No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Azure Firewall Manager vs Microsoft Defender XDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Firewall Manager
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
25th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Firewall Security Management (11th)
Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (9th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Azure Firewall Manager is 1.2%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 5.2%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender XDR5.2%
Azure Firewall Manager1.2%
Other93.6%
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

Sikkander  Batcha - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at CloudIQ
Has managed traffic effectively but lacks visibility and advanced control features
Azure Firewall is typically behind other vendor firewalls because we don't see what kind of traffic is traveling through it. That is one drawback. The main drawback is that we need log support from Azure Firewall, which can be quite costly. There is no login feature in Azure Firewall because only the IAM feature is available in the Azure site; we manage it only through the Azure portal, not through any other portal. Other vendors, such as Palo Alto, provide GUI or CLI interfaces to manage their firewalls, whereas we only manage Azure Firewall through the Azure portal. In the future, I would like to see additional features in Azure Firewall Manager to make it more competitive, such as technologies like App-ID and User-ID that Palo Alto has. Azure Firewall currently only allows traffic based on layer four and sometimes layer seven, so they need to improve in those areas compared to other vendors.
reviewer2812758 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infosec at a government with 10,001+ employees
Integrated defenses have unified threat hunting, phishing simulations, and identity investigations
I appreciate Microsoft Defender XDR's MDE, Microsoft Defender tool, which has Attack Simulator. Instead of doing a phishing campaign and getting a separate tool, Microsoft Defender XDR does it all. These features of Microsoft Defender XDR have helped us conduct a phishing campaign quarterly, which has been beneficial. I also appreciate the fact that it has Defender for Office integrated, Defender for Identity, and everything integrated together. I would describe the process of using Microsoft Defender XDR to prioritize incidents in my security operations as quite decent. I appreciate the automatic alerting system where any incidents or alerts we receive come directly to our email. From there, we can open the email, go directly to Microsoft Defender XDR, and start our investigations and remediations. I perceive the integration of security and identity access management in Microsoft Defender XDR as affecting my identity protection strategies very well because it is well integrated with Purview, integrated well with Entra ID, and integrated well with Exchange. I especially appreciate MDO, the Office product. If anything happens and I want to conduct an investigation, it takes me directly to Exchange, where I can also investigate any emails or phishing incidents. Instead of going to different portals, everything can be done from Microsoft Defender XDR. If necessary for further investigation, Microsoft Defender XDR then directs me to that environment. I would assess the integration of AI in guiding security actions within Microsoft Defender XDR as quite positive. Recently, Security Copilot went big, and it is beneficial that I can use that, especially to write KQL. I can do threat hunting features and intelligence all within using Microsoft's Security Copilot. It also has a nice AI feature for threat hunting. I know that all the Defender logs go to Sentinel, and I can pull it up from Microsoft Defender XDR or from Sentinel. The fact that I can actually do all that within Microsoft Defender XDR is a nice feature. In the top module, I can do threat lookups, and I can actually type KQLs in Microsoft Defender XDR and look up incidents. Predictive shielding has had a nice impact on my proactive security measures. It is beneficial that it has, similar to Entra ID, a secure score. For me to improve the product, the secure score helps me out. If I rate it from highest to lowest, I can see what things I can improve. Secure score helps me see what areas I can improve in Microsoft Defender XDR to increase my score and bring it to 80 or more. Knowing Microsoft Defender XDR from using it since 2019, before COVID days, I know that they have improved significantly. It is much more user-friendly and has a very nice vulnerability feature that I find handy and useful. The fact that this feature integrates into Intune is also very decent.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Azure Firewall Manager is the testing and configuration."
"I would definitely recommend the solution to my clients, especially if one is using Azure Cloud."
"The solution has improved our organization with its firewall."
"Azure Firewall Manager centralizes network security management with a hub and spoke architecture."
"From a traffic management perspective, it's a good firewall because it's automatically scalable based on the traffic availability."
"The solution is very easy to set up."
"The tool's support is good."
"It has helped us in multiple ways; for example, we don't require different spaces to manage it, we can do a lot of automation integrations into the code, we could integrate it into the DevOps pipeline, and it has helped us with our time-to-market for a very specific product when we are actually deploying or upgrading."
"The biggest return on investment when using Microsoft Defender XDR for me is saving time for the most part."
"The summarization of emails is a valuable feature."
"Based on what I've seen with Microsoft Defender XDR and the large amount of threat data Microsoft has access to, I'm confident I would trust Microsoft Security to handle the majority of all our threats from any threat actor who's essentially putting our company at risk."
"One of the most valuable features of Microsoft Defender XDR is its ability to provide preemptive reports regarding excessive privileged access."
"Microsoft XDR's system of analysis and investigation is super convenient for our customers. It integrates with other Microsoft solutions like Defender for 365 to protect email traffic from malicious external web links and phishing."
"Overall, the solution has decreased our time to detect and respond."
"What I appreciate most about Microsoft Defender XDR is the ability to drill down to the process level, the visibility of processes, and the file-level details of what processes are accessing, including the IP addresses for outbound connections."
"I have found the ability to delete unwanted threats beneficial."
 

