10 Best Log Monitoring Tools in 2024

There is no doubt that logging your system's activity is essential for its proper function. Logs can give you insight into occurring problems and help you understand how your software performs over time, where it excels, and where it fails.

When every aspect of the infrastructure logs on its own, you can easily have dozens of individual logs to look after, which is nearly impossible - that's why it's always good to use Log monitoring tools.

Centralized logging

Having multiple log sources is inevitable but storing and analyzing them independently is impractical. Centralized logging allows you to oversight multiple log sources at once by:

• Log collection and transport - To get real-time insight into logs, you need to transport logs using either an API or by configuring individual loggings to log directly into the centralized log manager. At the same time, you need to think about packet loss and how to prevent it.
• Log storing - Considering data volume and retention period is important when picking a monitoring solution.
• Log analysis - Comprehensive analysis of individual logs depends on properly distributing them into categories, visualization, and understanding reoccurring patterns or developing trends. This can also help you to baseline your software and set thresholds for other monitors. A lot of this is nowadays handled by AI.
• Alerting - After setting thresholds and understanding your software's behavior, you can integrate your monitoring solution with common tools. This way, you will be instantly alerted if anything goes south.

Log monitoring is also used in other monitoring practices such as:

• Server Monitoring
• Network Monitoring
• Application Monitoring
• Database Monitoring
• Cloud Monitoring

.. and more

The Best Log Monitoring Tools in 2023

Now, let's take a look at the best tools for Log monitoring in 2023.

1. Better Stack

Better Stack allows you to query your logs the same way you'd query your database with SQL-compatible structured log management. Thanks to a custom-built data pipeline and ClickHouse you can search & filter petabytes of logs in a moment and set an anomaly detection alert to receive alerts when your logs become out of the ordinary. On top of that, thanks to Better Stack's efficiency you save funds at the same time.

By offering integrations into stacks like Kubernetes, Heroku, Logstash, Rails, Docker, AWS, and more, you get a broad array of options for monitoring. All the collected data are sent to Grafana for comprehensive visualization and more efficient intel management. Everything is put together in a very well-designed, dark-mode UI.

One of the greatest benefits of Better Stack is built-in collaboration features, where you can cooperate with your colleagues in a Google Docs-like environment, save, share, and archive parts of code, and collaborate with your colleagues.

Tighter security is one of the main byproducts of log monitoring, and Better Stack itself is one of the most secure tools available. Using industry-standard best practices and cooperating only with data centers compliant with DIN ISO/IEC27001 certifications, your data is safe during both transit and storage.

Explore the full Better Stack demos library

Pros:

• Advanced Collaboration Features
• A one-click filter of logs
• Better Stack Uptime integration for a full-stack monitoring solution
• Inexpensive and extremely efficient ClickHouse-based tool
• Free tier with PAYG
• Robust log management and performance monitoring
• Customizable and user-friendly interface
• Extensive analytics capabilities, including custom alerts, dashboards, and real-time performance metrics
• Dozens of integrations
• Built-in incident management features

Cons:

• Not a complete observability tool

Pricing:

Better Stack provides a Free Tier that includes essential features at no cost, making it ideal for small projects or startups. This plan offers 30 GB of logs per month along with one status page. For those needing advanced features, such as Single Sign-On (SSO) or white-labeling options, these are available through a flexible pay-as-you-go plan.

2. Papertrail (SolarWinds)

Papertrail aggregates and analyses logs from a variety of sources that come in different types. That includes syslogs, .txt log files, Apache, MySQL, Ruby on Rails, Windows Events, Tomcat, Heroku, or logs from apps, routers, or firewalls.

Logs are scanned for any anomalies or deviations, and if needed, real-time alerts and summaries are displayed. Papertrail offers support for multiple languages and platforms, including Angular, Linux Logging Software, and Log Management, Ruby, NGINX, MySQL, Javascript, HAproxy, and Golang. With the ability to create per-user access control protocols, you do not compromise consistency or data security and integrity by giving access to multiple team members.

You can get Papertrail for free with a 48-hour search window, seven days archive, and a 16 GB first-month bonus followed by a 50 MB/month quota. If you are looking for paid packages, Papertrail's bundles start at $7/month.

