IT AI Index
September 2026 Edition · The permanent record of this edition. The unqualified address always carries the latest edition.
Index IT operations and endpoint September 2026 Edition

Log management

Asked as “log management platform”, and as “centralized logging tool”, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. 50 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing
Contested
20% of first choices, contested.

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment; they sit side by side and are never added together.

01The standing

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all twelve models, for a mid-market B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01Datadog Log Management20%29%58criticized challenger
02Grafana Loki16%7%44accepted challenger
03Graylog10%14%37accepted challenger
04New Relic Logs10%7%27accepted challenger
05OpenObserve8%5%22accepted challenger
06Better Stack8%0%19accepted challenger
07SigNoz6%0%13accepted challenger
08Elastic Stack2%35%55criticized challenger
Show the three products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
11Splunk0%53%51criticized challenger
09Sumo Logic0%11%18accepted challenger
10Cribl0%0%12accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its vendor page.

Recommended versus criticized

Every product with at least 10 labels here, on both axes. The 30% line names a quadrant, not the verdict above: that one needs more than 40%.

Criticized challengerCriticized default
Negative label rate →
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative40%
Key
01Datadog Log Management20%
02Grafana Loki16%
03Graylog10%
04New Relic Logs10%
05OpenObserve8%
06Better Stack8%
07SigNoz6%
08Elastic Stack2%
09Sumo Logic0%
10Cribl0%
11Splunk0%

02What they warned about

Two of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, Gemini 3.5 Flash, Perplexity Sonar, Grok 4.1 Fast, Mistral Small, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Llama 4 Maverick, Qwen 3.7 Flash, Kimi K2 and MiniMax M2.5 changed. A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
Splunk
53%
27 of 51 labels negative · 11 of 12 models · 6 hard negative
“Avoid Splunk for mid-market—it's enterprise-priced (~$150/GB/day list, $10K+/mo easily) and overkill” Grok 4.1 Fast, direct prompt
Datadog Log Management
29%
17 of 58 labels negative · 11 of 12 models · 4 hard negative
“**Avoid Datadog for logs** if you cannot strictly govern data volume or need multi-year retention.” Kimi K2, negative prompt
Elastic Stack
35%
19 of 55 labels negative · 9 of 12 models · 6 hard negative
“The "Operational Burdens" (Avoid unless you have expertise)... you may find the cluster constantly crashing” Qwen 3.7 Flash, negative prompt
Graylog
14%
5 of 37 labels negative · 5 of 12 models
“Had a privilege escalation vulnerability (CVE-2025-53106)... Ensure you're running version 6.2.4 or 6.3.0-rc.2 or later.” MiniMax M2.5, negative prompt

03What they cite

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list: twelve of the twelve in this edition, and all six flagship models on the expanded tier.

Sites the answers cite

62 of 72 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 6 of those lists are Google grounding redirects that name no site and are left out of the counts. 781 links across 207 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

vendor site · Cribl35 answers · 50 citations · 10 models
vendor site · OpenObserve33 answers · 37 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Middleware.io23 answers · 26 citations · 9 models
22 answers · 28 citations · 8 models
vendor site · Dash021 answers · 29 citations · 9 models
vendor site · Expert Insights18 answers · 19 citations · 8 models
vendor site · Logz.io17 answers · 20 citations · 7 models
vendor site · CubeAPM17 answers · 18 citations · 8 models
vendor site · SigNoz16 answers · 16 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Parseable15 answers · 20 citations · 8 models
vendor site · Exabeam14 answers · 14 citations · 9 models
13 answers · 16 citations · 9 models

Pages the answers cite

The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.

