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Azure Firewall vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
1.0
Azure Firewall offers cost-effective security, appealing to smaller businesses; larger enterprises might prefer alternatives like Fortinet or Palo Alto.
Sentiment score
7.2
Microsoft Defender for Cloud enhances security, reduces costs, and boosts productivity with proactive threat detection and seamless integration.
Defender proactively indexes and analyzes documents, identifying potential threats even when inactive, enhancing preventative security.
Identifying potential vulnerabilities has helped us avoid costly data losses.
The biggest return on investment is the rapid improvement of security posture.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
4.4
Azure Firewall support receives mixed reviews, with praise for expertise but criticism for inconsistent response times and delays.
Sentiment score
6.6
Microsoft Defender for Cloud support is praised for expertise but criticized for delays, inconsistent service, and ticket handling issues.
Microsoft provides excellent customer support, especially with premium support plans.
Nevertheless, the final support from Microsoft remains effective.
With Azure products, customer support is really good.
Since security is critical, we prefer a quicker response time.
The support team was very responsive to queries.
They understand their product, but much like us, they struggle with the finer details, especially with new features.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Azure Firewall offers strong scalability with automatic scaling, but some users note limitations in handling high bandwidth demands.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is highly scalable, managing diverse environments smoothly, with seamless integration and flexible subscriptions despite cost concerns.
Based on my experience, I would rate it nine out of ten for scalability.
Azure Firewall is highly scalable, and I would give it a scalability rating of nine out of ten.
When we started deploying the solution, it was not a mature product at times.
We are using infrastructure as a code, so we do not have any scalability issues with Microsoft Defender for Cloud implementation because our cloud automatically does it.
It has multiple licenses and features, covering infrastructures from a hundred to five hundred virtual machines, without any issues.
Defender won't replace our endpoint XDR, but it will likely adapt and support any growth in the Microsoft Cloud space.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.6
Azure Firewall is praised for its reliability and stability, generally receiving high ratings despite minor past incidents.
Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a stable, reliable environment with minor performance issues primarily due to outdated systems.
The stability of Azure Firewall is excellent.
Defender's stability has been flawless for us.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is very stable.
Microsoft sometimes changes settings or configurations without transparency.
 

Room For Improvement

Azure Firewall needs enhanced security, usability, flexibility, better pricing, support, threat intelligence, documentation, and improved Azure integration.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud needs better automation, integration, user-friendliness, documentation, pricing, real-time monitoring, and legacy support.
Improvement in reporting and better visibility into network traffic would also be beneficial.
Azure Firewall could improve its reporting capabilities.
It lacks some functionalities when compared to competitors like Check Point and Fortinet, such as WAF or load balancing.
Microsoft, in general, could significantly improve its communication and support.
It would be beneficial to streamline recommendations to avoid unnecessary alerts and to refine the severity of alerts based on specific environments or environmental attributes.
The artificial intelligence features could be expanded to allow the system to autonomously manage security issues without needing intervention from admins.
 

Setup Cost

Azure Firewall offers flexible pricing appealing to enterprises, balancing cost-efficiency with seamless Azure ecosystem integration despite potential premium costs.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides flexible pricing with a free version; costs vary by features, region, and enterprise needs.
Azure Firewall is quite expensive, with a high cost.
Azure Firewall is subscription-based, which is advantageous as there is no need for upfront payment.
Prices have increased recently
Every time we consider expanding usage, we carefully evaluate the necessity due to cost concerns.
We appreciate the licensing approach based on employee count rather than a big enterprise license.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is pricey, especially for Kubernetes clusters.
 

Valuable Features

Azure Firewall provides scalable security with IPS, threat intelligence, malware protection, automation, and integrates with Azure Monitor for management.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud enhances security with AI detection, compliance, seamless Azure integration, and multi-cloud support for streamlined protection.
We have to combine multiple features and multiple products, and then we can say that this is more cost-effective and works properly to ensure the security posture of our cloud deployments.
The premium version includes all traditional firewall features, reducing the need for separate compute resources.
We created rules in the firewall to ensure that the traffic would be diverted to the right endpoint and made sure only specific application VMs could reach the database server.
The most valuable feature for me is the variety of APIs available.
This feature significantly aids in threat detection and enhances the user experience by streamlining security management.
The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security.
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Firewall
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
11th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (12th)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (8th), Container Security (7th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (2nd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (5th), Compliance Management (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Azure Firewall is 3.6%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 6.1%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

AnvarSadique - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy setup and effective traffic routing enhance security
In terms of improvements, I think the price could be a concern as Azure ( /products/microsoft-azure-reviews ) services are often more expensive compared to other firewalls. However, the functional aspects of Azure Firewall met our needs. While I found the interface not particularly user-friendly, this is a common issue across vendors.
Vibhor Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
A single tool for complete visibility and addressing security gaps
Currently, issues are structured in Microsoft Defender for Cloud at severity levels of high, critical, or warning, but these severity levels are not always right. For example, Microsoft might consider a port being open as critical, but that might not be the case for our company. Similarly, it might suggest closing some management ports, but you might need them to be able to log in, so the severity levels for certain things can be improved. Even though Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a way to temporarily disable certain alerts or notifications without affecting our security score, it would be better to have more granularized control over these recommendations. Currently, we cannot even disable certain alerts or notifications. There should be an automated mechanism to design Azure policies based on the recommendations, possibly with AI integration. Instead of an engineer having to write a policy to fix security gaps, which is very time-consuming, there should be an inbuilt capability to auto-remediate everything and have proper control in place. Additionally, enabling Defender for Cloud at the resource group level, rather than only at the subscription level, would be beneficial.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is a better choice, Azure Firewall or Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls?
Azure Firewall Vs. Palo Alto Network NG Firewalls Both solutions provide stellar stability and security. Azure Firewall is easy to use and provides excellent support. Valuable features include int...
How does Azure Firewall compare with Palo Alto Networks VM Series?
Both products are very stable and easily scalable. The setup of Azure Firewall is easy and very user-friendly and the overall cost is reasonable. Azure Firewall offers a solid threat awareness, can...
Which would you recommend - FortiGate VM or Azure Firewall?
Both of these solutions are excellent options that provide flexible scalability and solid security. Fortinet Fortigate VM integrates well and has excellent centralized reporting. It is very easy to...
How is Prisma Cloud vs Azure Security Center for security?
Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening across your ecosystem. It also has great remote workforce capabilities and supports a...
What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Firewall vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
864,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.