SenseOn is a unified detection and response platform that consolidates multiple security tools into a single lightweight agent powered by AI. Splunk is a log management and SIEM platform that aggregates data from across your environment for search, correlation, and analysis. Both serve security teams, but they take different approaches to detection, pricing, and operations. This guide provides a thorough comparison to help you decide which platform fits your organisation.
How Does Splunk Work?
Splunk is a data platform built around its proprietary Search Processing Language (SPL). At its core, Splunk ingests machine data from virtually any source (firewalls, endpoints, servers, cloud services, applications), normalises that data, and stores it in a searchable index.
Splunk's architecture consists of several components:
- Forwarders collect data from source systems and send it to the Splunk infrastructure
- Indexers receive, parse, and store incoming data, making it searchable
- Search heads provide the interface where analysts write SPL queries, build dashboards, and create detection rules
- Splunk Enterprise Security (ES) is the SIEM layer that adds correlation rules, notable events, risk-based alerting, and compliance frameworks on top of the core platform
Splunk's strength lies in its flexibility. SPL can query virtually any data format, and the Splunkbase ecosystem offers over 2,500 apps and add-ons for integrating with third-party tools. For organisations with skilled Splunk analysts, this flexibility is genuinely powerful.
The trade-off is complexity. Operating Splunk at scale requires dedicated expertise in SPL, index management, search optimisation, and data pipeline architecture. Most mid-market organisations need at least two to four full-time Splunk administrators to maintain the platform effectively.
How Does SenseOn Work?
SenseOn takes a different approach. Instead of aggregating logs from other security tools, SenseOn deploys a single lightweight agent that generates its own high-fidelity telemetry across endpoints, networks, and cloud workloads.
The platform is built around the cross-domain correlation: a methodology that cross-validates every potential alert using three independent AI techniques:
- Supervised learning models trained on labelled threat data identify known attack patterns
- Unsupervised anomaly detection identifies deviations from normal behaviour without prior knowledge of specific threats
- Deep-learning sequence analysis examines chains of events over time to detect sophisticated multi-stage attacks
A signal must be corroborated by multiple AI methods before it becomes an alert. This cross-validation approach achieved 0 false positives in independent AV-Comparatives testing, a result that no traditional SIEM can match.
Because SenseOn generates its own telemetry and performs detection natively, it eliminates the need for separate SIEM, EDR, NDR, SOAR, and UEBA tools. A single platform, a single agent, and a single console.
Head-to-Head Comparison
The following table summarises the key differences between SenseOn and Splunk across the factors that matter most to security teams:
| Factor | SenseOn | Splunk | |---|---|---| | Pricing Model | Flexible Intelligence Credits (FIC): annual credit commitment, no data tax | Per-GB ingested: costs scale with data volume | | Detection Capabilities | Cross-domain correlation: supervised + unsupervised + deep learning, cross-validated | Correlation rules + risk-based alerting; detection quality depends on rule authoring | | Deployment Time | Days to weeks; single agent deployment | Weeks to months; complex architecture, multiple components | | False Positive Rate | 0 false positives in AV-Comparatives testing | Varies widely; depends on rule tuning and analyst effort | | Data Volume Costs | None: ingest all telemetry at no extra cost | Significant: per-GB pricing penalises full visibility | | Compliance Support | Built-in reports for DORA, NIS2, ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials Plus | Possible via custom dashboards and the Compliance framework, but requires SPL expertise | | Team Size Required | Lean teams (1-3 analysts) can operate effectively | 2-4 dedicated Splunk administrators plus SOC analysts | | Automation | Built-in automated response and investigation workflows | Splunk SOAR (separately licensed) provides playbook automation | | Network Visibility | Native: the agent captures network flow metadata from every endpoint | Requires separate NDR tool or network log ingestion | | Endpoint Visibility | Native: deep kernel-level telemetry from the SenseOn agent | Requires separate EDR tool; Splunk ingests EDR logs but does not generate endpoint telemetry |
Pricing Comparison
Pricing is often the catalyst that drives organisations to evaluate alternatives to Splunk. Splunk's per-GB pricing model creates a structural tension: the more data you ingest, the better your security visibility, but the higher your costs. This tension, sometimes called the SIEM tax, forces security teams to make trade-offs between coverage and budget.
