Paid vs. Open: Smarter, Scalable, Secure.

When Open Source Isn’t Enough Anymore

Graylog Open is a powerful, self-managed solution — and for many, it’s enough. But as your environment grows, DIY workarounds and manual processes can slow you down.
 

Graylog Enterprise and Graylog Security build on what you love with added automation, deeper visibility, and streamlined efficiency — all without losing flexibility or control.

  • Automate routine tasks and alerts
  • Accelerate search and analysis at scale
  • Pay only for active data, not everything you store
  • Deploy your way — on-prem, hybrid, or cloud
  • Upgrade without vendor lock-in or forced migrations
  • Built-in ready parsers, dashboards with Illuminate

 
Scale smart. Run Graylog your way — when you’re ready.

6 Reasons To Upgrade

Cut Costs, Scale with Ease, and Get Commercial-Grade Security

1. Lower Costs — Without Losing Coverage

The Trade-Off: Dropping data to cut costs risks missing something critical.

With Graylog Subscription: Keep all your logs — not just the ones you can afford to store. Route processed lower-priority data to a built-in data lake that doesn’t count toward your license. Use Data-Lake-Preview to search standby data before bringing it into active storage. Restore only what you need with selective retrieval, and gain full visibility without second-guessing what you dropped. No need to build from scratch. Graylog Illuminate gives you ready-to-use parsing and dashboards from day one.

2. High-Fidelity Detection — Without the Noise

The Trade-Off: More alerts often means more noise, not more insight.

With Graylog Subscription: Cut through the noise with smarter correlation and risk-based prioritization. Adversary Campaign Intelligence connects related alerts, surfaces high-risk behavior, and factors in asset value and recent vulnerabilities to calculate threat severity. And with Graylog Illuminate, you get ready-to-use parsers, dashboards, alerts, and detection rules for dozens of the most common IT and cybersecurity platforms — all curated and maintained by Graylog experts.

3. Fast Investigations — Without the Backlog

The Trade-Off: Deep investigations delay response — or get skipped entirely.

With Graylog Subscription: Pivot from alert to action in seconds. Timeline views, case management, and easy evidence capture help analysts move faster — without missing context. Investigate once. Generate full investigation reports instantly with our AI-assisted writer. Move on.

4. Always Audit-Ready — Without Manual Workarounds

The Trade-Off: Compliance eats up time with scripts and spreadsheets.

With Graylog Subscription: Meet regulatory requirements without the busywork. Role-based access control, audit logging, and automated compliance reports simplify enforcement, reduce risk, and free your team from manual processes. No heavy lifting required. Graylog Illuminate gives you ready-made content to build and automate reports with ease.

5. Expert Onboarding — Without Starting Over

The Trade-Off: Stay stuck on an outdated setup, or risk breaking what works by upgrading alone.

With Graylog Subscription: Our onboarding isn’t one-size-fits-all. For existing Open users, we offer expert-led architecture reviews, deployment tuning, and best-practice guidance tailored to your current setup. Graylog can even incorporate custom sources during the Onboarding Program. You’ll streamline ingestion, boost performance, and get more value from what you’ve already built — faster.

6. Enterprise-Grade Support — Without the Risk of Going It Alone

The Trade-Off: Running an unsupported open source tool in production can put your team — and your compliance posture — at risk.

With Graylog Subscription: Paid subscriptions include 24/5 enterprise support with access to product experts who can help you resolve critical issues fast. You’ll also gain access to on-demand training through Graylog Academy, with the option to purchase live sessions, customized training, or a Technical Account Manager (TAM) for ongoing strategic guidance. Need deeper help? Professional services are also available to support complex use cases and accelerate results.

Compare Features In Open vs. Paid

*Graylog Open only supports a very limited number of Parsers and Spotlights. Graylog Open users must first upgrade their 6.1+ instance to include the Enterprise plug-in before being able to install the Illuminate Content Hub.

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  • Feature

  • Graylog Open

  • Graylog Enterprise

  • 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

  • Partial

  • Illuminate Content Hub

  • Limited with free Illuminate content

  • Illuminate Content

  • Parsers (free packs)
    only available for certain, Open-source tools

  • Ops Content

  • All Content

  • Sharing Searches for Illuminate + Content Packs

  • ×

  • Graylog Schema

  • Manual

  • Illuminate

  • Illuminate

  • REST API

  • Content Pack Import/Export

  • Distinguish Illuminate vs. User-Created Entities

  • TCP RAW & TCP Syslog Outputs

  • Security Detection content (e.g. Sigma Rules)

  • ×

  • ×

  • Feature

  • Graylog Open

  • Graylog Enterprise

  • Graylog Security

  • Data Enrichment Connectors

  • IPinfo + MaxMind GeoIP (vendor subscription required

  • Lookup Tables

  • Static

  • Dynamic

  • Dynamic

  • 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

  • ×

  • ×

  • Feature

  • Graylog Open

  • Graylog Enterprise

  • Graylog Security

  • Basic Triggers and Aggregations

  • ×

  • Alerting

  • ×

  • Notifications

  • Basic

  • Advanced

  • Advanced

  • 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

  • ×

  • ×

  • Feature

  • Graylog Open

  • Graylog Enterprise

  • Graylog Security

  • 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

  • Internal

  • AD or LDAP

  • AD or LDAP

  • Feature

  • Graylog Open

  • Graylog Enterprise

  • Graylog Security

  • 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

  • ×

  • Feature

  • Graylog Open

  • Graylog Enterprise

  • Graylog Security

  • Documentation

  • Graylog Academy

  • Graylog Community

  • Onboarding and Architecture Review Services

  • ×

  • Technical Account Manager (add on)

  • ×

  • Optional

  • Optional

  • *Graylog Open only supports a very limited number of Parsers and Spotlights. Graylog Open users must first upgrade their 6.2+ instance to include the Enterprise plug-in before being able to install the Illuminate Content Hub.

    What Our Customers Are Saying

    Still using Graylog Open? Without advanced threat detection, automation, and compliance tools, your team is working harder than they need to. Upgrade now and experience the difference.

     

    Contact Graylog Sales