Is Axiom more economical than Splunk at scale?

Yes, and more predictable. Axiom stays economical at scale where Splunk licensing forces trade-offs: you pay for what you load, query, and store, with per-unit rates that drop as you grow and no overage tier to trip into.

Do I have to keep sampling / dropping fields?

No. Schema-less ingest and 95% compression make "keep everything" rational, so the trace and log story is complete when you need it.

Do I have to rip and replace Splunk?

No. Land beside Splunk on orphan workloads via the Splunk App and expand at the renewal seam. First workload live in days.

Will my team learn a new query language?

Barely. APL is the closest experience to SPL, so most muscle memory transfers, and our migration guide maps common SPL patterns to APL.

Can my AI agents query the data?

Yes. A native MCP server makes every loaded byte queryable in APL, with the SRE skill to lower MTTR.

What does Splunk still do better?

SIEM and security operations, its app and integration ecosystem, on-prem maturity, and compliance footprint today. If those are the priority, Splunk earns its place.

The modern machine data platform

Axiom vs Splunk

Splunk pioneered the machine data platform and still runs some of the largest security operations on earth. Axiom rebuilt that platform for the volume modern, AI-driven systems generate: keep every log, event, trace, and metric at any scale, on usage-based pricing you can predict, with the power-user query experience Splunk made famous.

Start free Read the migration guide

1['payment-service']

2| where ['event.type'] == "charge.failed"

3| summarize count() by ['decline.reason']

Dataset library

Search datasets

All

Search api-gateway-prod

Quick queries

Fields

SPRIORITY

SSYSLOG_FACILITY

SSYSLOG_IDENTIFIER

S_BOOT_ID

S_CAP_EFFECTIVE

S_CMDLINE

S_COMM

S_EXE

S_GID

S_MACHINE_ID

S_PID

S_SYSTEMD_UNIT

S_TRANSPORT

Search recent queries

Today, 02:553m ago

1['api-gateway-prod']

2| where status >= 500

3| summarize count() by bin_auto(_time)

Today, 02:4513m ago

1['api-gateway-prod']

2| summarize p95 = percentile(req_duration_ms, 95) by route

3| sort by p95 desc

Today, 02:3523m ago

1['payment-service']

2| where ['event.type'] == "charge.failed"

3| summarize count() by ['decline.reason']

Today, 02:2533m ago

1['frontend-web-vitals']

2| summarize users = dcount(session_id) by ['geo.country']

3| sort by users desc

Today, 02:1444m ago

1['nginx-access-logs']

2| where status == 429

3| summarize hits = count() by client_ip

axiom-agent — incident-2317

> Why did checkout p95 spike at 14:21 UTC?

axiom-mcp connected • incident-2317 • zsh 5.9

OVERVIEW

What’s the difference between Axiom and Splunk?

Axiom and Splunk both have roots as machine data platforms, but they’ve diverged.

Splunk pivoted toward security and stopped advancing the category; Axiom rebuilt it on modern infrastructure. What separates them now is economics and architecture: Splunk prices on ingest and license tiers built for an earlier era, which pushes teams to sample or leave whole sources un-onboarded. Axiom is a fully managed event store with usage-based pricing, so you keep everything and pay only for what you use.

FEATURE-BY-FEATURE COMPARISON

Axiom vs Splunk at a glance

The clearest differences show up when data grows: what you keep, what you operate, how you search, and who can query the data.

Dimension

Axiom

Splunk

Pricing model

Usage-based: load + query + compressed storage on a $25/mo platform fee; auto volume discounts; no overage tier

Annual license: Ingest (GB/day) or Workload/SVC units; sold via sales, list prices unpublished

Cost at scale

Sub-linear: load 0.12 to 0.06 cr/GB, query 0.20 to 0.08 cr/GB-hr, storage $0.030/GB

Ingest list ≈ $150–225/GB/day/yr; SVCs ≈ $55–75K each/yr

Sampling

Keep every field at PB scale (95% compression)

Whole sources often left un-onboarded to cap spend

Query language

APL: piped, sequential, power-user

SPL: the language APL is closest to; muscle memory transfers

Delivery

Fully managed event store (US & EU)

Splunk Cloud, or self-managed Enterprise (you run indexers)

Migration

Land beside Splunk via the Splunk App + Cribl

N/A

Security / SIEM

Log search only, not a SIEM

Mature SIEM, case mgmt, threat intel

Free tier

Personal free forever (500GB/mo); Cloud Always Free (1,000GB/mo)

Free trial; no permanent free tier at scale

Pricing model

Axiom

Usage-based: load + query + compressed storage on a $25/mo platform fee; auto volume discounts; no overage tier

