Comparison

Caver vs Wazuh

Caver compared to Wazuh (open-source SIEM/XDR). Why these two are a deliberate combo, not an either-or choice.

Wazuh is the dominant open-source SIEM/XDR. Free, Apache 2 licensed, deployed on roughly 25 million endpoints worldwide. The honest answer to “Caver vs Wazuh” is that for most teams, they’re a combo, not a choice. Wazuh is the endpoint-agent + assessment layer; Caver is the storage, search, analytics, AI-security, and OT layer behind it.

At a glance

	Wazuh	Caver
License model	Open source (Apache 2). Free agent + manager + indexer. Paid Wazuh Cloud for SaaS.	Per-deployment commercial license-key.
Endpoint agent	First-class: Windows, macOS, Linux, Solaris, AIX. Self-updating, signed, manageable.	None native. We recommend Wazuh agent + Caver as the analytics tier. Tracked at RES-splunk-caver#838.
File Integrity Monitoring (FIM)	First-class via Wazuh agent syscheck module.	Inherited from Wazuh agent via the partnership integration; CAVERN detection content consumes the events.
Compliance modules	PCI DSS, HIPAA, NIST 800-53, GDPR mapped to rules out-of-box.	Same coverage via Wazuh agent + dedicated compliance mapping page on docs.etairos.ai (planned).
Configuration assessment	CIS benchmark scanning via Wazuh sca module.	Inherited from Wazuh agent.
Vulnerability scanning	Package-CVE matching via Wazuh vulnerability detector.	Inherited from Wazuh agent.
Storage backing	Wazuh indexer (OpenSearch fork). Same scale-engineering tax as Elastic.	Native Parquet on object storage. No shard sizing, no ILM tuning.
Query languages	OpenSearch DSL (Lucene).	SPL + KQL + SQL natively. AI agents over MCP, Grafana, DuckDB, Trino, Athena over the same Parquet lake.
Container / K8s security	Wazuh-Kubernetes integration via API audit.	Partnering with Falco + Trivy for first-class K8s coverage (tracked at RES-splunk-caver#839).
OT / ICS coverage	Limited; no first-class industrial product.	caver-industrial: passive decoders for BACnet/IP, S7Comm, IEC 60870-5-104, DNP3, Modbus TCP, EtherNet/IP, OPC-UA. NIST 800-82 + IEC 62443. Air-gap-friendly.
AI security visibility	None.	caver-aisec: prompt-injection detection, AI Observatory for LLM spend, NIST AI 100-2 + OWASP feeds.
Content packs / integrations	Wazuh agent built-in modules plus community-contributed rules.	35+ vendor packs shipping with dashboards, saved searches, data inputs, and OCSF field mappings. Daily updates.
Cold-tier search	OpenSearch ISM moves data through hot/warm/cold/frozen with performance penalties.	First-class search over object storage. No rehydration.

Where Wazuh wins

The endpoint agent itself. ~25M endpoints can’t be wrong. Mature, signed, self-updating, broad OS coverage.
Free OSS pricing for the agent + manager + indexer. If you can run the indexer yourself, the only cost is your operator time.
Established compliance posture. PCI DSS / HIPAA / NIST 800-53 mappings are mature and accepted by auditors.
Active-response framework. Lightweight SOAR built into the agent (block IP, kill process, quarantine file).
Community + Wazuh Cloud. Real ecosystem, real managed-service option.

Where Caver wins

The analytics tier. Object storage backing instead of OpenSearch indexer. No shard sizing, no ILM tuning, no version-upgrade pain.
Query however you want. SPL, KQL, and SQL natively. Wazuh gives you OpenSearch DSL.
AI security. caver-aisec has no Wazuh equivalent.
OT / ICS. caver-industrial has no Wazuh equivalent.
Daily-updated content packs with bundled dashboards + data inputs + OCSF field mapping. Wazuh’s vendor coverage is broad but variable in depth.
Transparent commercial license-key on the analytics tier vs OSS+paid-cloud bimodal pricing.

How to decide

For most teams: deploy both. Run Wazuh agent on your endpoints. Land the events in Caver. Use Wazuh for endpoint coverage (FIM, CIS, CVE, OS-level events) and Caver for storage, search, AI security, OT/ICS, and cross-source correlation.

For shops already running Wazuh end-to-end (Wazuh agent + Wazuh manager + Wazuh indexer): Caver replaces just the indexer + analytics tier. Keep everything else.

For shops greenfield-evaluating SIEMs: Wazuh alone is a strong free starting point. The reasons to add Caver are scale economics, query-language flexibility, AI security, or OT/ICS coverage. None of those are urgent at small scale; all of them become urgent at scale.

For shops with regulated workloads where the “free OSS” answer doesn’t fly: Caver gives you the commercial backing, transparent licensing, and analytics tier that procurement can sign off on. Wazuh stays as the endpoint layer.

Talk to us about scoping — or read about the Wazuh agent partnership.

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