Comparison

Elastic (ELK Stack) vs Grafana Loki

No clear leader: Grafana Loki (68.0) and Elastic (ELK Stack) (64.4) are within the 5-point margin; treat as a tie. The attribute-by-attribute breakdown below, with a source and date on every value, is the honest way to compare them.

Elastic (ELK Stack) full profile →Grafana Loki full profile →

Machine formatsMarkdownJSONGraphQLMarkdown is open. JSON and GraphQL need a free key.

Elastic (ELK Stack)64

Grafana Loki68

Attribute comparison across 2 tools
Attribute	Elastic (ELK Stack)	Grafana Loki
vioscaleAI score	64 / 100medium · 65%	68 / 100high · 75%
Pricing
Free tierpricing.free_tier	✓	✓
Modelpricing.model	commercial	open_source
Price levelpricing.price_level	high	free
Transparentpricing.transparent	✓	✓
Integrations
Countintegrations.count	6	6
Security
Disclosure policysecurity.disclosure_policy	✓	✓
Fedrampsecurity.fedramp	-	✓
Gdprsecurity.gdpr	✓	✓
Iso27001security.iso27001	✓	✓
Pcisecurity.pci	-	✓
Scorecardsecurity.scorecard	5.6	8
Soc2security.soc2	-	✓
Trust centersecurity.trust_center	https://www.elastic.co/legal/ethics-and-compliance	https://grafana.com/security/hall-of-fame/issue_35/
Vulnerabilitiessecurity.vulnerabilities	Count: 45 · Source: https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=maven&package_name=org.elasticsearch%3Aelasticsearch&per_page=100 · Last 12m: 2 · Max severity: HIGH	Count: 1 · Source: https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=go&package_name=github.com%2Fgrafana%2Floki&per_page=100 · Last 12m: 0 · Max severity: MODERATE
Reliability
Sla pctreliability.sla_pct	99.95	-
Status pagereliability.status_page	✓	✓
Adoption
Dependent reposadoption.dependent_repos	18,551	334
Github starsadoption.github_stars	78,270	29,009
Activity
Commits last 30dactivity.commits_last_30d	100	100
Release
Cadence daysrelease.cadence_days	-	9
Historyrelease.history	20 items	20 items
License
Spdxlicense.spdx	-	AGPL-3.0
Language
Primarylanguage.primary	Java	Go
Market
Availabilitymarket.availability	Available worldwide · Popular in US, GB · HQ US	Available worldwide · HQ US
Content
Faqcontent.faq	7 items	8 items

Score

vioscaleAI score

Elastic (ELK Stack)64 / 100medium · 65%

Grafana Loki68 / 100high · 75%

Pricing

Free tier

Elastic (ELK Stack)✓

Grafana Loki✓

Model

Elastic (ELK Stack)commercial

Grafana Lokiopen_source

Price level

Elastic (ELK Stack)high

Grafana Lokifree

Transparent

Elastic (ELK Stack)✓

Grafana Loki✓

Integrations

Count

Elastic (ELK Stack)6

Grafana Loki6

Security

Disclosure policy

Elastic (ELK Stack)✓

Grafana Loki✓

Fedramp

Elastic (ELK Stack)–

Grafana Loki✓

Gdpr

Elastic (ELK Stack)✓

Grafana Loki✓

Iso27001

Elastic (ELK Stack)✓

Grafana Loki✓

Pci

Elastic (ELK Stack)–

Grafana Loki✓

Scorecard

Elastic (ELK Stack)5.6

Grafana Loki8

Soc2

Elastic (ELK Stack)–

Grafana Loki✓

Trust center

Elastic (ELK Stack)https://www.elastic.co/legal/ethics-and-compliance

Grafana Lokihttps://grafana.com/security/hall-of-fame/issue_35/

Vulnerabilities

Elastic (ELK Stack)Count: 45 · Source: https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=maven&package_name=org.elasticsearch%3Aelasticsearch&per_page=100 · Last 12m: 2 · Max severity: HIGH

Grafana LokiCount: 1 · Source: https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=go&package_name=github.com%2Fgrafana%2Floki&per_page=100 · Last 12m: 0 · Max severity: MODERATE

Reliability

Sla pct

Elastic (ELK Stack)99.95

Grafana Loki–

Status page

Elastic (ELK Stack)✓

Grafana Loki✓

Adoption

Dependent repos

Elastic (ELK Stack)18,551

Grafana Loki334

Github stars

Elastic (ELK Stack)78,270

Grafana Loki29,009

Activity

Commits last 30d

Elastic (ELK Stack)100

Grafana Loki100

Release

Cadence days

Elastic (ELK Stack)–

Grafana Loki9

History

Elastic (ELK Stack)20 items

Grafana Loki20 items

License

Spdx

Elastic (ELK Stack)–

Grafana LokiAGPL-3.0

Language

Primary

Elastic (ELK Stack)Java

Grafana LokiGo

Market

Availability

Elastic (ELK Stack)Available worldwide · Popular in US, GB · HQ US

Grafana LokiAvailable worldwide · HQ US

Content

Faq

Elastic (ELK Stack)7 items

Grafana Loki8 items

Capabilities

Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for log management software. “-” means undocumented, not absent.