04How they answered

Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ModelDirect“What is the best log management platform for a mid-market B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which centralized logging tool would you recommend to a mid-sized B2B company?”Comparative“What are the top log management platforms and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best log management platform for a company with a limited budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 500 person company evaluating a log management platform. What should we look at?”Negative“Which log management platforms should I avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5no first choiceagainst: Elastic StackDatadog Log Management, Grafana LokiChangedagainst: SplunkLogz.io
One alternativeSumo Logic
against: Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Graylog, Splunk
SolarWinds Papertrail
Two alternativesGrafana Loki, New Relic Logs
against: Elastic Stack
no first choiceagainst: Splunk
GPT-5.4 miniDatadog Log Management
Two alternativesNew Relic Logs, Splunk
against: Elastic Stack
Datadog Log ManagementHeld
Three alternativesElastic Stack / OpenSearch, Grafana Loki, Sumo Logic
against: Splunk
no first choiceGrafana Loki
Four alternativesAmazon CloudWatch Logs, Azure Monitor, Google Cloud Logging, OpenSearch / Elasticsearch
against: Datadog Log Management, Splunk
no first choicenothing named
Gemini 3.5 FlashCoralogix
Two alternativesBetter Stack, Grafana Loki
against: Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Splunk
Better Stack, Grafana CloudChanged
Two alternativesAxiom, Sumo Logic
against: Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack
no first choice
Six alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, OpenObserve, OpenSearch, Splunk
Axiom, Better Stack
Three alternativesGrafana Loki, New Relic Logs, OpenObserve
against: Elastic Stack, Graylog, OpenSearch
no first choiceagainst: Elastic Stackagainst: Amazon CloudWatch Logs, ArcSight, Datadog Log Management, Decentralized Log Aggregation, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, LogRhythm, Splunk
Perplexity SonarNew Relic Logs
Three alternativesManageEngine Log360, Middleware.io, Sematext
ManageEngine EventLog AnalyzerChanged
Two alternativesDatadog Log Management, Graylog
no first choiceBetter Stack, Grafana Loki
One alternativeOpenObserve
against: Elastic Observability
no first choiceagainst: Datadog Log Management, OpenObserve, SolarWinds, Splunk
Grok 4.1 FastDatadog Log Management, New Relic Logs
Three alternativesGrafana Loki, Graylog, ManageEngine Log360
against: Elastic Stack, Splunk
Datadog Log ManagementChanged
Three alternativesElastic Stack, Grafana Loki, Graylog
against: Splunk
no first choiceGrafana Loki
Five alternativesElastic Stack, Grafana Cloud, Graylog, New Relic Logs, OpenSearch
against: Datadog Log Management, Splunk
no first choice
Four alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, New Relic Logs
against: Splunk
against: Datadog Cloud SIEM, Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, FortiSIEM, Graylog, ManageEngine Log360, SolarWinds Papertrail, Splunk
Mistral SmallGraylog
Two alternativesNew Relic Logs, Sematext
ManageEngine EventLog AnalyzerChangedno first choiceAxiom
Three alternativesGrafana Loki, Graylog, SolarWinds Papertrail
no first choiceagainst: Datadog Log Management, SolarWinds, Splunk
DeepSeek V4 FlashNew Relic Logs, SigNoz
Three alternativesGrafana Loki, ManageEngine Log360, Splunk
against: Datadog Log Management
Grafana LokiChanged
Four alternativesBetter Stack, Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, SigNoz
against: Splunk
no first choice
Six alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, Logz.io, Splunk, Sumo Logic
Axiom, OpenObserve
Four alternativesGrafana Loki, Graylog, SigNoz, SolarWinds Papertrail
Grafana Loki, OpenObserve, SigNoz
One alternativeElastic Stack
against: Datadog Log Management, New Relic Logs, Splunk
against: Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, Splunk
Llama 4 MaverickMiddleware.io
Three alternativesGraylog, ManageEngine Log360, New Relic Logs
GraylogChanged
Three alternativesManageEngine EventLog Analyzer, OpenObserve, Sumo Logic
no first choiceOpenObserve
Three alternativesGrafana Loki, Graylog, SigNoz
no first choiceagainst: SolarWinds
Qwen 3.7 FlashDatadog Log Management, New Relic Logs
Three alternativesElastic Stack, OpenObserve, Sumo Logic
GraylogChanged
Two alternativesDatadog Log Management, Grafana Loki
against: Splunk
no first choice
Six alternativesCribl, Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, Mezmo, Splunk
Elastic Stack
Five alternativesAxiom, Better Stack, Grafana Loki, Graylog, SolarWinds Papertrail
no first choice
Five alternativesDatadog Log Management, Dynatrace, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, Graylog
against: Splunk
against: AppDynamics, Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, New Relic Logs, SolarWinds, Splunk
Kimi K2Datadog Log Management
Four alternativesGraylog, Middleware.io, New Relic Logs, OpenObserve
against: Splunk
GraylogChanged
Two alternativesBetter Stack, Datadog Log Management
against: Elastic Stack
no first choiceGrafana Loki, OpenObserve
Three alternativesFluent Bit, Graylog, SigNoz
against: Datadog Log Management, ELK / OpenSearch Stack, Splunk, Sumo Logic
no first choiceagainst: Splunkagainst: Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, Splunk
GLM 4.7 FlashXDatadog Log Management
Two alternativesElastic Stack, Splunk
Datadog Log ManagementHeld
Two alternativesGraylog, Logz.io
Datadog Log Management, Splunk
Three alternativesCribl, Elastic Stack (ELK) & OpenSearch, Grafana Loki
Grafana Loki
Three alternativesBetter Stack, Grafana Cloud, SolarWinds Papertrail
against: Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Splunk
no first choiceagainst: Azure Log Analytics Agent, Elastic Stack, Graylog, Logging Made Easy, Scribe, Splunk
MiniMax M2.5New Relic Logs
Four alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, LogRhythm, ManageEngine Log360
Datadog Log Management, GraylogChangedagainst: Elastic Stack, Splunkno first choice
Two alternativesElastic Stack, Splunk
Better Stack, Grafana Cloud, SigNoz
Two alternativesGrafana Loki, OpenObserve
against: Elastic Stack
no first choice
Four alternativesCribl, Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Splunk
against: CrowdStrike Falcon LogScale, Datadog Log Management, Graylog, Log4j 1.x, Sumo Logic
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

