Google Cloud Logging vs Logstash
Google Cloud Logging
cloud.google.comLogstash
elastic.coSide by side
| Figure | Google Cloud Logging | Logstash |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $0.01/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 13 | 1 |
| Spec score · Log Management Software | 9.5 (#2) | 8.5 (#25) |
| Archive export | Yes | Yes |
| Deployment options | cloud | self-hosted |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | Official integrations include Cloud Monitoring, Error Reporting, Cloud Trace, Pub/Sub, Cloud Storage and BigQuery. | Elastic describes turn-key integrations for connecting data sources and ingesting logs, metrics, traces, files, web content, and security events. |
| Live log tailing | Yes | Yes |
| Log pipelines | Yes | Yes |
| Purpose | Cloud Logging is a fully managed, real-time log management service for storage, search, analysis, and alerting at exabyte scale. | Logstash is an open source server-side data processing pipeline that ingests data from multiple sources, transforms it, and sends it to a destination. |
Plans
Google Cloud Logging
- Logging storage (non-vended network logs)$0.50, paid once
- Vended network logs storage$0.25, paid once
- 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
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.
Logstash
Logstash is an open-source, server-side pipeline that collects data from many sources, transforms events, and sends results to destinations. It can continuously ingest logs, metrics, web application data, data-store information, and AWS service data. Filters parse events, identify fields, and transform content with features such as grok parsing, IP geolocation, and anonymizing or excluding sensitive fields. Data can go to multiple outputs, including Elasticsearch. Its plugin framework includes more than 200 input, filter, and output plugins, and custom plugins can be built with an API and generator. Persistent queues provide at-least-once delivery for in-flight events after node failures; dead letter queues retain events for inspection and replay. Monitoring tools show pipeline performance and availability. Logstash supports log pipelines, archive export, live tailing, and structured parsing. It is self-hosted, with Linux packages and Docker listed. The free plan is free under the Elastic License.