September 2026 Edition, published · The permanent record of that edition, superseded since. The current standing is on the category page →
Index › IT › IT operations and endpoint › Logs › Enterprise · September 2026 Edition

Log management for enterprise buyers

Asked as “log management platform”, and as “centralized logging tool”, on behalf of an enterprise B2B company. 54 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing · first-choice share
41%
Clear leader
41Splunk20Datadog Log Management07Elastic Stack31others

41% of first choices, clear leader.

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment; they sit side by side and are never added together.

The standing

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all twelve models, for an enterprise B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01Splunk41%34%61criticized default
02Datadog Log Management20%26%61criticized challenger
03Elastic Stack7%24%46accepted challenger
04Sumo Logic6%15%33accepted challenger
05New Relic Logs4%14%22accepted challenger
06Coralogix4%0%11accepted challenger
07Grafana Loki2%0%30accepted challenger
08Cribl Stream2%0%19accepted challenger
09Elastic Observability2%0%11accepted challenger
10Dynatrace2%17%18accepted challenger
Show the three products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
13Graylog0%24%21accepted challenger
12Microsoft Sentinel0%0%12accepted challenger
11OpenObserve0%0%12accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its product page.
Head to headHead-to-head pages are published for mid-market buyers, so these open on mid-market figures, not enterprise.
All twenty-eight head-to-head pages: the top eight products, each against each

Recommended versus criticized

Every product with at least 10 labels here, on both axes. The 30% line names a quadrant, not the verdict above: that one needs more than 40%.

Criticized challengerCriticized default
Negative label rate →
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative60%
Key
01Splunk41%
02Datadog Log Management20%
03Elastic Stack7%
04Sumo Logic6%
05New Relic Logs4%
06Coralogix4%
07Grafana Loki2%
08Cribl Stream2%
09Elastic Observability2%
10Dynatrace2%
11OpenObserve0%
12Microsoft Sentinel0%
13Graylog0%

What they warned about

Zero of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.4 mini, Gemini 3.5 Flash, Perplexity Sonar, Grok 4.20, Mistral Small, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Llama 4 Maverick, Qwen 3.7 Flash, Kimi K2, GLM 4.7 FlashX and MiniMax M2.5 changed. A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
Splunk
34%
21 of 61 labels negative · 11 of 12 models · 4 hard negative
“Avoid these for predictability — Splunk — ... which makes it hard to forecast. ✗” DeepSeek V4 Flash, budget prompt
Datadog Log Management
26%
16 of 61 labels negative · 10 of 12 models · 4 hard negative
“Options to Avoid if Cost Predictability is Critical: Datadog's pricing model is complex and expensive at scale” Claude Haiku 4.5, budget prompt
Elastic Stack
24%
11 of 46 labels negative · 9 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“Why? Operational nightmare at scale... Best avoided if: You're not running managed services like Elastic Cloud” Grok 4.20, negative prompt
Graylog
24%
5 of 21 labels negative · 5 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“Platforms to Strongly Avoid or Approach with Extreme Caution: 1. Graylog (especially self-managed deployments)” Grok 4.20, negative prompt

What they cite

Twelve of the twelve models returned a source list in this edition: four return the pages they cited and eight the search results they consulted.

Sites the answers cite

61 of 72 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 910 links across 232 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

vendor site · Cribl32 answers · 41 citations · 11 models
vendor site · OpenObserve32 answers · 41 citations · 10 models
vendor site · CubeAPM25 answers · 29 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Middleware.io25 answers · 27 citations · 10 models
vendor site · SigNoz24 answers · 27 citations · 10 models
23 answers · 29 citations · 9 models
vendor site · Parseable23 answers · 28 citations · 9 models
vendor site · Exabeam21 answers · 25 citations · 9 models
vendor site · Dash020 answers · 34 citations · 11 models
19 answers · 19 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Coralogix16 answers · 21 citations · 7 models
16 answers · 16 citations · 10 models

Pages the answers cite

The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.

Search against answers

Each company's standing in the answers beside its site's footprint in Google search, one row a site: the products the models named on it with their shares, and the share they add up to; monthly searches on Google, and DataForSEO's estimate of AI search demand (modeled from search signals, directional, not a count of queries to any assistant), for the most-searched of the company's and its products' names (the name is in each row's hover text); estimated monthly organic visits to the site; and its best position in Google's top ten for “best log management platform”, “log management platform”, “log management platforms”. US estimates from DataForSEO and Google's Ads Transparency Center. A small company's site, or a mid-sized company's site for its flagship, is marked company; a product on a large parent's site (Google, Microsoft) has no site figures. A column with no figures for this category is left out, and an empty cell means none were seen, not none exist. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
Company and productsShareOwn site citedName searches, GoogleAI search demand, est.Organic visitsPaid search a month, est.Google ads, last 30 daysBest Google position
Splunk splunk.com41%25340,5006,832892,906120
Datadog parent site
Datadog Log Management 20%
20%16774,0003,541
Elastic elastic.co
Elastic Stack 7%, Elastic Observability 2%
9%15474,00034,672208,306 company1058
Sumo Logic sumologic.com6%834,40026582,749$4,12355
CubeAPM cubeapm.com6%42400846
New Relic newrelic.com
New Relic Logs 4%
4%6714,80084383,276 company$41289
Coralogix coralogix.com4%1164,4008310,540$2827
Grafana Loki grafana.com
Grafana Loki 2%, Grafana Cloud Logs 2%
4%1551,90012284,520116
Cribl Stream cribl.io2%1242601517,616$19205
Dynatrace dynatrace.com2%67622,2001,10662,738$3,941120