Pros:

• Solarwinds backing
• Cron Job Monitoring
• Enter keywords to quickly locate logs and troubleshoot issues
• Supports multiple machines per host, enhancing flexibility in log management.

Cons:

• Users must export logs manually for further analysis, which can be cumbersome.

Pricing:

Papertrail offers a variety of options starting with $7 for 1GB/month all the way up to $230 for 25GB/month.

3. Mezmo

Mezmo parses major log line types on ingestion and offers Custom Parsing Templates. You can filter your logs based on app, host, or cluster, browse logs from any source instantly, and search through them with simple keywords, exclusion terms, chained expressions, and data ranges. Alerts are set off based on either Presence or Absence, or generate an alert from a saved View and report on them in PagerDuty, Slack, or with a custom Webhook. Mezmo also allows you to save views to access common Filters and Searches and share them.

Mezmo is built on Elasticsearch, providing you with relatively fast and reliable indexing and filtering of your logs. A web-based GUI handles filtering, logs grouping by source, and more. Visualization and custom dashboards are also available, and you can work with user-specific logs. Agentless log collection via Syslog and HTTP(s) with full-text search and visualizations are available.

Mezmo's pricing packages depend on the retention period in days and the number of users. For starters, you can get Mezmo for free for one user without any log retention and unlimited saved views.

Pros:

• Pay-as-you-go pricing model
• Well-designed UI
• Friendly UI
• Live tailing and alerts
• Integrations with various platforms

Cons:

• Dashboard and metrics can feel basic
• Searching logs can be cumbersome

Pricing:

Mezmo provides a range of plans, including free, professional, and enterprise options. The free plan allows for up to 25 users but does not include any data retention. The professional plan starts at $0.80 per GB with a 3-day retention, and users can choose to extend this retention to 7, 14, or 30 days, with pricing increasing to $1.80 per GB. The enterprise plan is available through a custom quote and supports unlimited users, ensuring compliance with HIPAA and PCI standards.

4. Sematext Logs

Sematext is a monitoring and logging service. It uses a method of centralized logging and provides you with a way to aggregate and store logs from any data source in one location. You can collect data from servers, applications, databases, containers, systems, and more. Sematext allows you to use live-time viewing of your logs as they arrive in the cloud from multiple data sources.

It uses Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana for collecting and transforming data, searching, filtering, and analyzing, and finally, data managing and visualization. You can troubleshoot faster using real-time alerting on both metrics and logs. Log analyzing and looking for anomalies make the whole process quicker. You can integrate it with email, PagerDuty, Slack, HipChat, BigPanda, OpsGenie, VictorOps, WebHooks, Nagios, Zapier, and more.

Sematext runs on AWS, an infrastructure that follows strict IT security best practices. Your logs are encrypted via HTTPS and sent through TLS/SLL channels. You can also restrict specific permissions to some members of your team.

Pros:

• It brings infrastructure and application performance monitoring together with log management
• Easy to use with good pre-configured dashboards and reports thus also quick to start
• No need for a lengthy configuration

Cons:

• Data retention periods can be quite short depending on the plan

Pricing:

Sematext provides three different plans for log monitoring tailored to meet diverse organizational requirements. The Basic Plan, priced at $5 per month, offers 500 MB of daily log volume with a 7-day retention period. For users needing greater capacity, the Standard Plan begins at $50 per month and includes 1 GB of daily log volume with the same 7-day retention. Finally, the Pro Plan starts at $60 per month, also providing 1 GB of daily volume along with a 7-day retention period

5. Sumo Logic

Sumo Logic offers a complete set of log management tools for the entire stack, whether cloud, on-premises, or hybrid. Centralized data visualization allows you to spot developing trends and disarm any errors before they occur or during damage control, finding the root cause faster. Thanks to anomaly detection, outlier detection, and predictive analytics, you get deep and comprehensive insights into your architecture's performance. Sumo logic offers real-time visibility into AWS, Azure, and GCP cloud applications and infrastructure. Alongside that, you get access to over 150 apps and native integrations to get full out-of-the-box visibility into third-party technologies.