Cons

"The price is okay. This said, the solution is certainly expensive in comparison with other cloud services."
"The solution can improve the integration with open-source tools."
"Microsoft was unable to fully solve the problem with email phishing and spamming."
"For Azure Firewall Manager, the learning curve for new people is a bit challenging, but the integration should be more straightforward for configuring a centralized system."
"The cost is a significant concern because we are in a region where the dollar is not our default currency, and converting to dollars makes it very expensive."
"We could do only one-way NAT-ing, where the traffic comes from outside to internal, to Azure, which is fine. However, when we actually do NAT-ed traffic to hit the firewall, that way is not working."
"The configuration and settings require substantial time for learning, particularly for new users. Improvements in ease of configuration would benefit users significantly."
"There should be a simple one-click deployment for a firewall, rather than a set of setup instructions that include steps such as the DNS configuration, et cetera."
"There is no comprehensive visibility, making it less user-friendly."
"Some of our older hardware experienced a slight bump in CPU and memory usage. Although I don't have empirical data to back that up, I would suggest possibly more streamlining in the software."
"Microsoft Defender XDR could be improved with a lower price."
"I haven't really come across the incident Q assistant helping improve the efficiency of my SOC workflow."
"The dashboards could be improved."
"The documentation on their website is somewhat outdated and doesn't show properly. I wanted to try a query in Microsoft Defender 365. When I opened the related documentation from the security blog on the Microsoft website, the figures were not showing. It was difficult to understand the article without having the figures. The figures were there in the article, but they were not getting loaded, which made the article obsolete."
"In the future, it would be beneficial for Microsoft to consider making the product more user-friendly or simplified for those who are interested in using it. Currently, it requires a high level of technical expertise, making it challenging for beginners or less experienced individuals."
"There is definitely scope for improvement in the automation area. Because the solution is a SaaS platform, we don't have the overall ability to automate stuff.... There is no direct way to go ahead because it's a SaaS platform."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is certainly expensive in comparison with other cloud services."
"The price of the solution is reasonable but it is reasonable for the features."
"Microsoft Defender XDR is expensive."
"365 Defender can get expensive because you pay per gigabyte of data ingested. On the other hand, much of the data available in the other Microsoft security solutions are made available relatively cheaply—sometimes at cost or for free. Integrating only a limited set of third-party solutions with Sentinel would be cost-effective. It's much more affordable if companies only have Microsoft stuff."
"It is 15 dollars per server per month. It is worth it, but it can be costly. It depends on the company's size."
"All I can say again is the E5 gives you all the capabilities that it offers. It also gives Office 365 and one terabyte of storage. All in all, the E5 license model makes sense. There are some people who say it's quite costly, but rather than paying different vendors, it makes sense to go all in with Microsoft if you've got that licensing. From that perspective, it's cost-effective, but I can't comment much on that."
"Defender XDR is included in the E5 license, but it's a bit too expensive."
"I believe that the pricing of the licensing is fair."
"The functionality is fantastic, but for medium and small-sized companies it's overpriced. It would be better if it were a little bit cheaper."
"I believe the pricing is fair and acceptable. I consider it to be reasonable and satisfactory."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Microsoft Security Suite solutions are best for your needs.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
11%
Educational Organization
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise28
Large Enterprise41
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Firewall Manager?
The pricing for Azure Firewall Manager is expensive. In our project, we have used both Palo Alto Firewall and Azure Firewall. Azure charges for many aspects including scaling, automated scaling dep...
What needs improvement with Azure Firewall Manager?
Azure Firewall is typically behind other vendor firewalls because we don't see what kind of traffic is traveling through it. That is one drawback. The main drawback is that we need log support from...
What is your primary use case for Azure Firewall Manager?
My customers are using Azure Firewall Manager, so I'm learning from both documentation and practical knowledge. I usually recommend Azure Firewall Manager for projects such as an animal hospital pr...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft 365 Defender?
My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Microsoft Defender XDR is that we are on an E5 license, so it is incorporated there. It is part of our Microsoft package.
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?
From my perspective, Microsoft Defender XDR can be improved with better visibility in certain areas where I can trigger host isolation on one machine. It should at least provide the option to isola...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft 365 Defender?
My main use cases for Microsoft Defender XDR are telemetry, advanced hunting, and the ability to perform host isolation if there is potential malware. I believe the incidents prioritized using Micr...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Firewall Manager vs. Microsoft Defender XDR and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.