets
- Widget Thresholds and Labels
- Text Widgets with Markdown
- Revert Changes When Canceling Widget Edit
- Data Table Row Numbers
- Right-click Graylog + Custom Saved Searches
- Scheduled Email Reports
- Dashboard Drill Down
- Custom Reports
- Customizable Visualization Widgets
- Save & Share
- Input Wizard
- Illuminate Content Hub
- Illuminate Content
- Sharing Searches for Illuminate + Content Packs
- Graylog Schema
- REST API
- Content Pack Import/Export
- Distinguish Illuminate vs. User-Created Entities
- TCP RAW & TCP Syslog Outputs
- Data Enrichment Connectors
- IPinfo + MaxMind GeoIP (vendor subscription required)
- Lookup Tables
- MCP Server Integration for Natural Language Tools
- AI Dashboard Summarization
- Basic Triggers and Aggregations
- Alerting
- Notifications
- Automated Script Triggers
- Correlation Engine
- Compliance Reports
- Teams Management
- OIDC, Okta, Auth0, AzureAD, Google, Keycloak, PingIdentity, OneLogin
- Graylog User Audit Logs
- Role-based Access
- Cluster Metrics for Graylog Node, Graylog Data Node and MongoDB
- Multi Cluster
- Enterprise Forwarder
- Cluster to Cluster Forwarder
- Cloud Forwarder
- Data Node (OpenSearch 2.19)
- Data Pipeline Management and Routing
- Data Lake - S3, GCS and Azure Blob
- Data Lake Preview and Selective Retrieval
- Amazon Data Lake Preview + Retrieval
- Filtered AWS Security Lake Input (3rd-party data lake)
- Lake Retrievals Page
- Data Tiering, Hot and Warm and Archive
- HDFS Warm Tier Support
- Documentation
- Graylog Academy
- Graylog Community
- Onboarding and Architecture Review Services
- Technical Account Manager (add on)
Graylog Security
- Support for Syslog, CEF, GELF, BEATS, HTTP JSON, IPFIX, Netflow, Plain Text
- Log Collection
- Sidecar Central Log Collector Management
- Index Field Type Profiles
- Pipelines & Streams
- Data Normalization
- Collections
- Asset History
- Asset Event Definition
- Distinguish Illuminate vs. User-Created Entities
- Visualization Widgets
- Save to Dashboard
- Guided Search
- Save & Share
- Filters
- Parameters
- Favorite Fields
- Security Core Reports
- AI Dashboard Summarization
- Drill Down from Aggregation Widgets
- Widget Thresholds and Labels
- Text Widgets with Markdown
- Revert Changes When Canceling Widget Edit
- Data Table Row Numbers
- Right-click Graylog + Custom Saved Searches
- Scheduled Email Reports
- Dashboard Drill Down
- Custom Reports
- Customizable Visualization Widgets
- Save & Share
- Input Wizard
- Illuminate Content Hub
- Illuminate Content
- Sharing Searches for Illuminate + Content Packs
- Graylog Schema
- REST API
- Content Pack Import/Export
- Distinguish Illuminate vs. User-Created Entities
- TCP RAW & TCP Syslog Outputs
- Security Detection content (e.g. Sigma Rules)
- Data Enrichment Connectors
- IPinfo + MaxMind GeoIP (vendor subscription required)
- Lookup Tables
- Asset Data
- Vulnerability Scan Support (Qualys, Tenable Cloud, Nessus, Microsoft Defender, CrowdStrike)
- MCP Server Integration for Natural Language Tools
- AI Dashboard Summarization
- UEBA + Anomaly Detection (ML)
- AI Investigation Report Generation
- Basic Triggers and Aggregations
- Alerting
- Notifications
- Automated Script Triggers
- Correlation Engine
- Sigma Rules
- MITRE ATT&CK Framework Alignment
- User Activity, Suspicious Data Movement, File and System Integrity, Network and Perimeter Threats
- Custom Detectors
- Evidence Collection
- AI Investigation Report Generation
- Investigation Timeline Visualization and Analytics
- Event Procedures (Guided Steps)
- Automation
- Guided Response and Workflow
- Third Party SOAR and Ticketing Integration, add-on
- Compliance Reports
- Asset-based Risk Scoring
- Events and Alerts Risk Scoring
- Adversary Campaign Intelligence
- Field Actions with Threat Intel Lookups and Watchlists
- Threat Coverage Analyzer and Visualization
- Vulnerability Scan Ingest (Qualys, Tenable Cloud, Nessus, Microsoft Defender)
- Teams Management
- OIDC, Okta, Auth0, AzureAD, Google, Keycloak, PingIdentity, OneLogin
- Graylog User Audit Logs
- Role-based Access
- Cluster Metrics for Graylog Node, Graylog Data Node and MongoDB
- Multi Cluster
- Enterprise Forwarder
- Cluster to Cluster Forwarder
- Cloud Forwarder
- Data Node (OpenSearch 2.19)
- Data Pipeline Management and Routing
- Data Lake - S3, GCS and Azure Blob
- Data Lake Preview and Selective Retrieval
- Amazon Data Lake Preview + Retrieval
- Filtered AWS Security Lake Input (3rd-party data lake)
- Lake Retrievals Page
- Data Tiering, Hot and Warm and Archive
- HDFS Warm Tier Support
- Documentation
- Graylog Academy
- Graylog Community
- Onboarding and Architecture Review Services
- Technical Account Manager (add on)
Better Stack vs Graylog FAQ
- Which one is cheaper?
- One or both use custom pricing, so it depends on your specific needs.
- Can I use either one for free?
- Both offer free plans, so you can try each without paying. Start with whichever fits your workflow better and upgrade when you hit the limits.
- How do they charge?
- Different approach here. Better Stack uses hybrid pricing, while Graylog goes with usage-based. That changes the math depending on your team size and usage.
- Which one is a better deal?
- Depends on what you need. Better Stack: At $29/responder, they're undercutting PagerDuty and Opsgenie on incident management while bundling observability that Datadog charges a premium for separately. They're going after mid-market engineering teams who are tired of stitching together three tools and paying enterprise prices for the privilege. Graylog: They're positioning as a mid-market alternative to Splunk and Elastic — cheaper than Splunk's eye-watering enterprise contracts, but not trying to compete with free-tier-first tools like Grafana Loki. The $15-18K floor targets security and ops teams with real budgets but sticker shock from the big players.
Keep tabs on both.
We'll monitor pricing changes for Better Stack and Graylog and let you know when something moves.