---
icon: material/scale-balance
title: "Comparisons"
---

How the 10x Engine compares to Elastic ILM, and to Elastic's Logsdb index mode + searchable snapshots.

??? tenx-compare "How does this compare to Elastic ILM (Index Lifecycle Management)"

    **ILM moves data to cheaper tiers *after* you've already paid to index every byte. The 10x Engine cuts what gets indexed: fewer nodes, less compute, less hot-tier SSD from day one.**

    On self-hosted Elasticsearch or OpenSearch, compact reduces volume losslessly before indexing. On managed Elasticsearch, compact is a no-op, so the real levers there are tier_down, offload, and sample/drop.

    |  | Elastic ILM | 10x Engine |
    |---|---|---|
    | When | After ingestion | Before ingestion |
    | What | Move data to cheaper tiers | Reduce volume before indexing on self-hosted |
    | Ingestion cost | Full volume indexed | Only optimized volume indexed |
    | Hot tier | Full volume on SSD | Less SSD on self-hosted |

??? tenx-compare "How does the 10x Engine compare to Elastic's Logsdb index mode and searchable snapshots"

    **Both kick in *after* ingestion. You still pay full compute and node costs to index every byte. Neither reduces your node count.**

    The before-indexing reduction comes from compact, which is lossless and applies on self-hosted Elasticsearch or OpenSearch. On managed Elasticsearch, compact is a no-op, so the levers there are tier_down, offload, and sample/drop.

    |  | Logsdb | Searchable Snapshots | 10x Engine |
    |---|---|---|---|
    | When | After indexing | After indexing | Before indexing |
    | Reduces | Disk footprint (columnar encoding) | Lifecycle storage (S3 frozen tier) | Ingestion compute + storage + nodes |
    | Ingestion cost | Unchanged | Unchanged | Less on self-hosted |
    | Node count | Unchanged | Unchanged | Fewer nodes needed |