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

Azure Firewall vs Microsoft Sentinel 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 Sentinel
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th)
 

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 Sentinel is 5.0%, down from 6.5% 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.
Ivan Angelov - PeerSpot reviewer
Threat detection and response capabilities enhance investigation processes
My security team has been using Microsoft Sentinel for around two years. We also have Bastion and SolarWinds as part of our monitoring tools. We use a three-way tool, alongside Microsoft Sentinel, in our environment The most valuable features for us include threat collection, threat detection,…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like that you can deploy the policies separately from the firewall."
"The product's value to my company stems from its ability to secure my organization."
"I think that one of the best features is definitely the premium version, along with the IDPs in terms of the intrusion detection and prevention system."
"With Azure products, customer support is really good."
"We use the solution for application and server deployment."
"There is not a single feature or single product that can ensure security."
"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."
"The features of Azure Firewall that I find most valuable include DNS inspection, forward proxy, and security, particularly on the edge."
"I believe one of the main advantages is Microsoft Sentinel's seamless integration with other Microsoft products."
"Microsoft Sentinel's ability to correlate data from multiple sources has improved our capability significantly."
"The signal correlation and dashboards features of Microsoft Sentinel are fantastic because it correlates the signal logs with other products."
"Sentinel enables us to ingest data from our entire ecosystem. In addition to integrating our Cisco ASA Firewall logs, we get our Palo Alto proxy logs and some on-premises data coming from our hardware devices... That is very important and is one way Sentinel is playing a wider role in our environment."
"It is easy to implement (turn on) - does need a skilled analyst to develop queries and playbooks."
"The in-built SOAR of Sentinel is valuable. Kusto Query Language is also valuable for the ease of writing queries and ease of getting insights from the logs. Schedule-based queries within Sentinel are also valuable. I found these three features most useful for my projects."
"Investigations are something really remarkable. We can drill down right to the raw logs by running different queries and getting those on the console itself."
"Sentinel is a SIEM and SOAR tool, so its automation is the best feature; we can reduce human interaction, freeing up our human resources."
 

Cons

"Diagnosing blocked traffic was initially challenging because we didn't know how to diagnose and integrate Azure Firewall with other Azure services for storing logs in Log Analytics."
"The threat intelligence part could be better. I don't see why our customers have to get an additional solution with Azure Firewall. It would be great if they made it on par with Palo Alto."
"It would be much easier if the on-premises, firewall rules, had some kind of export-import possibility in place, which is not the case right now."
"The development area and QA area could be improved. With those improvements, we can improve projects and take even less time to implement them."
"I would like the premium and standard features to be available on the basic package. Additionally, it lacks some functionalities when compared to competitors like Check Point and Fortinet, such as WAF or load balancing."
"For larger enterprises, they need to adjust the scalability."
"Maybe one of the things in the tool where improvements are needed as there are some shortcomings consist of Azure Firewall Manager."
"The tool needs to improve the onboarding and transition process for on-prem users."
"I would like Sentinel to have more out-of-the-box analytics rules. There are already more than 400 rules, but they could add more industry-specific ones. For example, you could have sets of out-of-the-box rules for banking, financial sector, insurance, automotive, etc., so it's easier for people to use it out of the box. Structuring the rules according to industry might help us."
"The pricing tiers of Microsoft Sentinel should be improved. There are complexities in calculating the right pricing tier for different customers, which makes it difficult for me as a consultant during upfront pricing."
"If Sentinel had a graphical user interface, it would be easier to use. I would also like it to be more customizable."
"If their UI was a bit more streamlined and easy to find when I need it, then that would be a great improvement."
"I believe one of the challenges I encountered was the absence of live training sessions, even with the option to pay for them."
"Everyone has their favorites. There is always room for improvement, and everybody will say, "I wish you could do this for me or that for me." It is a personal thing based on how you use the tool. I do not necessarily have those thoughts, and they are probably not really valuable because they are unique to the context of the user, but broadly, where it can continue to improve is by adding more connectors to more systems."
"It has been a challenge with Azure Sentinel to onboard the Syslog server from FortiGate. Azure Sentinel can work better on that shift between the Syslog server and a firewall."
"We have been working with multiple customers, and every time we onboard a customer, we are missing an essential feature that surprisingly doesn't exist in Sentinel. We searched the forums and knowledge bases but couldn't find a solution. When you onboard new customers, you need to enable the data connectors. That part is easy, but you must create rules from scratch for every associated connector. You click "next," "next," "next," and it requires five clicks for each analytical rule. Imagine we have a customer with 150 rules."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive, especially with the premium functions. For one of the clients, it was very expensive. You have to use it more at an enterprise level, and there, it was not at an enterprise level. So, it was very costly, but security-wise, it was a very wise decision to use it that way."
"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 solution is cheaper than other brands. My company has an enterprise contract and we finally got a good price with Azure."
"The licensing module is good."
"I rate the product pricing a five out of ten."
"Before choosing this solution, we evaluated others, and we found this to be the most cost-effective."
"Azure Firewall is more expensive. If Microsoft can make Azure Firewall cheaper, I can see that all clients will think of using it. One client used FortiGate because it is much cheaper. Some clients ask me for Cisco, but in the cloud estimate, I found its cost is the same as Azure Firewall."
"The combination of the ease of accessibility and the free cost of the service is great. But we buy storage based on our events per second and on how many sources are integrated into the solution."
"Good monthly operational cost model for the detection and response outcomes delivered, M365 logs don't count toward the limits which is a good benefit."
"Microsoft Sentinel can be costly, particularly for data management."
"Some of the licensing models can be a little bit difficult to understand and confusing at times, but overall it's a reasonable licensing model compared to some other SIEMs that charge you a lot per data."
"Sentinel's pricing is on the higher side, but you can get a discount if you can predict your usage. You have to pay ingestion and storage fees. There are also fees for Logic Apps and particular features. It seems heavily focused on microtransactions, but they may be slightly optional. By contrast, Splunk requires no additional fee for their equivalent of Logic. You have a little more flexibility, but Sentinel's costs add up."
"I'm not happy with the pricing on the integration with Defender for Endpoint. Defender for Endpoint is log-rich. There is a lot of information coming through, and it is needed information. The price point at which you ingest those logs has made a lot of my customers make the decision to leave that within the Defender stack."
"It is a consumption-based license model. bands at 100, 200, 400 GB per day etc. Azure Sentinel Pricing | Microsoft Azure"
"Sentinel is expensive relative to other products of the class, so it often isn't affordable for small-scale businesses. However, considering the solution has more extensive capabilities than others, the price is not so high. Pricing is based on GBs of ingested daily data, either by a pay-as-you-go or subscription model."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Microsoft Security Suite solutions are best for your needs.
857,028 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%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

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...
Is there a common threat intelligence tool that aggregates multiple threat intelligence sources?
Yes, Azure Sentinel is a SIEM on the Cloud. Multiple data sources can be uploaded and analyzed with Azure Sentinel and its Threat Hunting functionality with AI available as templates or customized ...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
Which is better - Azure Sentinel or AWS Security Hub?
We like that Azure Sentinel does not require as much maintenance as legacy SIEMs that are on-premises. Azure Sentinel is auto-scaling - you will not have to worry about performance impact, you will...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Azure Sentinel
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Firewall vs. Microsoft Sentinel and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.