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 Logs › Enterprise September 2026 Edition

Log management for enterprise buyers

Asked as “log management platform”, and as “centralized logging tool”, on behalf of an enterprise B2B company. 54 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing
Clear leader
41% of first choices, clear leader.

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 an enterprise B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01Splunk41%34%61criticized default
02Datadog Log Management20%26%61criticized challenger
03Elastic Stack7%26%47criticized challenger
04Sumo Logic6%15%33accepted challenger
05New Relic Logs4%14%22accepted challenger
06Coralogix4%0%11accepted challenger
07Grafana Loki2%0%30accepted challenger
08Cribl2%0%13accepted challenger
09Elastic Observability2%0%11accepted challenger
10Dynatrace2%17%18accepted challenger
Show the three products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
13Graylog0%24%21accepted challenger
12Microsoft Sentinel0%0%12accepted challenger
11OpenObserve0%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
12
13
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative60%
Key
01Splunk41%
02Datadog Log Management20%
03Elastic Stack7%
04Sumo Logic6%
05New Relic Logs4%
06Coralogix4%
07Grafana Loki2%
08Cribl2%
09Elastic Observability2%
10Dynatrace2%
11OpenObserve0%
12Microsoft Sentinel0%
13Graylog0%

02What they warned about

Zero of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.4 mini, Gemini 3.5 Flash, Perplexity Sonar, Grok 4.1 Fast, Mistral Small, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Llama 4 Maverick, Qwen 3.7 Flash, Kimi K2, GLM 4.7 FlashX 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
34%
21 of 61 labels negative · 11 of 12 models · 4 hard negative
“Avoid these for predictability — **Splunk** — ... which makes it hard to forecast. ✗” DeepSeek V4 Flash, budget prompt
Datadog Log Management
26%
16 of 61 labels negative · 10 of 12 models · 4 hard negative
“Options to Avoid if Cost Predictability is Critical: Datadog's pricing model is complex and expensive at scale” Claude Haiku 4.5, budget prompt
Elastic Stack
26%
12 of 47 labels negative · 10 of 12 models · 3 hard negative
“**Why?** Operational nightmare at scale... Best avoided if: You're not running managed services like Elastic Cloud” Grok 4.1 Fast, negative prompt
Graylog
24%
5 of 21 labels negative · 5 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“Platforms to **Strongly Avoid or Approach with Extreme Caution**: 1. **Graylog (especially self-managed deployments)**” Grok 4.1 Fast, 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

61 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. 826 links across 218 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

