Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Azure Firewall vs Microsoft Purview Data Governance 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
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
11th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (13th)
Microsoft Purview Data Gove...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Data Governance (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Azure Firewall is 4.0%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview Data Governance is 4.4%, down from 4.7% 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.
AmrNaeem - PeerSpot reviewer
It helps us by reporting on and auditing leaks and breaches
One important feature is data security, which both end users and the organization seek. Microsoft Purview offers data protection across a multi-cloud and multi-platform environment. It's critical that Purview connects to iOS, Mac, and Android. We could only secure some of our data if it only covered Windows. It provides a comprehensive view of the entire ecosystem's threats and compliance in real time. It's very easy to use. Purview's compliance features are crucial. We have to match some cases in other countries to our own to comply with the policies, procedures, and regulatory frameworks here.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"All its features are good. That's why we recommend it."
"One of the notable advantages of Azure Firewall is its user-friendly interface, which closely resembles or shares similarities with other Azure components."
"Network filtering is valuable. The scalability capability from the cloud-native service helps us a lot because it simplifies our day-to-day maintenance activity."
"Microsoft's technical support is very good. They're quite knowledgable and responsive."
"We secure the entry point to the virtual data center with the firewall."
"It's auto-scalable, which is a great feature."
"Among the most valuable features are the DDoS protection that protects your virtual machines, the threat intelligence, and traffic filtering."
"The solution can autoscale."
"Microsoft Purview is extremely stable."
"It is pretty early, but the decision to go with this investment was largely driven by the simplification of our information security technology management stack. That is the primary objective. Once you simplify and you have a connected structure, it allows for faster adoption there. It also gives us additional capabilities as we go on using the technology that we are familiar with, and we do not have to depend on outside parties to come in and tell us how to do certain things."
"The data protection feature is vital as it controls who can access data when it moves out of our protected boundary."
"Microsoft Purview is scalable."
"The best part is that I can create classifications per my requirements. I use it to classify multiple platforms like AWS, GCP, Azure, and different file sharing systems."
"Purview's ability to connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices is critical."
"The time to onboard is pretty short."
"It gives you the opportunity to know your data and apply policies around it. If those policies are flouted, you can always track what's happening. You have options such as alerting the person who is committing that action, or you can take automatic action by blocking, for example, an email that is been sent externally. It's very useful."
 

Cons

"Azure Firewall is an expensive solution. On a scale from one to ten, where one is not affordable, I would rate the price as a three."
"This solution is not mature when it comes to handling perimeter traffic like internet browsing."
"For large organizations, a third-party firewall would be an added advantage, because it would have more advanced features, things that are not in Azure Firewall."
"It would be nice to be able to create groupings for servers and offer groups of IP addresses."
"You have to have a defined IP range within your network to associate it with your network. The problem is you have to plan ahead of time if you expect to use the firewall in the future so that you don't have to reconfigure your subnets or that specific IP range. Other than that, I don't any issues. I use it for basic configuration for a single application, so I really don't try to leverage it for multiple applications where I might find some complexity or challenges."
"One thing that would help engineers adopt it better is the documentation."
"The threat intelligence aspect of this particular firewall is not at par with other providers."
"Azure Firewall has limited visibility for IDPS, no TLS inspection, no app ID, no user ID, no content ID, no device ID. There is no antivirus or anti-spyware. Azure Firewall doesn't scan traffic for malware unless it triggers an IDPS signature. There is no sandbox or machine learning functionality, meaning we are not protected from Zero-day threats. There is no DNS security and limited web categories."
"The product needs improvement to edit the number of assets. It needs to be more inuitive as well."
"There are negatives to the compliance aspect of Purview in that you get a lot of false positives with some of the native scanning and rules in the platform. A lot of them need tweaking to get a more realistic handle on what data there is."
"I have some concerns about the separation of roles in Purview from the Microsoft tenant, as well as how they interact with the security portal and endpoint manager."
"I rate Microsoft support six out of 10. The standard support is acceptable, but sometimes it doesn't respond fast enough. Overall, it doesn't meet our expectations."
"Another area for improvement is in managing the business glossary terms. If they could provide the same type of method that we use to configure the scan rule sets, that would be helpful. Currently, there is no option like this, so we have to do it manually. Automatic detection would be great."
"Setting up Purview in a production tenant proved challenging due to a lack of clear documentation on permission requirements."
"There are some non-Microsoft file formats that are not supported."
"I would like to have AI functionality on the dashboard to help me analyze and report on the data that we capture using Purview on a daily basis."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of Azure Firewall is pay-as-you-go. Fortinet also has a pay-as-you-go model, but Azure's pricing is higher and, with FortiGate, you also have the license."
"It is pay-as-you-go. So, you pay based on the usage. If I remember it well, there is a basic fee, and there is a traffic fee. It is not per month. It is per hour or something like that. It is not so expensive."
"Before choosing this solution, we evaluated others, and we found this to be the most cost-effective."
"Azure Firewall comes with Azure native services. We did not buy any kind of license for it. Whether you have a free subscription or a pay-as-you-go model, you can deploy the Azure Firewall service... The amount that you use will determine how much you pay."
"Azure Firewall is quite an expensive product."
"The licensing module is good."
"I rate the product pricing a five out of ten."
"The solution is cheaper than other brands. My company has an enterprise contract and we finally got a good price with Azure."
"The price is reasonable considering its value."
"The price is reasonable because most of our clients already have an E3 license, which makes implementation easy."
"The interesting part is how they are bundling the version into the E5 stack. If it was not for that inclusion, this would have been a difficult conversation for us, so kudos to Microsoft on that. Separating it out may become a problem for customer retention. It is definitely a good move on Microsoft's part to include it as part of any existing or any system upgrades for customers that were on E3."
"I would rate the cost of Microsoft Purview a six out of ten with ten being the most expensive."
"Microsoft Purview requires a Microsoft 365 license and is included with an E5 license."
"The pricing is reasonable because it's part of the 365 E3 or E5 license you buy."
"People often and unjustly say that Microsoft product pricing is not in the scope of reality, that it's just too expensive at times. I do not feel that is the case at all... If I'm able to let go of 30 to 70 percent of my IT administration staff, that makes up for a lot of money."
"The categorization within the licensing could be improved. There are a lot of solutions within Microsoft Purview. If the licensing could be a bit clearer and the solutions could be better categorized according to function and across multiple environments, that would be excellent. The licensing is very confusing."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Microsoft Security Suite solutions are best for your needs.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
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...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Purview?
It is designed to seamlessly connect to various data sources, which is particularly beneficial for our customers who primarily use Microsoft technologies.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Purview?
Microsoft Purview Data Governance is quite affordable compared to other market solutions, which have high initial costs. It allows for a cost-effective start with negligible initial cost. However, ...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Purview?
There should be more clarity about the costing, particularly how the cost is calculated, especially when utilizing health reports and quality features. Additionally, adding more tools around data q...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Purview, MS Azure Purview
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Firewall vs. Microsoft Purview Data Governance and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.