vioscaleAI
Comparison

Elastic (ELK Stack) vs OpenObserve

No clear leader: OpenObserve (65.2) 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 →OpenObserve full profile →
Machine formatsMarkdownJSONGraphQLMarkdown is open. JSON and GraphQL need a free key.
Elastic (ELK Stack)64
OpenObserve65
Score
vioscaleAI score
Elastic (ELK Stack)64 / 100medium · 65%
OpenObserve65 / 100medium · 68%
Pricing
Free tier
Elastic (ELK Stack)✓
OpenObserve✓
Model
Elastic (ELK Stack)commercial
OpenObservefreemium
Price level
Elastic (ELK Stack)high
OpenObservelow
Starting price
Elastic (ELK Stack)–
OpenObserve$0.01
Transparent
Elastic (ELK Stack)✓
OpenObserve✓
Integrations
Count
Elastic (ELK Stack)6
OpenObserve18
Security
Certifications
Elastic (ELK Stack)–
OpenObserveSOC 2 Type II
Disclosure policy
Elastic (ELK Stack)✓
OpenObserve–
Gdpr
Elastic (ELK Stack)✓
OpenObserve✓
Hipaa
Elastic (ELK Stack)–
OpenObserve✓
Iso27001
Elastic (ELK Stack)✓
OpenObserve–
Pci
Elastic (ELK Stack)–
OpenObserve✓
Scorecard
Elastic (ELK Stack)5.6
OpenObserve–
Soc2
Elastic (ELK Stack)–
OpenObserve✓
Trust center
Vulnerabilities
Reliability
Sla pct
Elastic (ELK Stack)99.95
OpenObserve99.9
Status page
Elastic (ELK Stack)✓
OpenObserve✓
Adoption
Dependent repos
Elastic (ELK Stack)18,551
OpenObserve0
Github stars
Elastic (ELK Stack)78,270
OpenObserve22,343
Package downloads weekly
Elastic (ELK Stack)–
OpenObserve479
Activity
Commits last 30d
Elastic (ELK Stack)100
OpenObserve100
Release
Cadence days
Elastic (ELK Stack)–
OpenObserve5
History
Elastic (ELK Stack)20 items
OpenObserve20 items
License
Spdx
Elastic (ELK Stack)–
OpenObserveAGPL-3.0
Language
Primary
Elastic (ELK Stack)Java
OpenObserveTypeScript
Market
Availability
Content
Faq
Elastic (ELK Stack)7 items
OpenObserve7 items

Capabilities

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

Core
Pipeline role
Elastic (ELK Stack)End-to-end platform
OpenObserveBackend
Search
Full-text log search
Elastic (ELK Stack)✓
OpenObserve✓
Live tail / stream
Elastic (ELK Stack)✓
OpenObserve-
Processing
Structured parsing
Elastic (ELK Stack)✓
OpenObserve✓
PII redaction at ingest
Elastic (ELK Stack)-
OpenObserve✓
Ops
Log-based alerting
Elastic (ELK Stack)✓
OpenObserve✓
Dashboards / visualisation
Elastic (ELK Stack)✓
OpenObserve✓
Storage
Retention tiering
Elastic (ELK Stack)✓
OpenObserve✓
Object-store columnar backend
Elastic (ELK Stack)✗
OpenObserve✓
Interop
OpenTelemetry logs
Elastic (ELK Stack)-
OpenObserveNative
Query language
Elastic (ELK Stack)ES|QL (with native PromQL support)
OpenObserveSQL, PromQL, VRL
Deployment
Hosting
Elastic (ELK Stack)Cloud + self-hosted
OpenObserveCloud + 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

OpenObserve

OpenObserve is a cloud-native observability platform that unifies logs, metrics, traces, real user monitoring, and AI/LLM observability in a single system. Using Parquet columnar storage on object storage backends, it achieves significantly lower infrastructure costs than traditional platforms while supporting flexible deployment across cloud, on-premises, and air-gapped environments.

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 verify ↗

OpenObserve

from $0.01/gb/moHybridFree tier14-day trial

From $0.50/GB ingested + $0.01/GB queried. 14-day free trial (no card required). Self-hosted free up to 50 GB/day.

  • Cloud Professional$0.50/GB ingested + $0.01/GB queried, billed monthly. 30% discount with annual commitment.
    • Logs, Metrics, Traces, RUM, Session Replay, Error tracking
    • Unlimited users
    • Single Sign-On (SSO)
    • Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
    • 19+ dashboard chart types
    • +3 more
  • Self-Hosted Enterprise FreeFree
    • All observability features
    • Single Sign-On (SSO)
    • Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
    • Audit trail with 365-day immutable logs
    • Sensitive data redaction
    • +2 more
  • EnterpriseContact sales
    • Custom volume discounts
    • Bring Your Own Bucket (BYOB) - infinite retention
    • All observability features
    • AI-Powered Observability with incident management and AI SRE agent
    • Premium support
    • +5 more
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

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

Platforms
Web
Elastic (ELK Stack)✓
OpenObserve✓
macOS
Elastic (ELK Stack)✗
OpenObserve✓
Windows
Elastic (ELK Stack)✗
OpenObserve✓
Linux
Elastic (ELK Stack)✗
OpenObserve✓
CLI
Elastic (ELK Stack)✓
OpenObserve✓
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
Elastic (ELK Stack)✓
OpenObserve✓
Self-hosted
Elastic (ELK Stack)✓
OpenObserve✓
On-premise
Elastic (ELK Stack)✗
OpenObserve✓
Hybrid
Elastic (ELK Stack)✗
OpenObserve✓
Air-gapped
Elastic (ELK Stack)✗
OpenObserve✓

Integrations

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

In common (2)
  • Slack
  • PagerDuty

Elastic (ELK Stack)

32 total - 30 not shared
  • OpenAI
  • Anthropic
  • Jina AI
  • Amazon Bedrock
  • Google Vertex AI
  • Microsoft Azure AI
  • Mistral
  • Cohere
  • Hugging Face
  • NVIDIA
  • IBM watsonx
  • LlamaIndex
  • LangChain
  • Vectorize.io
  • Jira
  • ServiceNow
  • Microsoft Teams
  • xMatters
  • IBM Resilient
  • Filebeat
  • Metricbeat
  • Heartbeat
  • Elastic Agent
  • Logstash
  • +6 more
Independently observed

OpenObserve

21 total - 19 not shared
  • OpenTelemetry
  • Prometheus
  • SQL
  • PromQL
  • Apache Parquet
  • Amazon S3
  • Google Cloud Storage
  • Azure Blob Storage
  • MinIO
  • Fluent Bit
  • Vector
  • Okta
  • Microsoft Entra
  • Google Workspace
  • Kubernetes
  • Docker
  • Azure AD
  • Syslog
  • Terraform
Independently observed
Still deciding?

Elastic (ELK Stack) or OpenObserve: 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.