Capability comparison for Log Management Software
Capability	Elastic (ELK Stack)	Grafana Loki
Core
Pipeline role	End-to-end platform	Backend
Search
Full-text log search	✓	✗
Live tail / stream	✓	✓
Processing
Structured parsing	✓	✓
PII redaction at ingest	-	-
Ops
Log-based alerting	✓	✓
Dashboards / visualisation	✓	✓
Storage
Retention tiering	✓	-
Object-store columnar backend	✗	✓
Interop
OpenTelemetry logs	-	-
Query language	ES\|QL (with native PromQL support)	LogQL
Deployment
Hosting	Cloud + self-hosted	Cloud + self-hosted

Core

Pipeline role

Elastic (ELK Stack)End-to-end platform

Grafana LokiBackend

Full-text log search

Elastic (ELK Stack)✓

Grafana Loki✗

Live tail / stream

Elastic (ELK Stack)✓

Grafana Loki✓

Processing

Structured parsing

Elastic (ELK Stack)✓

Grafana Loki✓

PII redaction at ingest

Elastic (ELK Stack)-

Grafana Loki-

Ops

Log-based alerting

Elastic (ELK Stack)✓

Grafana Loki✓

Dashboards / visualisation

Elastic (ELK Stack)✓

Grafana Loki✓

Storage

Retention tiering

Elastic (ELK Stack)✓

Grafana Loki-

Object-store columnar backend

Elastic (ELK Stack)✗

Grafana Loki✓

Interop

OpenTelemetry logs

Elastic (ELK Stack)-

Grafana Loki-

Query language

Elastic (ELK Stack)ES|QL (with native PromQL support)

Grafana LokiLogQL

Deployment

Hosting

Elastic (ELK Stack)Cloud + self-hosted

Grafana LokiCloud + self-hosted

What each one is

The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.

Elastic (ELK Stack)

Open-source system for collecting logs and application data, indexing them for searchability, and providing interactive dashboards for analysis. Supports both cloud-hosted and self-managed deployments.

Independently observed

Grafana Loki

A horizontally scalable, multi-tenant log aggregation platform that stores compressed logs and indexes them by labels, enabling fast queries and integration with Prometheus-based monitoring stacks.

Independently observed

Pricing

List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.

Elastic (ELK Stack)

from $99/moSubscriptionFree tier14-day trial

From $99/month. Subscription model with free 14-day trial. Usage-based pricing for cloud resources (120 GB storage / 2 zones baseline).

StandardFrom $99/month. Free 14-day trial.
- Distributed Elasticsearch Platform on AWS, Azure, GCP
- Elasticsearch Query Language (ES|QL)
- AutoOps monitoring
- Hundreds of out-of-the-box integrations
- Discover, dashboards, alerting
- +4 more
GoldFrom $114/month. Includes reporting and third-party integrations.
- Everything in Standard
- Reporting
- Third-party alerting actions
- Watcher
- Enterprise Search
- +2 more
PlatinumFrom $131/month. ML and advanced security included.
- Everything in Gold
- Advanced security features
- Machine learning: anomaly detection, supervised learning
- Cross-cluster replication
- Semantic and vector search with ML models (ELSER, e5)
- +5 more
EnterpriseFrom $184/month. Full AI suite and advanced automation.
- Everything in Platinum
- Searchable snapshots in cold/frozen tiers
- Elastic Maps Server
- Cross-cluster search and ES|QL Data Federation
- GPU inference with Elastic Inference Service
- +10 more

as of 2026-08-14verify ↗

Grafana Loki

Open sourceFree tier

Open source. Free tier with 50GB/mo on Grafana Cloud.

Grafana Cloud Logs FreeFree

as of 2026-10-13verify ↗

Platform & deployment

Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.

Platform and deployment support comparison
Supports	Elastic (ELK Stack)	Grafana Loki
WebPlatforms	✓	✓
CLIPlatforms	✓	✓
Cloud / SaaSDeployment	✓	✓
Self-hostedDeployment	✓	✓

Platforms

Web

Elastic (ELK Stack)✓

Grafana Loki✓

CLI

Elastic (ELK Stack)✓

Grafana Loki✓

Deployment

Cloud / SaaS

Elastic (ELK Stack)✓

Grafana Loki✓

Self-hosted

Elastic (ELK Stack)✓

Grafana Loki✓

Integrations

What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.

Elastic (ELK Stack)

32 total

OpenAI
Anthropic
Jina AI
Amazon Bedrock
Google Vertex AI
Microsoft Azure AI
Mistral
Cohere
Hugging Face
NVIDIA
IBM watsonx
LlamaIndex
LangChain
Vectorize.io
Slack
Jira
PagerDuty
ServiceNow
Microsoft Teams
xMatters
IBM Resilient
Filebeat
Metricbeat
Heartbeat
+8 more

Independently observed

Grafana Loki

8 total

Prometheus
Grafana
Kubernetes
Docker
Prometheus Alertmanager
Alloy
Promtail
Alertmanager

Independently observed

Still deciding?

Elastic (ELK Stack) or Grafana Loki: which one depends on you

A composite score cannot know your constraints. Describe them and both get re-weighted against what you actually need, with the evidence behind every position.

Free to run, no account needed to start. How the evaluation works

Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.