vendor site · OpenObserve28 answers · 37 citations · 9 models
vendor site · Cribl28 answers · 36 citations · 10 models
vendor site · SigNoz24 answers · 27 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Middleware.io24 answers · 26 citations · 9 models
23 answers · 29 citations · 9 models
vendor site · CubeAPM23 answers · 26 citations · 9 models
vendor site · Dash019 answers · 33 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Parseable19 answers · 24 citations · 8 models
vendor site · Exabeam17 answers · 21 citations · 8 models
15 answers · 15 citations · 9 models
14 answers · 23 citations · 7 models
14 answers · 14 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 an enterprise B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which centralized logging tool would you recommend to a large B2B company with thousands of employees?”Comparative“What are the top enterprise-grade log management platforms and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best log management platform for a large company that needs predictable total cost across thousands of users?”Scale-constrained“We are a 5,000 person company with SSO, SOC 2 and procurement review requirements evaluating a log management platform. What should we look at?”Negative“Which log management platforms should a large enterprise avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Datadog Log Management, Splunk
One alternativeSumo Logic
Splunk, Sumo LogicChanged
Six alternativesCribl Stream, Datadog Log Management, Dynatrace, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, Graylog
no first choiceagainst: SplunkNew Relic Logs
One alternativeCubeAPM
against: Datadog Log Management, Splunk
no first choiceagainst: Elastic Stack, OpenSearch, Splunk
GPT-5.4 miniDatadog Log Management
Four alternativesElastic Observability, Grafana Loki, New Relic Logs, Splunk
SplunkChanged
Two alternativesElastic Observability, Sumo Logic
Splunk
Six alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Observability, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, Microsoft Sentinel, Sumo Logic
Grafana Cloud Logs
Two alternativesDatadog Log Management, Splunk
against: Elastic Stack, Graylog
no first choicenothing named
Gemini 3.5 FlashDatadog Log Management, Splunk
Six alternativesCoralogix, Cribl Stream, Dynatrace, Grafana Loki, Logz.io, OpenObserve
Datadog Log ManagementChanged
Three alternativesCoralogix, Dynatrace, Grafana Loki
against: Elastic Stack, Splunk
no first choice
Six alternativesDatadog Log Management, Dynatrace, Elastic Stack (ELK) & OpenSearch, Grafana Loki, Splunk, Sumo Logic
Grafana Loki
Four alternativesCoralogix, Cribl Stream, CrowdStrike Falcon LogScale, OpenObserve
against: Datadog Log Management, Splunk, Sumo Logic
Splunk, Sumo Logic
Five alternativesCrowdStrike Falcon LogScale, Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, New Relic Logs
against: ArcSight, Better Stack, Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, IBM QRadar, LogRhythm, Loggly, OpenSearch, SolarWinds Papertrail, Splunk
Perplexity SonarElastic Observability
Five alternativesCribl, Datadog Log Management, Microsoft Sentinel, OpenObserve, Splunk
SplunkChanged
Three alternativesCribl, Datadog Log Management, Graylog
no first choiceCubeAPM
Two alternativesCoralogix, Cribl
no first choiceagainst: Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Graylog, Splunk
Grok 4.1 FastElastic Stack, Splunk
Two alternativesDatadog Log Management, Sumo Logic
SplunkChanged
Three alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Sumo Logic
no first choiceNew Relic Logs
One alternativeGrafana Loki
against: Datadog Log Management
Splunk
Three alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Sumo Logic
against: Dynatrace
against: Datadog Log Management, Dynatrace, Elastic Stack, Graylog, Splunk
Mistral SmallDatadog Log Management, Splunk Observability Cloud
Three alternativesCribl, Elastic Observability, Grafana Loki
SplunkChanged
Two alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Stack
Splunk
Five alternativesCribl, Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Graylog, Microsoft Sentinel
Coralogix, CubeAPM
One alternativeNew Relic Logs
against: Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Splunk
no first choiceagainst: Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Splunk
DeepSeek V4 FlashDatadog Log Management, Splunk
Five alternativesCribl, Dynatrace, Elastic Observability, New Relic Logs, OpenObserve
SplunkChanged
Four alternativesCribl, Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Sumo Logic
Datadog Log Management, Splunk
Seven alternativesElastic Observability, Grafana Loki, Graylog, New Relic Logs, OpenObserve, SigNoz, Sumo Logic
Dynatrace
One alternativeExabeam
against: Datadog Log Management, Splunk, Sumo Logic
no first choiceagainst: Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Graylog, Loggly, OpenSearch, SolarWinds Papertrail, Splunk, Sumo Logic
Llama 4 MaverickCribl
Three alternativesDatadog Log Management, Dynatrace, Elastic Observability
SplunkChanged
Two alternativesDatadog Log Management, Dynatrace
no first choiceCubeAPM
Two alternativesGrafana Cloud, SigNoz
against: Datadog Log Management
no first choiceagainst: Datadog Log Management, Dynatrace, Splunk
Qwen 3.7 FlashSplunk
Four alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, Microsoft Sentinel
Datadog Log Management, SplunkChanged
Two alternativesElastic Stack, Grafana Loki
Splunk
Three alternativesCribl, Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack
Sumo Logic
Two alternativesGraylog, OpenSearch / Elasticsearch
against: Datadog Log Management, New Relic Logs, Splunk
no first choice
Four alternativesCloud-Native, Datadog Log Management, Dynatrace, New Relic Logs
against: Elastic Stack, OpenSearch, Splunk, Sumo Logic
against: Loggly, SolarWinds Papertrail
Kimi K2Splunk
Four alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Logpoint, Sumo Logic
Datadog Log Management, Elastic StackChanged
One alternativeCribl
against: Splunk
Splunk
Four alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, Sumo Logic
Coralogixagainst: Datadog Log Management, Grafana Cloud, New Relic Logs, SplunkSplunk
Four alternativesCrowdStrike Falcon LogScale, Datadog Log Management, Elastic Security, Microsoft Sentinel
against: Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Splunk, Sumo Logic