Consider a typical mid-market organisation ingesting 100 GB per day into Splunk:
- Splunk licence: Approximately £300K-£500K per year depending on the licensing tier and negotiated discounts
- Infrastructure: £50K-£150K per year for on-premises compute and storage, or equivalent cloud spend
- Professional services: £30K-£80K per year for ongoing tuning, content development, and architecture support
- Staffing: 2-4 dedicated Splunk engineers at £65K-£95K each
- Add-on licences: Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk SOAR, and Splunk UBA are separately licensed products
The combined total cost of ownership frequently exceeds £500K per year, and that figure grows as data volumes increase by the typical 25-35% annually.
SenseOn's Flexible Intelligence Credit (FIC) model eliminates this dynamic entirely. You commit to an annual credit pool and consume credits by outcome (detection, investigation, compliance, and AI-accelerated resolution) rather than by data volume. There are no per-GB charges, no data-tier penalties, and no incentive to reduce visibility. One credit pool covers all capabilities, consolidating SIEM, EDR, NDR, SOAR, and UEBA, with detection, response, automation, and compliance reporting included. The more you commit, the lower the unit rate.
For most mid-market organisations (500-7,500 employees), SenseOn delivers 40-60% lower TCO compared to a Splunk-based security stack, while providing broader detection capabilities. And with Resolve, credits are consumed only on autonomous completion; human escalations are free.
Detection Philosophy: Rules vs AI
The most fundamental difference between SenseOn and Splunk is how they approach detection.
Splunk relies on correlation rules: logical statements written in SPL that define the conditions under which an alert should fire. For example: "If a user authenticates from two countries within one hour, generate an alert." These rules are powerful when well-crafted, but they require someone to anticipate the attack pattern in advance, write the rule correctly, and tune the thresholds to minimise false positives without missing genuine threats.
The challenge is that real-world attacks rarely match neat rule definitions. Sophisticated adversaries adapt their techniques to stay below detection thresholds, and novel attack patterns have no corresponding rules. Organisations with mature Splunk deployments typically maintain hundreds of correlation rules, each requiring ongoing tuning as the environment changes.
SenseOn's cross-domain correlation takes a different approach. Instead of requiring analysts to predefine what an attack looks like, the three AI methods independently analyse telemetry and cross-validate findings. The supervised model recognises known patterns, the unsupervised model flags anomalies without prior knowledge, and the deep-learning model detects subtle sequences that unfold over hours or days. Only when multiple methods agree does an alert surface.
This architectural difference has a direct operational impact: Splunk generates alerts proportional to the number of rules multiplied by the volume of matching events. SenseOn generates alerts proportional to the number of genuine threats. For most mid-market organisations, this means the difference between hundreds of alerts per day and a handful of high-confidence detections.
When Should You Choose Splunk?
Splunk remains a strong choice in specific circumstances:
- Large enterprise with dedicated SPL expertise: If your organisation has invested heavily in Splunk talent, custom SPL content, and integrated workflows, the switching cost may outweigh the benefits of migration. Splunk's flexibility is genuinely unmatched for organisations that can afford to exploit it.
- General-purpose log analytics beyond security: Splunk serves IT operations, application performance monitoring, and business analytics use cases that go well beyond security. If your organisation uses Splunk as a cross-functional data platform, replacing it requires addressing those non-security use cases as well.
- Existing Splunk investment with long-term contracts: Organisations mid-way through multi-year Splunk licences may find it more practical to plan migration for the next renewal cycle.
- Regulatory requirements for raw log retention: Some compliance frameworks require long-term retention of raw logs in their original format. Splunk (or a dedicated log management platform) may be needed alongside a detection platform to satisfy these requirements.
When Should You Choose SenseOn?
SenseOn is purpose-built for the challenges that mid-market security teams face:
- SIEM cost pressure: If your Splunk renewal is driving budget conversations, SenseOn eliminates the data tax with its Flexible Intelligence Credit model. No more choosing between visibility and budget.
- Lean SOC teams: If your security team is 1-5 people, you cannot afford to dedicate 2-4 of them to SIEM administration. SenseOn's automated detection and investigation workflows let small teams operate at the level of much larger organisations.
- Consolidation goals: If you are running separate SIEM, EDR, NDR, and SOAR tools, SenseOn consolidates them all into a single platform. This reduces licence costs, integration complexity, and the vendor management overhead.
- Compliance requirements: Organisations subject to DORA, NIS2, or FCA requirements need continuous monitoring and rapid incident reporting. SenseOn provides these capabilities out of the box, without the custom development that Splunk requires.
