Osquery
Endpoint management software
Endpoint protection software
- Features
- Ease of use
- Ease of management
- Quality of support
- Affordability
- Market presence
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What is Osquery
Osquery is an open-source endpoint visibility and security telemetry tool that exposes operating system state as a SQL interface for querying and scheduled data collection. Security and IT teams use it to inventory assets, detect configuration drift, and support incident response across macOS, Windows, and Linux endpoints. It is typically deployed as an agent and integrated with log pipelines, SIEM, or security analytics tools rather than used as a standalone endpoint management suite.
SQL-based endpoint telemetry
Osquery provides a consistent SQL schema to query endpoint state such as processes, users, installed software, and configuration settings. This lowers the barrier for analysts who already use SQL and enables repeatable queries across heterogeneous fleets. Scheduled queries and event-based tables support continuous collection for detection and hunting workflows.
Cross-platform, open-source agent
Osquery supports major desktop/server operating systems, which helps standardize endpoint data collection across mixed environments. As open source, it allows inspection of code, community contributions, and internal customization of tables and extensions. Organizations can deploy it without vendor lock-in and choose their own backend storage and analytics stack.
Flexible integrations and pipelines
Osquery emits results via configurable logging plugins (e.g., filesystem logs, syslog, and other supported outputs), making it adaptable to existing security data pipelines. It can be paired with fleet management layers and configuration management tools to distribute packs and policies. This flexibility fits teams that already operate centralized logging and detection engineering processes.
Not a full EPP suite
Osquery focuses on visibility and telemetry rather than prevention, malware blocking, or automated remediation. It does not replace endpoint protection platforms that provide exploit protection, behavioral blocking, quarantine, or managed response features. Teams typically need additional tools and processes to turn telemetry into prevention and response actions.
Operational overhead for scale
Running Osquery at scale requires decisions about agent configuration, query scheduling, performance impact, and data retention. Organizations must build or adopt supporting components for enrollment, policy distribution, and result aggregation. Compared with integrated endpoint management products, this can increase engineering and maintenance effort.
Query safety and performance risks
Poorly designed queries or aggressive schedules can increase CPU/disk usage and generate high data volumes. Some endpoint artifacts are not available uniformly across OS versions, which can complicate cross-platform query packs. Effective use often requires tuning, testing, and governance to avoid endpoint impact and noisy telemetry.
Plan & Pricing
| Plan | Price | Key features & notes |
|---|---|---|
| Open-source (core osquery) | Free | Core osquery is an open-source project (licensed Apache-2.0 OR GPL-2.0). Downloadable from the official project; no paid plans or subscription tiers are published on the official project repositories. |
Seller details
osquery (open-source project; originally created at Facebook/Meta)
2014
Open Source
https://www.osquery.io/