05The record

One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency. Full answer text is in the free responses file. Download the record
Seventy-two rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
PromptModelVersion stringTime (UTC)SearchedSourcesLatency
Direct recommendationClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:14no05 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 14:10yes47 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:52yes1727 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:50yes205 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 11:13yes3418 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:45yes1110 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 10:51yes1016 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:40yes53 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:47yes939 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:26yes921 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:22yes1246 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:34yes932 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 09:38no06 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:52no03 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 14:13yes824 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:21yes205 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 12:10yes179 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:05yes54 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:57yes1020 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:20yes53 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:49no042 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:34yes12103 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:29yes1094 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:44no011 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:03yes99 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:27yes79 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:51yes921 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:34yes206 s
ComparativeGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 13:41yes3318 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:56yes58 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:50yes1010 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:37yes52 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:32yes1548 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:41yes1239 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:55yes2571 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 14:11yes575 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 09:57yes96 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 14:15no04 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:19yes1723 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:04yes205 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 12:41yes159 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:49yes54 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:37yes913 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:41yes53 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:09no038 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:14yes946 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:55yes25157 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:00yes732 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:49yes1814 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:03no07 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:24yes1326 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 12:59yes206 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 14:04yes1412 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:23no06 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:17yes1422 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:06yes53 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:07no038 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 14:06yes1531 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:27yes20137 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 10:18yes517 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:07yes3513 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:10yes44 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:04yes1719 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 12:32yes206 s
Negative framingGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 11:29yes2312 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:14yes54 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:05yes2439 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:04yes52 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:04yes1057 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:31yes2951 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:46yes4239 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:19yes2150 s

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

Category-scoped readings
AWS CloudWatch read as Amazon CloudWatch Logs
CloudWatch (AWS) read as Amazon CloudWatch Logs
Datadog read as Datadog Log Management
Datadog (Log Management) read as Datadog Log Management
Datadog (for Logs) read as Datadog Log Management
ELK read as Elastic Stack
ELK Stack read as Elastic Stack
ELK Stack (Elastic) read as Elastic Stack
ELK Stack (Elasticsearch + Logstash + Kibana) read as Elastic Stack
ELK Stack (Elasticsearch) read as Elastic Stack
ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) read as Elastic Stack
ELK Stack (Elasticsearch/Logstash/Kibana) read as Elastic Stack
ELK stack read as Elastic Stack
ELK stack (ElasticSearch, LogStash, Kibana) read as Elastic Stack
Elastic read as Elastic Stack
Elastic (ELK Stack) read as Elastic Stack
Elastic (ELK Stack: Elasticsearch + Kibana) read as Elastic Stack
Elastic (ELK) read as Elastic Stack
Elastic Cloud read as Elastic Stack
Elasticsearch read as Elastic Stack
New Relic read as New Relic Logs
Self-Hosted Elasticsearch (ELK Stack) read as Elastic Stack
Unresolved, counted raw
Azure Log Analytics Agent (MMA)
Decentralized Log Aggregation
ELK / OpenSearch Stack
Log4j 1.x
Logging Made Easy (LME)
Scribe
Sematext Logs
SolarWinds Log Analyzer
Syslog-ng
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.
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