- Need for consolidated visibility: SenseOn's single agent provides endpoint, network, and cloud visibility from one sensor. There is no need to build and maintain data pipelines from multiple third-party tools.
Case studies illustrate these benefits in practice. Kingspan achieved a 97.5% reduction in false positives after moving to SenseOn. ED&F Man tripled their incident response speed. Miller Insurance dramatically expanded analyst capacity without adding headcount. Combat Stress reduced security costs significantly, all outcomes that stem from SenseOn's unified approach.
Migration Considerations
Migrating from Splunk to SenseOn is a structured process that typically takes two to four weeks for a mid-market organisation. Here is what to expect:
Phase 1: Assessment (Days 1-3)
SenseOn's deployment team works with your security team to understand your current Splunk environment: data sources, detection rules, compliance requirements, and integration points. This assessment identifies which Splunk capabilities map directly to SenseOn features and which (if any) require a complementary solution.
Phase 2: Agent Deployment (Days 3-10)
The SenseOn agent is deployed across your endpoint estate. The agent is lightweight (typically under 2% CPU utilisation) and can be pushed via your existing endpoint management tools (SCCM, Intune, Jamf). The agent immediately begins generating telemetry and the cross-domain correlation engine starts building behavioural baselines.
Phase 3: Parallel Operation (Days 10-21)
SenseOn runs alongside your existing Splunk deployment. This parallel period validates that SenseOn's detections meet or exceed your current coverage, gives analysts time to familiarise themselves with the SenseOn console, and builds confidence before Splunk decommissioning.
Phase 4: Transition (Days 21-28)
Once your team is confident in SenseOn's coverage, Splunk can be decommissioned or scaled back. Historical data from Splunk can be archived for compliance purposes. Most organisations retain a minimal Splunk instance for 90-180 days during the transition period before fully decommissioning.
What Data to Bring
You do not need to migrate raw log data from Splunk into SenseOn. SenseOn generates its own telemetry from day one. However, you may want to:
- Archive Splunk data for compliance retention requirements
- Export key correlation rules for reference (SenseOn's detection is AI-driven, but understanding your existing rules helps validate coverage)
- Document current Splunk dashboards and reports so equivalent SenseOn views can be configured
Frequently Asked Questions
Is SenseOn a direct replacement for Splunk?
SenseOn consolidates the security detection and response functions that organisations typically use Splunk for, including SIEM, EDR, NDR, and SOAR capabilities. However, if you use Splunk primarily as a general-purpose log analytics platform for non-security use cases (IT operations, application debugging, business analytics), you may still need a log management tool alongside SenseOn. For security operations, SenseOn delivers superior detection outcomes at a fraction of the cost.
How does SenseOn's pricing compare to Splunk's?
Splunk prices by data volume, typically per gigabyte ingested per day, which means costs grow as your environment generates more logs. SenseOn uses Flexible Intelligence Credits (FIC): a consumption-based credit model where you commit to an annual credit pool and consume credits by outcome (detection, investigation, compliance, AI-accelerated resolution) rather than by data volume. There are no per-GB charges, and the more you commit, the lower the unit rate. For most mid-market organisations, this results in 40-60% lower total cost of ownership compared to Splunk.
Can I migrate from Splunk to SenseOn without losing historical data?
Yes. SenseOn's deployment team works with you to plan migration, which typically takes 2-4 weeks. Historical data from Splunk can be retained in your existing Splunk instance during a transition period or exported for archival. SenseOn begins generating its own high-fidelity telemetry from day one of deployment, so there is no detection gap during migration.
Does SenseOn require SPL expertise to operate?
No. Unlike Splunk, which relies heavily on its proprietary Search Processing Language (SPL), SenseOn is designed for security teams that need answers without writing complex queries. The cross-domain correlation engine automates detection and correlation, and the investigation interface presents contextualised alerts that analysts can act on immediately. This means lean teams without dedicated Splunk engineers can operate SenseOn effectively.
How does SenseOn handle compliance reporting compared to Splunk?
SenseOn provides built-in compliance reporting for frameworks including DORA, NIS2, ISO 27001, and Cyber Essentials Plus. Splunk can support compliance through custom dashboards and reports, but this requires significant configuration effort and SPL expertise. SenseOn's compliance reports are pre-built and continuously updated, reducing the manual effort required from your team.