Sumo Logic provides you with two dashboards - a live dashboard and an interactive one. The live dashboard offers numerous real-time data in the order they come. However, it doesn't provide an option to look back at the older data. That's where the interactive dashboard comes in. In the interactive dashboard, you can view a complete overview of events and trends, focus on the graphs, and identify rare events. You can filter for specific errors and exceptions to be able to focus on them in the future.

Pros:

• A free limited version is provided to you to test out the service
• It allows you to ingest the logs from your network directly and in real-time
• The application also offers extensive REST API
• GUI is easy to grasp, thus making it quicker to start

Cons:

• Some users report difficulties in leveraging more advanced features, including API integration for log monitoring

Pricing:

Sumo Logic offers three pricing tiers for which you need to contact sales.

6. LogicMonitor

LogicMonitor offers log intelligence at scale for hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Your data are centralized, correlated, and contextualized, with an emphasis on data hygiene and internal compliance. LogicMonitor allows you to centralize your monitoring, and correlate relevant logs with metrics in a single platform.

It supports more than 2000 integrations, modules, and pre-built templates for on-premises and cloud infrastructures. LogicMonitor is truly user-friendly since it offers query options for all experience levels. It also allows you to access raw data up to 12 months old. Metrics, logs, and log anomalies are all associated with their corresponding devices, cloud instances, and containers.

LogicMonitor manipulates your data with machine learning tools, which decreases troubleshooting times and allows better workflow by sparing your engineers of unproductive tasks. Anomalies are automatically detected and contextualized for easier root-cause analysis. LogicMonitor offers Full IT operations lifecycle support via integrations like ServiceNow, CMDB, and Ansible.

One of the biggest disadvantages is the need to communicate your subscription with a sales team. You need to get a custom quote.

Pros:

• Heavy usage of automation and machine learning methods
• Extensive use of automation and machine learning techniques
• Accommodates users of all experience levels without sacrificing functionality
• Offers a unified platform for monitoring a diverse range of devices and services
• Automatically identifies and configures IT assets
• Delivers tailored alerts and reports
• Monitors resources in both on-premises and cloud environments
• Facilitates quick implementation and user-friendly operation

Cons:

• A steep learning curve is associated with mastering all features of the platform

Pricing:

LogicMonitor offers a free trial with feature-based pricing later on.

7. Datadog

Datadog’s Log management allows you to gain complete visibility into cloud-scale infrastructure. It is capable of aggregating metrics and events from over 500 integrated technologies, tagging and storing them. Using Datadog’s Log Management, you can collect, search, and analyze logs, and then correlate them using specific traces, metric spikes, or security signals.

Datadog is an intuitive platform, that allows you to correlate individual logs and discover patterns. It allows you to visualize data using customizable, drag-and-drop dashboards. Log querying can be done without the knowledge of any query language. Datadog's alerts are powered by machine learning that automatically detects anomalies and logs errors.

Datadog’s Log management is also capable of identifying potential threats, discovering misconfiguration, and monitoring your logs using threshold and anomaly detection. On top of that, you can monitor the security of all layers of your cloud environment. Datadog tracks the performance impact of every code deployed and automatically maps data flows and dependencies with the service map.

Pros:

• Security monitoring capacities
• Centralized log management and aggregation from various sources, including servers, containers, applications, and cloud services
• Real-time log analysis with robust filtering, searching, and tagging functionalities
• Seamless integration with Datadog’s infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring (APM), and security tools
• Performance dashboards for visualizing metrics and insights
• Machine learning-driven insights to identify anomalies and patterns within log data
• Built-in alerting based on log patterns and predefined thresholds, with notifications sent via email, Slack, and other integrated platforms
• Long-term log retention options to satisfy compliance and auditing requirements

Cons:

• A lot of features for new users
• Advanced analytics and monitoring features may require additional setup and configuration
• Some users may find it overkill if they need only basic log management without full observability

Pricing:

Datadog provides a 15-day retention period for default users, with the flexibility to extend this duration upon request. The pricing for data ingestion begins at $0.10 per GB per month and $1.70 per million log events per month for standard indexing.

