ELK Stack vs Google Cloud Logging
ELK Stack
elastic.co
Google Cloud Logging
cloud.google.comSide by side
| Figure | ELK Stack | Google Cloud Logging |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $0.01/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 12 | 13 |
| Spec score · Log Management Software | 9.5 (#1) | 9.5 (#2) |
| Archive export | Yes | Yes |
| Deployment | Elastic Stack is available as hosted Elastic Cloud service or self-managed software for on-premises, public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid environments. | cloud |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | Elastic offers over 300 turn-key integrations for Search, Security, Observability, and cloud providers including AWS, Azure, and GCP. | Official integrations include Cloud Monitoring, Error Reporting, Cloud Trace, Pub/Sub, Cloud Storage and BigQuery. |
| Live log tailing | Yes | Yes |
| Log pipelines | Yes | Yes |
| Pricing model | Hosted tiers start at monthly prices; Serverless charges by usage. | Google Cloud describes Logging charges as usage-based, with storage, vended-network-log and extended-retention meters. |
| Purpose | The Elastic Stack combines Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, and Logstash to take data from any source and format for search, analysis, and visualization. | Cloud Logging is a fully managed, real-time log management service for storage, search, analysis, and alerting at exabyte scale. |
| Log retention | 30 | 30 |
| Support | Elastic Cloud subscription tiers include varying levels of support, while paid self-managed Gold, Platinum, and Enterprise subscriptions include support. | The product page directs customers who need help getting started to contact sales. |
Plans
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
Google Cloud Logging
- Logging storage (non-vended network logs)$0.50 a month
- Vended network logs storage$0.25 a month
- Logging retention beyond default period$0.01 a month
- Free allotmentFree
- Log AnalyticsFree
- Log RouterFree
- Logs RouterFree
- Extended retention$0.01 a month
- Logging retention$0.01 a month
- Vended network logs storage$0.25, paid once
In their own words
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.
Google Cloud Logging
Google Cloud Logging is a managed cloud service for storing, searching, analyzing and alerting on logs. Logs Explorer supports query-based searches, sorting, histogram views, field exploration and saved queries. Log Analytics uses BigQuery for SQL analysis, and log data can also be accessed in BigQuery alongside other business data. Google Cloud platform logs are ingested without setup; GKE workload logs are captured automatically, while the Ops Agent collects VM workload logs. Logs Router can send logs to external systems through Pub/Sub, and Cloud Storage can hold archives. Regional log buckets keep and process workload data in a selected region, with configurable access controls and retention. The service integrates with Cloud Monitoring, Error Reporting and Cloud Trace. Cloud Audit Logs records administrative activity and resource access, and its entries are immutable; the product page states 400 days of audit-log retention at no additional cost. Standard logging storage includes the first 50 GiB per project per month free, and new Google Cloud customers are offered $300 in credits. The listed deployment is cloud; platforms include API, Linux and web.