rsyslog vs Telegraf
rsyslog
rsyslog.comTelegraf
influxdata.comSide by side
| Figure | rsyslog | Telegraf |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | €166.58/mo | $1,500/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 7 | 4 |
| Spec score · Telemetry Pipeline Software | 7.9 (#16) | 8.7 (#3) |
| Deployment | The project offers source and Git installation paths, maintained packages for Ubuntu, RHEL/CentOS, and Debian, and a Docker container. | Telegraf Controller is self-hosted as a single binary and runs on macOS, Linux, and Windows. |
| Maker | The rsyslog site is operated by Adiscon GmbH, which identifies itself as rsyslog’s main sponsor. | Telegraf is built by InfluxData, which says it was founded in 2012. |
| Purpose | rsyslog collects, transforms, and routes event data as a high-performance log processing engine. | Telegraf is an open source agent for collecting metrics from infrastructure, applications, and devices. |
| Support | Community support is available through the mailing list, while Adiscon offers paid enterprise support for business users. | Enterprise Support offers Gold-level SLAs, expert troubleshooting for Telegraf Controller and official plugins, and guaranteed response times. |
Plans
rsyslog
- rsyslogFree
- Windows Agent Basic$55, paid once
- Windows Agent Professional$79, paid once
- Windows Agent Enterprise$109, paid once
- Enterprise Support€1,999 a year
- Extended Enterprise Support€3,899 a year
- Unlimited Enterprise Support€19,999 a year
Telegraf
- Telegraf (open source)Free
- Telegraf OSSFree
- Telegraf Enterprise$18,000 a year
- Telegraf Enterprise$18,000 a year
In their own words
rsyslog
rsyslog is a self-hosted engine for collecting, transforming and routing event data, with a processing model built from inputs, rulesets and actions. The project says it can deliver over one million messages per second to local destinations when processing is limited. Reliability features include on-demand disk spooling, backup destinations and multiple processing threads. Documented outputs include Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Apache Kafka, HTTP endpoints and syslog forwarding. Database outputs cover MariaDB/MySQL and PostgreSQL, with libdbi support for other databases. TLS-protected syslog and forwarding with peer authentication settings are documented. The core programs use GPLv3, while some runtime files use LGPL. rsyslog is developed for Linux, POSIX and related UNIX-like systems, and is available through source, Git, distribution packages and Docker. It does not run natively on Windows; a separate Windows Agent collects Event Logs and local log files and can relay syslog to rsyslog on Linux. The core software is free; paid support is available from €1,999/yr.