8. Dynatrace

Dynatrace offers Log Monitoring as a part of their platform. It allows you to create custom log metrics for smarter and faster troubleshooting and understanding logs in context. Their Log Management solution offers Log data analysis and alerting. Dynatrace allows you to analyze log events across different parts of production and over longer periods of time. Dynatrace leverages artificial intelligence to correlate log messages and problems your monitors register. All of the data is used for root-cause analysis. You can also define custom rules and log metrics to receive notifications if any anomalies or passed thresholds occur. Dynatrace offers two products, Log monitoring v1 and Log monitoring v2 modes and they offer different approaches to log management, whereas the v2 is considered by Dynatrace as newer. V2 removes issues with logs with unrecognized timestamps and offers a generic log data ingestion engine. However, a lot of features are still missing in the v2, such as sensitive info masking, UI configuration files on a host, or on-demand access to log files on the monitored host. However, Dynatrace is not easy to jump into and requires more learning. Dynatrace offers either a full-stack monitoring solution or multiple individual plans.

Pros:

• The AI-assisted full-stack monitoring solution
• More than 560 supported technologies
• Solutions also cover security, Digital Experience, or even Business Analytics

Cons:

• Complex features might make it difficult to master
• Not as effective for log management compared to other specialized tools

Pricing:

Dynatrace starts at $0.20 GiB for ingesting and processing, with $0.0007/day for retaining, and $0.0035 for querying.

9. Splunk

Splunk’s Log Observer is a log monitoring solution designed for DevOps. It allows you to integrate with the most popular data sources such as Kubernetes, Fluentd, or multiple AWS services. Splunk’s UI offers a point-and-click interface for rapid investigation of logs, which makes it easy to filter, sort, and explore data based on what you want to see at the moment. Log Observer also offers Live Tail features allowing you to observe and filter logs in real-time. Splunk is fast when searching for short-time data. However, it stays behind when getting data from a longer period of time, or when identifying trends.

Splunk’s log management is a part of the Observability Platform, a complete platform combining Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, RUM, APM, and On-Call. Splunk is an enterprise-ready solution that reflects mostly on its price. Log observer is billed in two ways. Your bill can be calculated based on the amount of data indexed, or indexed. You can try Splunk Cloud or Enterprise in a free trial period.

Pros:

• Splunk’s Observability Platform
• Enterprise-focused solution
• Indexing large volumes of machine-generated data from various sources
• Robust tools for data analysis, including search, reporting, and visualization capabilities
• Tailored dashboards to visualize key metrics and insights
• A wide range of apps and add-ons available through the Splunkbase
• Strong capabilities for security information and event management (SIEM) to detect and respond to threats
• Designed to handle large-scale data environments efficiently

Cons:

• Initial installation and configuration can be complex and time-consuming
• Requires substantial resources to run optimally
• New users may find it challenging to navigate and fully utilize its advanced features

Pricing:

Splunk offers a pricing model based on data ingestion. To get the quote, you have to contact sales.

10. Logstash

Logstash is a free and open server-side data processing pipeline for data ingestion from multiple sources. Logstash is a part of the ELK stack - Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana. Logstash ingests, transforms, and transfers your data of any format or complexity and allows you to derive structure from unstructured data using Grok or collect geo coordinates from IP addresses. Logstash supports a variety of outputs that allow you to route your data with flexibility and according to your needs. Thanks to more than 200 plugins, Logstash is quite customizable, and if you can't find what you're looking for, you can always use their API for plugin development.

Elastic is available both as Elastic Cloud, a public cloud-managed service available on all the major platforms, or a fully configurable and customizable Elastic Stack is available for download. Elastic Cloud starter premium package is Standard and starts at $16/month.

Pros:

• Open source
• It's an integral part of the ELK stack
• Includes alerts

Cons:

• Scaling can get quite expensive
• Easily replaceable with better tools

Pricing:

Logstash offers a free trial with multiple plans starting with Standard for $95/month all the way to Enterprise for $175/month.

Tools summary:

Conclusion

In this article, we went over Log Monitoring. We also explained what are the benefits of centralized logging and log monitoring. Then we proposed a list of The Best Log Monitoring Tools in 2023 and their main benefits.