Central Logging vs ELK Stack
Central Logging
centrallogging.com
ELK Stack
elastic.coSide by side
| Figure | Central Logging | ELK Stack |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $187/mo | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 12 |
| Spec score · Log Management Software | 8.5 (#32) | 9.5 (#1) |
| Archive export | Yes | Yes |
| Deployment | It runs as a statically linked, self-contained executable with no installer, runtime, or dependencies. | Elastic Stack is available as hosted Elastic Cloud service or self-managed software for on-premises, public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid environments. |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | The site documents log shipping guides for Nginx, Caddy, Docker, Kubernetes, Proxmox, PostgreSQL, rsyslog, systemd, and Python. | Elastic offers over 300 turn-key integrations for Search, Security, Observability, and cloud providers including AWS, Azure, and GCP. |
| Live log tailing | Yes | Yes |
| Log pipelines | Yes | Yes |
| Purpose | Central Logging is a self-hosted logging, alerting, cron monitoring, and uptime system installed on the customer's server. | The Elastic Stack combines Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, and Logstash to take data from any source and format for search, analysis, and visualization. |
| Log retention | 15 | 30 |
| Structured log parsing | Yes | Yes |
Plans
Central Logging
- Free trialFree
- Unlimited license$187 a month
- Unlimited license$187, paid once
ELK Stack
- BasicPrice not published
- Logs EssentialsPriced on request
- Complete$0.09 a month
- Standard$99 a month
- Gold$114 a month
- Platinum$131 a month
- Enterprise$184 a month
- Basic (self-managed)Free
- Elastic Cloud hostedPriced on request
- Elastic Cloud ServerlessPriced on request
In their own words
Central Logging
Central Logging has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
ELK Stack
The Elastic Stack combines Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats and Logstash to bring data from different sources into search, analysis and visualization workflows. Elasticsearch is a distributed, JSON-based search and analytics engine, while Kibana provides dashboards, visualizations, live presentations and deployment management. Elastic Agent, Beats and a web crawler can ingest information from applications, infrastructure and public content. Features include alerting, machine learning, vector search, graph analytics, clustering, high availability and data lifecycle management. Elastic positions the platform for Search, Observability and Security, including centralized logging, monitoring and security analytics. It is available as hosted Elastic Cloud or as self-managed software for on-premises, public cloud, private cloud and hybrid environments. Elasticsearch and Kibana have an open source foundation, and Elasticsearch can be downloaded and started free. Elastic Cloud offers a 14-day trial without a credit card. Hosted pricing depends on deployment components and can include snapshot storage and data transfer charges; listed hosted tiers start at $99 a month.