Google's top ten for the three searches hold 13 sites; 5 of them are among the sites the models cited here (cribl.io, dash0.com, exabeam.com, grepr.ai, openobserve.ai). The first result for “best log management platform” is reddit.com.

How they answered

Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ShowHide
ModelDirect“What is the best log management platform for an enterprise B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which centralized logging tool would you recommend to a large B2B company with thousands of employees?”Comparative“What are the top enterprise-grade log management platforms and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best log management platform for a large company that needs predictable total cost across thousands of users?”Scale-constrained“We are a 5,000 person company with SSO, SOC 2 and procurement review requirements evaluating a log management platform. What should we look at?”Negative“Which log management platforms should a large enterprise avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Datadog Log Management, Splunk
One alternativeSumo Logic
Splunk, Sumo LogicChanged
Six alternativesCribl Stream, Datadog Log Management, Dynatrace, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, Graylog
no first choiceagainst: SplunkNew Relic Logs
One alternativeCubeAPM
against: Datadog Log Management, Splunk
no first choiceagainst: Elastic Stack, OpenSearch, Splunk
GPT-5.4 miniDatadog Log Management
Four alternativesElastic Observability, Grafana Loki, New Relic Logs, Splunk
SplunkChanged
Two alternativesElastic Observability, Sumo Logic
Splunk
Six alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Observability, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, Microsoft Sentinel, Sumo Logic
Grafana Cloud Logs
Two alternativesDatadog Log Management, Splunk
against: Elastic Stack, Graylog
no first choicenothing named
Gemini 3.5 FlashDatadog Log Management, Splunk
Six alternativesCoralogix, Cribl Stream, Dynatrace, Grafana Loki, Logz.io, OpenObserve
Datadog Log ManagementChanged
Three alternativesCoralogix, Dynatrace, Grafana Loki
against: Elastic Stack, Splunk
no first choice
Six alternativesDatadog Log Management, Dynatrace, Elastic Stack (ELK) & OpenSearch, Grafana Loki, Splunk, Sumo Logic
Grafana Loki
Four alternativesCoralogix, Cribl Stream, CrowdStrike Falcon LogScale, OpenObserve
against: Datadog Log Management, Splunk, Sumo Logic
Splunk, Sumo Logic
Five alternativesCrowdStrike Falcon LogScale, Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, New Relic Logs
against: ArcSight, Better Stack, Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, IBM QRadar, LogRhythm, Loggly, OpenSearch, SolarWinds Papertrail, Splunk
Perplexity SonarElastic Observability
Five alternativesCribl Stream, Datadog Log Management, Microsoft Sentinel, OpenObserve, Splunk
SplunkChanged
Three alternativesCribl Stream, Datadog Log Management, Graylog
no first choiceCubeAPM
Two alternativesCoralogix, Cribl Stream
no first choiceagainst: Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Graylog, Splunk
Grok 4.20Elastic Stack, Splunk
Two alternativesDatadog Log Management, Sumo Logic
SplunkChanged
Three alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Sumo Logic
no first choiceNew Relic Logs
One alternativeGrafana Loki
against: Datadog Log Management
Splunk
Three alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Sumo Logic
against: Dynatrace
against: Datadog Log Management, Dynatrace, Elastic Stack, Graylog, Splunk
Mistral SmallDatadog Log Management, Splunk Observability Cloud
Three alternativesCribl Stream, Elastic Observability, Grafana Loki
SplunkChanged
Two alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Stack
Splunk
Five alternativesCribl Stream, Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Graylog, Microsoft Sentinel
Coralogix, CubeAPM
One alternativeNew Relic Logs
against: Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Splunk
no first choiceagainst: Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Splunk
DeepSeek V4 FlashDatadog Log Management, Splunk
Five alternativesCribl Stream, Dynatrace, Elastic Observability, New Relic Logs, OpenObserve
SplunkChanged
Four alternativesCribl Stream, Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Sumo Logic
Datadog Log Management, Splunk
Seven alternativesElastic Observability, Grafana Loki, Graylog, New Relic Logs, OpenObserve, SigNoz, Sumo Logic
Dynatrace
One alternativeExabeam
against: Datadog Log Management, Splunk, Sumo Logic
no first choiceagainst: Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack / OpenSearch, Graylog, Loggly, SolarWinds Papertrail, Splunk, Sumo Logic
Llama 4 MaverickCribl Stream
Three alternativesDatadog Log Management, Dynatrace, Elastic Observability
SplunkChanged
Two alternativesDatadog Log Management, Dynatrace
no first choiceCubeAPM
Two alternativesGrafana Cloud Logs, SigNoz
against: Datadog Log Management
no first choiceagainst: Datadog Log Management, Dynatrace, Splunk
Qwen 3.7 FlashSplunk
Four alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, Microsoft Sentinel
Datadog Log Management, SplunkChanged
Two alternativesElastic Stack, Grafana Loki
Splunk
Three alternativesCribl Stream, Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack
Sumo Logic
Two alternativesGraylog, OpenSearch / Elasticsearch
against: Datadog Log Management, New Relic Logs, Splunk
no first choice
Four alternativesCloud-Native, Datadog Log Management, Dynatrace, New Relic Logs
against: Elastic Stack, OpenSearch, Splunk, Sumo Logic
against: Loggly, SolarWinds Papertrail
Kimi K2Splunk
Four alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Logpoint, Sumo Logic
Datadog Log Management, Elastic StackChanged
One alternativeCribl Stream
against: Splunk
Splunk
Four alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, Sumo Logic
Coralogixagainst: Datadog Log Management, Grafana Cloud Logs, New Relic Logs, SplunkSplunk
Four alternativesCrowdStrike Falcon LogScale, Datadog Log Management, Elastic Security, Microsoft Sentinel
against: Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Splunk, Sumo Logic
GLM 4.7 FlashXDatadog Log Management, Splunk
Three alternativesElastic Stack, Grafana Cloud Logs, New Relic Logs
SplunkChanged
Four alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, OpenObserve
Splunk
Seven alternativesAmazon CloudWatch Logs, Azure Monitor Logs, Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Google Cloud Logging, New Relic Logs, Sumo Logic
Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stackagainst: New Relic Logs, Splunkno first choiceagainst: Elastic Stack, Graylog, IBM QRadar, Splunk
MiniMax M2.5Elastic Stack, Splunk
One alternativeGrafana Loki
SplunkChanged
Six alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, Graylog, Microsoft Sentinel, Sumo Logic
against: IBM QRadar
no first choiceManageEngine Log360
Four alternativesDash0, KloudMate, Netdata, Sumo Logic
against: Datadog Log Management, Splunk
Datadog Log Management, Splunk
Two alternativesElastic Stack, Microsoft Sentinel
nothing named
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

