NXLog vs. Snare - A practical comparison of log collection capabilities

Multiple log collection agents are available on the market. While both Snare Agent and NXLog Agent serve similar use cases, NXLog Agent provides broader platform support, more advanced log processing, and greater flexibility in integration.

On a side note, log collection is just a starting point of a complete data pipeline or observability pipeline. That said, this article focuses specifically on log collection.

NXLog Agent matches and often surpasses Snare’s capabilities, offering additional features that enhance flexibility, performance, and compatibility.

Unlike Snare Agent, NXLog Agent supports AIX, FreeBSD, and Docker too, making it a more flexible option for organizations with diverse IT environments.

NXLog’s broader certification and partnership ecosystem reflects its commitment to interoperability and enterprise-grade integration.

While Snare Agent covers a few common formats, NXLog Agent supports a wider range of structured and industry-standard formats, making it easier to adapt to various logging and SIEM requirements.

NXLog Agent provides advanced processing capabilities such us message rewriting and correlation, which are not available in Snare Agent, enabling more intelligent and streamlined data handling.

Both agents offer strong auditing capabilities, but NXLog Agent’s support for AIX and BSD environments gives it an edge in heterogeneous infrastructures.

NXLog Agent includes a built-in failover and enterprise-grade delivery mechanisms, which help ensure log continuity and resilience in production environments.

Log format plays a critical role in ensuring readability, searchability, and storage efficiency. Structured formats, in particular, are easier to process and integrate with downstream systems such as SIEMs.

While Snare supports only a limited number of formats, NXLog Agent offers a much broader range of industry-standard output formats, including:

NXLog Agent’s extensive format support provides flexibility for integration, transformation, and long-term storage. Its core design embraces structured logging, unlike the Snare Agent, which was originally built around its proprietary format.

In contrast, NXLog Agent supports multiple structured data formats such as JSON, KVP, CSV, and XML — all of which can significantly reduce noise, improve parsing, and help cut SIEM storage costs.

For more on this, see Using structured logging.

A key factor in selecting a log collection agent is how efficiently you can manage and configure it across your environment. In a corporate setup, you will likely seek a solution that allows you to manage your agents from a single interface. That is where NXLog Platform comes in, giving you full control over your NXLog Agent fleet. NXLog Platform provides you with:

NXLog Platform simplifies integration with a growing library of solution packs, which provide ready-to-use configuration templates for popular log sources and destinations. These include integrations with Microsoft Sentinel, Google Security Operations, Securonix, Splunk Enterprise, Sumo Logic, and many others. Each solution pack is designed to help you get started quickly while following best practices.

Solution packs are available in the NXLog Platform configuration builder. For further information, see the Solution Packs section in the NXLog Platform User Guide.

See also our NXLog Integration Guides if you are looking for even more integrations.

NXLog Agent is lightweight, efficient, and consumes minimal system resources. It can run quietly in the background as a service, making it well-suited for performance-sensitive environments.

With NXLog Platform, configuring your agents is straightforward. It provides an intuitive drag-and-drop interface to build agent configurations. You can push these configurations to multiple agents in one go, streamlining deployment and reducing setup time. For advanced users who prefer writing configurations from scratch, a built-in text editor is also available, with features such as syntax highlighting and auto-complete.

We are constantly updating our documentation, which is already well above 1,000 pages, and is a stand-alone product in itself. It contains how-tos with configuration samples, tutorials, and integration guides offering much more than your basic user manual. We also have a dedicated support team ready to help our customers, available 24/7 with a world-class, 4-hour SLA.

NXLog Agent stands out as a powerful and flexible alternative to Snare Agent. It offers broader operating system support, more advanced log processing capabilities, a wider range of supported data formats, and streamlined agent management with NXLog Platform.

Combined with an easy-to-use configuration builder, solution packs, and seamless integration with leading SIEMs, NXLog Platform enables you to build scalable and efficient log and telemetry pipelines.

Whether you’re modernizing an existing setup or deploying a new log collection strategy, NXLog Agent provides the tools and flexibility needed for enterprise environments.