Sazabi vs Cribl: What Happens After the Pipeline
Prices and facts checked on vendor pages on Nov 8, 2026.
Cribl and Sazabi sit at different points in the same data path. Cribl Stream is a telemetry pipeline: it collects, reduces, enriches and routes data to wherever you choose. Sazabi is AI-native observability and security: it is a place for that data to land, be searched, and have problems found in it. Sazabi wrote this page, and Cribl facts come from Cribl's own pages, checked November 8, 2026. Most teams would not choose between them. The better question is whether you need one, the other, or both.
At a Glance
How Cribl Works and Charges
Cribl's Stream page describes an observability pipeline that collects, reduces, enriches and routes telemetry from any source to any tool, with 80+ sources and destinations. The same page lists a Copilot Editor that maps schemas and filters data from plain-language prompts. Cribl Edge, Cribl Search and Cribl Lake sit alongside it, and Cribl.Cloud is the managed home for all of them.
Cribl's pricing page splits the model by product. Stream and Edge are priced on GBs of data ingested. Search has three options: usage-based, a flat monthly rate by dataset size, or Lakehouse tiers by GB per day. Lake is priced by volume stored. Everything is paid in credits at $1 per credit, invoiced monthly. The page says no more than 20% of a year's purchased credits roll over, and unused credits beyond that are forfeited. Managed Stream infrastructure carries an additional fee, and on-prem customers can use a Universal Subscription that converts Stream and Edge licenses into credits.
The page lists a Free plan that processes up to 1 TB per day with one Worker Group, Standard up to 5 TB per day with 8x5 support, and Enterprise at unlimited volume. Cribl's docs describe Cribl.Cloud's free tier as up to 1 TB per day of throughput, counting data in and out, and say hybrid deployments keep the Leader in Cribl.Cloud while Workers run in your environment. Its Cribl.Cloud page states SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certification for that service.
How Sazabi Works and Charges
A pipeline decides where data goes. Sazabi starts after that decision. You send logs to one intake URL, and Sazabi watches the stream, opens an issue when something looks wrong, and shows the log records behind it. It investigates root cause and posts to Slack or Linear. Your coding agent can pull the same context through MCP, CLI or API. You can also ask questions in plain language and search the retained logs.
Sazabi has no routing rules, packs or worker groups to run. The tradeoff is scope. It is a destination, not a router, and it is not built to send data onward to other tools.
Pricing is per 30-day cycle: Hobby $50, Startup $200, Growth $1,000, each with 200 GB ingested, 50 GB scanned, 20 issues and 500 AI credits, then $0.10 per GB ingested, $0.10 per GB scanned, $4 per issue and $0.01 per AI credit. Retention is 7, 30 or 90 days. See Sazabi pricing.
Key Differences for a Log-Centered Team
Different jobs. Cribl answers "where should this event go, in what shape, and should it be kept at all?" Sazabi answers "what broke, why, and who should know?" A team with one backend and modest volume may not need a pipeline. A team feeding five destinations probably does.
Who writes the rules. Cribl's value comes from pipelines and routes you author, with Copilot Editor to help. Sazabi does not need authored rules for detection: it flags problems you did not predict.
Cost lever. Cribl lowers downstream bills by filtering and reshaping before data reaches a paid tool. Sazabi's lever is the plan structure: a flat cycle price with included usage. If you already use Cribl to cut a high-volume source, that reduction also lowers Sazabi's ingest meter.
Security posture. Cribl.Cloud lists SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001. Sazabi holds SOC 2 Type II, SOC 1, ISO 27001 and ISO 27017 certifications. Anyone who signs an NDA, customer or not, can request the SOC 2 Type II report and ISO 27001 audit reports from the Sazabi Trust Center. HIPAA safeguards are available on select plans.
When to Pick Cribl
- You send telemetry to several tools and need one place to route and reshape it.
- You need to mask, enrich or drop data before it leaves your network.
- You want a free tier to start, with up to 1 TB per day and no license.
- You run self-hosted or hybrid infrastructure and want a pipeline that follows.
- Your main goal is lowering what you pay a downstream platform.
When to Pick Sazabi
- Your problem is finding and understanding production issues, not moving data.
- You have one destination and do not want to run a pipeline tier in front of it.
- You want a coding agent to receive the root cause through MCP or the CLI.
- You prefer a plan price to a credit model.
Running Both
This is the common setup. Cribl Stream's OTel Destination can send over gRPC or HTTP. Choose HTTP, set the Endpoint to your Sazabi intake URL, and Cribl sends logs to <endpoint>/v1/logs by default, with an override field if your path differs. Sazabi's intake accepts OTLP over HTTP, as described in its OpenTelemetry Collector guide and OpenTelemetry docs. The OpenTelemetry integration page lists the setups.
Three details matter. Cribl's destination sends Binary Protobuf only, not JSON. It drops events that do not conform to the OTLP schema, so shape events in a pipeline first. And its OTLP version setting defaults to 0.10.0 with 1.3.1 as the other option. Sazabi has no Cribl-specific guide, so send a small sample and confirm records appear before you route real traffic.
If you use Vector instead of Cribl, see Sazabi vs Vector.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Cribl an alternative to Sazabi?
Mostly no. Cribl Stream collects, reduces, enriches and routes telemetry, while Sazabi is where logs land to be searched and investigated. Teams often run a pipeline in front of an observability tool.
Can Cribl Stream send logs to Sazabi?
Cribl Stream has an OTel Destination that can send over HTTP, and Sazabi accepts OTLP over HTTP at an intake URL. Sazabi has no Cribl-specific guide, so test with a small sample before you route production data.
Does Cribl charge by data volume?
Its pricing page says Cribl Stream and Edge are priced on GBs of data ingested, in credits where $1 equals 1 credit. A free tier processes up to 1 TB per day with no license required.
Should I filter logs in Cribl before they reach Sazabi?
It is your call. Sazabi meters ingest at $0.10 per GB beyond its included allowance, so dropping data lowers that line, but Sazabi works best when the logs around an incident are all there.
Sources
- Free, Standard and Enterprise tiers, data volume limits, pricing by product, credits, rollover and billing (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- What Cribl Stream does: collect, reduce, enrich and route; Copilot Editor; 80+ sources and destinations (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Cribl.Cloud product scope and the security attestations it lists (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Cribl.Cloud free tier throughput, hybrid deployments, what usage is billed (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- OTel Destination: gRPC or HTTP, binary Protobuf, OTLP version setting, default logs path (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Sazabi plan prices, included usage, overage rates and retention (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- BYOC availability on AWS under an enterprise agreement (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Sazabi receives OTLP/HTTP and uses an intake URL with an embedded key (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Sazabi intake is OTLP/HTTP-compatible; logs and traces arrive as separate streams (accessed Nov 8, 2026)