The record

One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency.
Seventy-two rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
PromptModelVersion stringTime (UTC)SearchedSourcesLatency
Direct recommendationClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:37no05 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:41yes55 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:07yes929 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 12:50yes205 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 12:00yes3817 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:38yes96 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 09:43yes914 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:33yes53 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:30no038 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:18yes1527 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:03yes1562 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:55yes526 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:20yes98 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:01yes45 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:52yes922 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:26yes206 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 10:56yes138 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:13no03 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:19yes913 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:48yes52 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 14:02yes1041 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:39yes1062 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:32yes1336 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:26no068 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:28yes99 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:17yes710 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:04yes2034 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 11:47yes208 s
ComparativeGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 12:59yes2715 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:31yes57 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:59yes1218 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:22yes53 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:14yes545 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:45yes1851 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:30no0158 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:14yes947 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:19yes97 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:22yes47 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:53yes2332 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:16yes205 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 11:09yes3921 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:06yes55 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 10:24yes2331 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:15yes53 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:47yes13117 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:46yes2031 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:16yes2766 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:27yes532 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:15no06 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:54no010 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:58yes932 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:02yes208 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 12:11yes1513 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:47no08 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:13yes3033 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:16yes55 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:54no043 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:04yes1526 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:29yes2358 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 10:10yes1029 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:31yes2816 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:48no06 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:31yes1425 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:48yes197 s
Negative framingGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 10:41yes2217 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:05yes1914 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:59yes3445 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:03yes53 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:45yes2663 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:32yes2937 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:39yes25165 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:11no09 s

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

ShowHide
Category-scoped readings
AWS CloudWatch read as Amazon CloudWatch Logs
Azure Monitor read as Azure Monitor Logs
Cribl read as Cribl Stream
Datadog read as Datadog Log Management
ELK read as Elastic Stack
ELK Stack read as Elastic Stack
ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) read as Elastic Stack
ELK Stack (Elasticsearch/Logstash/Kibana, self-hosted) read as Elastic Stack
Elastic read as Elastic Stack
Elastic (ELK Stack) read as Elastic Stack
Elastic (ELK Stack/Observability) read as Elastic Stack
Elastic (ELK) read as Elastic Stack
Elastic Cloud read as Elastic Stack
Elasticsearch read as Elastic Stack
Elasticsearch (ELK) read as Elastic Stack
Grafana Cloud read as Grafana Cloud Logs
Grafana Cloud (Loki) read as Grafana Cloud Logs
New Relic read as New Relic Logs
Unresolved, counted raw
ClickHouse-based architectures
IBM QRadar Log Insights
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.
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