Splunk

Annual license: Ingest (GB/day) or Workload/SVC units; sold via sales, list prices unpublished

Cost at scale

Axiom

Sub-linear: load 0.12 to 0.06 cr/GB, query 0.20 to 0.08 cr/GB-hr, storage $0.030/GB

Splunk

Ingest list ≈ $150–225/GB/day/yr; SVCs ≈ $55–75K each/yr

Sampling

Axiom

Keep every field at PB scale (95% compression)

Splunk

Whole sources often left un-onboarded to cap spend

Query language

Axiom

APL: piped, sequential, power-user

Splunk

SPL: the language APL is closest to; muscle memory transfers

Delivery

Axiom

Fully managed event store (US & EU)

Splunk

Splunk Cloud, or self-managed Enterprise (you run indexers)

Migration

Axiom

Land beside Splunk via the Splunk App + Cribl

Splunk

N/A

Security / SIEM

Axiom

Log search only, not a SIEM

Splunk

Mature SIEM, case mgmt, threat intel

Free tier

Axiom

Personal free forever (500GB/mo); Cloud Always Free (1,000GB/mo)

Splunk

Free trial; no permanent free tier at scale

PRICING STUDIO

Compare your workload across providers

Plug in your current Splunk workload and see the cost side by side with Axiom, no sales call. All Axiom data is billed the same way: GB ingested, query compute, and storage.

Open Pricing Studio

Live Monthly Estimate

Ingest / month

2 TB/mo

100 GB1 TB100 TB500 TB5 PB

Query (GB-hrs/mo)

Query settings only affect the Estimate tab — the comparison prices every provider on the same standard workload.

Enterprise add-ons

Comparing providers…

KEY QUESTIONS, ANSWERED

Common questions

COST AT SCALE

MIGRATION

CAPABILITIES AND FIT

IS AXIOM RIGHT FOR YOU?

Which one is right for you?

Choose Axiom if…

Hitting the Splunk license wall at multi-TB/day
Sampling or dropping sources to survive
Want predictable usage-based pricing
Keep full-fidelity data long-term
Want AI-agent access to your machine data

Choose Splunk if…

Core need is enterprise SIEM / security operations
You depend on specific Splunk apps or detection content
You need mature on-prem or regulated-environment deployment

MIGRATION

Moving off Splunk without the big-bang project

Start with one orphan workload, route it via the Splunk App or Cribl, watch it land in days, and query it in APL. Expand workload by workload, no rip-and-replace.

Get the Splunk to Axiom (SPL to APL) migration guide

DocumentationExploreDebugSearchSettings

AXIOM FOR SPLUNK

Connect your Axiom organization

Run APL queries against Axiom from inside Splunk and return the results to a Splunk search. Enter an API token — we’ll verify it can list your datasets and run a query before finishing.

Axiom API token

◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦

ConnectedConnectConnected

Store the token in Splunk’s credential store(encrypting…)

List your datasets(org permission needed)

Run a test query(dataset permission needed)

Create an API Token

Create an Axiom API token with query access to the datasets you want to search from splunk:

In Axiom, open Settings > API Tokens and click New API token.
Give it a name (for example “splunk-app”) and choose an expiry.
Under Token permissions > Advance (custom), grant “query:read” on the Axiom dashboard

New Search

| axquery apl="['shopshock-v3-traces'] | summarize p50=percentile(duration,50), p95=percentile(duration,95), p99=percentile(duration,99) by ['service.name'] | order by p95 desc"

| spath

| eval p50_ms=round(p50/1000000,1), p95_ms=round(p95/1000000,1), p99_ms=round(p99/1000000,1)

| table service.name, p50_ms, p95_ms, p99_ms

10 events(6/25/26 4:01 PM to 7/2/26 4:01 PM)

EventsPatternsStatistics (10)Visualization

service.name

p50_ms

p95_ms

p99_ms

api-gateway

0.6

532.2

13689.5

payments-service

305.6

482.2

501.8

orders-service

282.3

482.2

501.8

user-service

0.7

0.8

1.0

inventory-service

0.7

0.8

0.9

notification-service

0.6

0.7

0.8

analytics-service

0.1

0.2

search-service

0.1

0.2

product-catalog-service

0.1

recommendation-service

0.1

MORE COMPARISONS

See how Axiom compares across the ecosystem

See how Axiom compares to leading observability platforms across performance, pricing, scalability, and ease of operation.

Datadog

Logs + metrics on one usage-based dial. No Standard Indexing SKU.

ClickHouse

Same backend class. Fully managed. No DIY ops.

Elastic

Columnar event store built for observability volumes. No cluster to operate.

See for yourself

Try APL on live data in the Playground, no account required.

Start free Try APL in the Playground