GLM 4.7 FlashXDatadog Log Management, Splunk
Three alternativesElastic Stack, Grafana Cloud, New Relic Logs
SplunkChanged
Four alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, OpenObserve
Splunk
Seven alternativesAmazon CloudWatch Logs, Azure Monitor, Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Google Cloud Logging, New Relic Logs, Sumo Logic
Datadog Log Management, Elastic Stackagainst: New Relic Logs, Splunkno first choiceagainst: Elastic Stack, Graylog, IBM QRadar, Splunk
MiniMax M2.5Elastic Stack, Splunk
One alternativeGrafana Loki
SplunkChanged
Six alternativesDatadog Log Management, Elastic Stack, Grafana Loki, Graylog, Microsoft Sentinel, Sumo Logic
against: IBM QRadar
no first choiceManageEngine Log360
Four alternativesDash0, KloudMate, Netdata, Sumo Logic
against: Datadog Log Management, Splunk
Datadog Log Management, Splunk
Two alternativesElastic Stack, Microsoft Sentinel
nothing named
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 11:37no05 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:41yes55 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:07yes929 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 12:50yes205 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 12:00yes3817 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:38yes96 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 09:43yes914 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:33yes53 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:30no038 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:18yes1527 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:03yes1562 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:55yes526 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:20yes98 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:01yes45 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:52yes922 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:26yes206 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 10:56yes138 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:13no03 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:19yes913 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:48yes52 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 14:02yes1041 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:39yes1062 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:32yes1336 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:26no068 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:28yes99 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:17yes710 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:04yes2034 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 11:47yes208 s
ComparativeGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 12:59yes2715 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:31yes57 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:59yes1218 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:22yes53 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:14yes545 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:45yes1851 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:30no0158 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:14yes947 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:19yes97 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:22yes47 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:53yes2332 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:16yes205 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 11:09yes3921 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:06yes55 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 10:24yes2331 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:15yes53 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:47yes13117 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:46yes2031 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:16yes2766 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:27yes532 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:15no06 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:54no010 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:58yes932 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:02yes208 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 12:11yes1513 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:47no08 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:13yes3033 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:16yes55 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:54no043 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:04yes1526 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:29yes2358 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 10:10yes1029 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:31yes2816 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:48no06 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:31yes1425 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:48yes197 s
Negative framingGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 10:41yes2217 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:05yes1914 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:59yes3445 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:03yes53 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:45yes2663 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:32yes2937 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:39yes25165 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:11no09 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
Datadog read as Datadog Log Management
ELK read as Elastic Stack
ELK Stack read as Elastic Stack
ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) read as Elastic Stack
ELK Stack (Elasticsearch/Logstash/Kibana, self-hosted) read as Elastic Stack
Elastic read as Elastic Stack
Elastic (ELK Stack) read as Elastic Stack
Elastic (ELK Stack/Observability) read as Elastic Stack
Elastic (ELK) read as Elastic Stack
Elastic Cloud read as Elastic Stack
Elasticsearch read as Elastic Stack
Elasticsearch (ELK) read as Elastic Stack
New Relic read as New Relic Logs
Unresolved, counted raw
BusinessLOG
ClickHouse-based architectures
IBM QRadar Log Insights
KloudMate
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.
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