# ELK - xpack , watcher - what to use for advanced alerting and observability?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elk-xpack-watcher-what-to-use-for-advanced-alerting-and-observability/247946>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Tags:** elastic-stack-alerting\
**Created:** [September 9, 2020, 4:16am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elk-xpack-watcher-what-to-use-for-advanced-alerting-and-observability/247946 "2020-09-09T04:16:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![AwesomeRoy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/awesomeroy/32/48587_2.png) [@AwesomeRoy](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/AwesomeRoy)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2020, 4:16am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elk-xpack-watcher-what-to-use-for-advanced-alerting-and-observability/247946/1 "2020-09-09T04:16:34Z")

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Kibana alerting is basic . For advanced alerts in ELK stack what should I use ?

1. Watcher plugin ? - Is this part of paid version only ? or can i install this separately within the open n source version as well ?
2. x-pack ? Can this be used for advanced alerting ?

Note - By advanced alerting I mean , advanced alert logic and multiple alert channels . Basic Kibana alerting works for simple index threshold alerts

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**Author:** ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2020, 4:38am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elk-xpack-watcher-what-to-use-for-advanced-alerting-and-observability/247946/2 "2020-09-09T04:38:11Z")

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Welcome to our community! 😃

Watcher, which is part of the broader X-Pack set of functionality, has features that are both free and commercial. However [the features](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/kibana/current/alerting-getting-started.html) that Kibana currently expose as a subset of what the [underlying API](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/xpack-alerting.html) can provide, as we are working on improving the UI integration for Alerting.

You might want to look at the API and see if it'll do what you want.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![AwesomeRoy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/awesomeroy/32/48587_2.png) [@AwesomeRoy](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/AwesomeRoy)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2020, 7:57am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elk-xpack-watcher-what-to-use-for-advanced-alerting-and-observability/247946/3 "2020-09-09T07:57:52Z")

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Thanks, in that case can you explain why am I getting ' current license is non-compliant for watcher' when I am querying `GET /_watcher/watch/my_watch?pretty` ?

I am using Elastic search 7.9.0 open source edition

```
{
 "name": "elasticsearch",
 "cluster_name": "docker-cluster",
 "cluster_uuid": "jO35QjzcQxS3KJiokdsobw",
 "version": {
 "number": "7.9.0",
 "build_flavor": "default",
 "build_type": "docker",
 "build_hash": "a479a2a7fce0389512d6a9361301708b92dff667",
 "build_date": "2020-08-11T21:36:48.204330Z",
 "build_snapshot": false,
 "lucene_version": "8.6.0",
 "minimum_wire_compatibility_version": "6.8.0",
 "minimum_index_compatibility_version": "6.0.0-beta1"
},
"tagline": "You Know, for Search"
}
```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/christian_dahlqvist/32/4617_2.png) [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2020, 8:12am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elk-xpack-watcher-what-to-use-for-advanced-alerting-and-observability/247946/4 "2020-09-09T08:12:43Z")

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Watcher requires a commercial license and is not fully available with the default Basic license.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![AwesomeRoy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/awesomeroy/32/48587_2.png) [@AwesomeRoy](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/AwesomeRoy)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2020, 8:15am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elk-xpack-watcher-what-to-use-for-advanced-alerting-and-observability/247946/5 "2020-09-09T08:15:29Z")

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@Christian_Dahlqvist , Warkolm mentions that watchesr -has features that are both free and commercial. What are the free features ? How do i enable them?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2020, 11:38pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elk-xpack-watcher-what-to-use-for-advanced-alerting-and-observability/247946/6 "2020-09-09T23:38:16Z")

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Use the default distribution, that contains our free (but not open source) functionality.

You can see more here - [https://www.elastic.co/subscriptions](https://www.elastic.co/subscriptions) and [https://www.elastic.co/blog/introducing-the-new-alerting-framework-for-observability-security-and-the-elastic-stack](https://www.elastic.co/blog/introducing-the-new-alerting-framework-for-observability-security-and-the-elastic-stack)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [October 7, 2020, 11:38pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elk-xpack-watcher-what-to-use-for-advanced-alerting-and-observability/247946/7 "2020-10-07T23:38:28Z")

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