Difference Between Kibana vs Splunk
Kibana is an open source visualization and exploration tool used for application monitoring, log analysis, time-series analysis applications. It also provides in-built features like statistical graphs (histograms, pie charts, line graphs, etc). It is a part of ELK stack, therefore it also provides inbuilt integration with Elasticsearch search engine. Splunk is visualization software that is used for analyzing logs and machine-generated data, application monitoring, security and web applications. It can represent the data in its inbuilt dashboards, graphs, etc..
Head to Head Comparison between Kibana vs Splunk (Infographics)
Below are the top 11 comparisons between Kibana vs Splunk:
Key differences between Kibana vs Splunk
Let us discuss some key differences between Kibana vs Splunk in the following points:
1. Splunk is one of the first data visualizations Softwares that was developed. It is well established and maintained. Kibana is an upcoming tool that is relatively new to the market. Splunk has well-established customer support for issues that might be faced on the run, whereas Kibana also has customer support set up but since its new, it is not quite proficient yet. We can predict that as the community grows bigger, support also gets better.
2. Kibana offers a flexible platform for visualization, it has an interactive dashboard that is designed to make the experience as simple as possible. it also gives real-time updates/summary of the operating data.
3. Splunk provides SaaS interface (Software as a service) which analyzes machine data very efficiently. Splunk belongs to the Log management/analysis category whereas Kibana can be classified into the monitoring tools category.
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4. Setting up Kibana is very easy. It is very flexible with its setup as well as the user interfaces whereas Splunk is a bix complex to set up but very powerful with its on-premise/off-premise integration.
5. Kibana is completely an open source. Splunk is a licensed software (SaaS) and its services are charged. Splunk has three versions.
- Splunk Enterprise: As the name suggests, is used by large organizations and enterprises.
- Splunk cloud: It is a platform on which users can develop their applications. It can be hosted on AWS cloud as well.
- Splunk Lite: This is a free trial with limited features for users to get a feel of what it can do.
6. Splunk is truly agile, users can develop their PoC and can convert it into a product with ease as it supports instant conversion. Kibana is tightly coupled with the ELK stack. Analysis and visualization can be done only after completely setting up the ELK stack.
7. Splunk allows the users to create central repositories across the Splunk cloud, the stored data can be retrieved from various sources.
8. Kibana doesn’t offer solaris portability whereas Splunk does.
9. Kibana is developed using apache lucene and is developed in Java. Splunk is standalone and is developed in C++.
10. Splunk offers extra security to the user’s centralized hosted data as it is proprietary and licensed, it offers extra security features to store the data.
Comparison Table of Kibana vs Splunk
The table below summarizes the comparisons between Kibana vs Splunk:
| Kibana | Splunk |
| Kibana is a park of ELK stack. | Splunk is a proprietary standalone software/service. |
| Kibana uses Apache Lucene’s syntax for its queries. | Splunk uses its custom written Search Processing Language (SPL). |
| Kibana is also fast but when compared to Splunk, not so much. It still has to improve its data retrieving techniques to make it more efficient. | Splunk is very powerful when it comes to data analyzing and processing. |
| Kibana has a lot of detailed documentation available, there are many open source platforms that discuss and share the feature information. | Splunk has vast documentation and customer care support for any issue that may arise. |
| Kibana is completely open source and hence free. It is easy to set up and offers various tutorials on how to use it. | Splunk is licensed and hence charged. It is quite expensive to use. |
| Kibana’s focus is mainly on monitoring tools. | Splunk’s focus is mainly on log analysis. |
| Kibana is relatively new and it is growing rapidly. It is very relevant to today’s needs and offers various advanced features. | Splunk is a mature product in the market which is established and has its own community. |
| Kibana is highly interactive. Its UI is very user friendly. | Splunk provides a dashboard for the analysis visualization but is not as interactive as Kibana. |
| Debugging is not available in Kibana. | Splunk provides debugging and troubleshooting support in cases of failure to find the root cause. |
| Kibana allows data formats like JSON, unlike Splunk, it does not allow all kinds of data but it can be integrated with third parties to send data in the desired format. | Splunk can take in any data formats like .csv, log files, JSON, etc. and is very flexible for integrating with other plugins or tools. |
| LinkedIn, Netflix, StackOverflow are few organizations that use Kibana. | Bosch, Cisco, Adobe are few organizations that use Splunk. |
Conclusion
Overall, both the tools have their own pros and cons as we have seen earlier. Selecting a tool is completely based on the system and its requirements. For applications that require constant backend support and powerful and fast analysis, Splunk is a better alternative whereas organizations that cannot afford Splunk, need real-time monitoring can pick Kibana.
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