Elastic Observability
Elastic Observability is a comprehensive, full-stack observability solution built on Elastic's Search AI Platform.
Our verdict
Who it's for
Full-stack observability solution built on a Search AI Platform, enabling faster troubleshooting with agentic AI.
Who should look elsewhere
Reviewers consistently report a steep learning curve, since getting real value out of the platform requires comfort with Kibana and query languages like KQL and ES|QL that new teams do not already know.
Pros
- +Fixes problems in seconds, not hours, using AI-driven insights.
- +Supports petabytes of data with cost-efficient storage and high performance.
- +Open source and standardized on OpenTelemetry for flexibility and extensibility.
- +Provides comprehensive full-stack visibility from bare metal to cloud and GenAI apps.
- +Offers zero-config, always-on analysis with machine learning to proactively identify issues.
Cons
- −Reviewers consistently report a steep learning curve, since getting real value out of the platform requires comfort with Kibana and query languages like KQL and ES|QL that new teams do not already know.
- −Running it well is resource-intensive on compute and storage, so self-managed deployments carry significant infrastructure overhead and cost-management burden as data volumes grow.
- −The pricing and licensing structure is widely described as confusing to decipher for large-scale deployments, and premium capabilities such as AI-powered APM sit behind expensive subscription tiers.
- −Compared with competitors like Datadog, users note weaker out-of-the-box automation and predictive AI features, leaving more manual configuration and setup work to the team.
Key features
- ✓Log analytics with Discover, prebuilt dashboards, and ES|QL
- ✓Application Performance Monitoring (APM) with native OpenTelemetry support
- ✓Infrastructure monitoring across cloud, on-prem, Kubernetes, and serverless
- ✓AIOps with zero-config anomaly detection, pattern analysis, and correlation
- ✓LLM observability for tracking GenAI app latency, errors, prompts, and costs
- ✓Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) with RUM, synthetic testing, and uptime monitoring
- ✓AI-driven log processing with Streams for automatic data organization
- ✓AI Assistant for natural language root cause insights and context
Pricing
| Plan | Price | Billing | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hosted | — | month | Full visibility and control over HW configuration, clusters size, node count, and versions; Custom control over cluster capacity; All solutions and platform capabilities |
| Serverless | — | month | Fully managed, just bring your data. Elastic manages all HW configuration, clusters size, node count, and versions.; Automatically scales up and down based on search and indexing load to optimize performance; Most solution and platform capabilities |
| Self-managed | — | month | Full control over deployment location, HW setup and configuration, orchestration, clusters size, node count, and versions; Custom control over cluster capacity, storage-based autoscaling available in ECE and ECK; All solutions and platform capabilities |