Wazuh is an open-source SIEM/XDR. It ships a manager, an OpenSearch indexer, a dashboard, and agents. It is not a mechanic. Tink installs in one command, watches the Linux host, explains what is wrong, and helps you fix it.
Accidental sysadmins land on Wazuh because it is the free SIEM: FIM, SCA, vuln scans, and auth-log rules. Then disk is at 91%, nginx dies, and last night's rule 5710 hits do not say what to run. A filling /var is a Tink warning; it is not a decoder XML file.
Tink is the other job: detect the issue on the machine, say why it happened in plain English, propose the command, and run it only after you approve. Keep using Wazuh if you already want a SIEM. Use Tink if you run Linux servers and want a mechanic.
| Feature | Tink | Wazuh |
|---|---|---|
| Setup time | 30 seconds (one curl | sh command) | Hours to days — Wazuh manager, indexer, dashboard, then an agent on every host |
| What you get | Working monitoring, diagnosis, and approved fixes | SIEM/XDR: FIM, SCA, vuln scans, log rules — not a fleet mechanic |
| Pricing | Free (Scout) / $9 / $29 per machine per month | Open source. You still pay the manager VM, indexer disk, and the person who tunes rules |
| Hidden costs | None — fully managed | OpenSearch heap, rule noise, agent enrollment, and whether anyone watched disk while alerts fired |
| Monitoring approach | Agent on the server — CPU, disk, services, logs, certs, ports | Security events into a manager. Wazuh does not forecast fill time or propose a restart |
| Configuration | None after install — heuristics and AI | ossec.conf, decoder/rule XML, indexer retention, and which agent groups get which SCA policy |
| Plain-English diagnosis | Yes — AI explains root cause, impact, and fix | No — you read rule IDs, FIM diffs, and SCA checks yourself |
| Fix execution | Proposes and executes approved commands with an audit trail | Detects and alerts — Wazuh cannot restart nginx, free disk, or rotate a cert |
| Alerting | Built-in across 8 channels | Manager integrations after you wire Slack/email/PagerDuty and quiet the rule flood |
| Predictive alerts | Yes — disk fills in ~6 days, memory and CPU trends | Event-driven only — Wazuh does not forecast fill time or a quiet NIC going bad later |
| SSH brute-force detection | Built-in — parses auth.log every scan | Yes — that is a Wazuh rule. It still will not say the disk is at 91% |
| Machine offline detection | Agent presence monitoring with multi-channel alerts | Agent disconnected if you built that rule — no presence ping to Telegram by default |
| Public status page | Shareable URL with 90-day history | Not included — the Wazuh dashboard is not a customer-facing status page |
| Weekly fleet digest | Automated Monday digest + daily brief when issues are open | Not included — a rule hit list is not a plain-English fleet narrative |
| On-call tracking | Built-in /oncall command + incident acknowledgment | Not included — wire the manager into PagerDuty |
| Conversation interface | Telegram, WhatsApp, web dashboard, CLI | Wazuh dashboard. No mechanic you text when /var filled |
| Learning curve | None — works after install | Steep — manager topology, indexer ops, decoders, and Wazuh's own rule IDs |
| Best for | Freelancers, small teams, accidental sysadmins (1-50 Linux servers) | Security teams that already want a SIEM/XDR and will still SSH in when the box is sick |
Keep using Wazuh when you already want that exact job:
The agents are free. A working ops loop for five Linux boxes is not:
For a 5-server team, Tink Mechanic at $45/month is cheaper than the engineer who tunes Wazuh after the outage, and every scan includes a diagnosis a quiet rule ID will not type.
No SIEM homework. No silent host. One command install.
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