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Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) vs Microsoft Defender XDR comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 9, 2024

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

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Sponsored
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
6th
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Bitdefender GravityZone Ext...
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
30th
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
27th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Network Detection and Response (NDR) (13th)
Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
8th
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 4.6%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) is 1.2%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 4.2%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks4.6%
Microsoft Defender XDR4.2%
Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR)1.2%
Other90.0%
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
 

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Process Expert at A.P. Moller - Maersk
Gained full visibility and streamlined threat detection through behavior-based insights and AI integration
Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth. We have fine-tuned our security policies and allowed different levels of policies to get rid of those false positives. Currently, we are getting a fairly good amount of incidents that are not false positives or benign, but actionable items. The process is streamlined. In the initial days, the operations used to get involved in a lot of benign and other activities, but now the process is streamlined. We are leveraging the auto-detection and remediation plans. The operations teams are now more involved in other business roles as well, not just looking into the logs and fetching out what's happening there. They have fixed a lot of things. Initially, they didn't have IAC code drift detection, cloud posture management, or security posture management, but they have those now. They purchased different vendors and did a merger with that. They have now Prisma Cloud that gets integrated and now they are working with Cortex Cloud. Everything that was negative has now been addressed, and the product altogether looks to be in a very better and mature shape now. Currently, it's more or less detecting the workloads with AI-based best practices. Since most organizations are consuming AI agents and other things, we are looking forward to seeing what other feature enhancements Palo Alto can support in that.
reviewer2165952 - PeerSpot reviewer
Company Advisor
Automated protection has reduced our management time and keeps all client environments consistently secure
Reporting in Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) could be improved. It has some reporting in it, but it's a little cumbersome to work with, so the reporting that is there could be improved. The analytics dashboards of Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) are quite useful, and they are nice in that we can see an overview very quickly and drill down into specific issues or specific clients. The dashboards are quite good, though it would be nice if we had the same with automated reports. It would be much more useful for us to have that via email or having a report. The only downside that we find is that the product is a little bit slow.
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 behavior-based detection feature is valuable."
"The scalability of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is very good."
"The solution doesn't need a high level of technical training."
"Overall, it's a great platform; it integrates very well with other solutions from Palo Alto and also with our vendors, the ease of use is excellent, I love the root cause analysis from Cortex, which is amazing, and in a few clicks you can have the full root cause."
"One of the main benefits of the solution is its intelligence to correlate the events into an incident."
"The initial setup is easy."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is specifically designed to prevent zero-day attacks and is part of an ecosystem of Palo Alto, providing customers with a long-term vision to modify and redesign how security is applied in their company."
"The tool is easy to use."
"The threat detection rates are exceptionally good, better than most of the competition."
"The best thing about Bitdefender is that it has got top-notch features and it is not tied to specific countries like some other antivirus tools."
"The best features in the product, as a reseller, are the integrated SOC; integration with a SOC is one of the advantages."
"We are using Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus for the threat protection and security of our network."
"Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus is highly stable."
"The product is easy to use."
"The solution has best-in-breed technology and scores very highly on efficacy rates."
"We moved from Sophos antivirus to Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR), and ever since then, we've been very happy with the product."
"I like how Microsoft XDR and the other Microsoft products are integrated into a single unified security stack covering identity access management, endpoint protection, email, cloud applications, etc."
"The Endpoint Manager is incredible; it has a very straightforward interface and is exceedingly easy to use. Pulling out and deploying different tags or resources is a simple task across various departments with different levels of security. The notifications are also simple and satisfying; it's great to see the bubble informing us which devices are compliant and which are waiting to update."
"The solution is well integrated with applications. It is easy to maintain and administer."
"The email protection feature is the most valuable because our risks primarily lie there, and it seems to be the most popular target."
"Defender XDR enables you to scan a system remotely and get a complete inventory of its assets. You can gather more information from the asset inventory and apply threat intelligence using Office 365 or something."
"My clients like Defender's file integrity monitoring. They're monitoring Windows and Linux system files."
"The ability to isolate and address viruses is the most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender XDR."
"The native capabilities are quite good as it slips in seamlessly as part of our integration and gives a lot of flexibility in terms of configuration and customization as per the business requirements."
 

Cons

"The dashboard could use some significant improvement, just making it more useful with more information. It has a limited amount of information right now. It is customizable, but I'd love to see a better out-of-box dashboard."
"The solution should force customers to integrate with network traffic to see the full benefits of XDR."
"There is a severe gap in functionality between Windows, Linux, and Mac versions. For example all folder restriction settings are Windows only. Traps 5.0+ does not have SAML / LDAP integration."
"A little bit more automation would be nice."
"Enhancing UI simplicity and playbook flexibility are areas that could benefit from more low-code automation options for smoother integrations."
"A potential area of improvement for Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is the cost."
"There's room for improvement with Mac device installations, which can be challenging."
"This is a very costly product."
"The solution seems to be pretty amateur for an EDR solution, and it should be more in sync in terms of features, with solutions such as FireEye and SentinelOne."
"Detection and response is a disadvantage that could be improved."
"I would like automatic issue fixing for users without needing to physically open the PC. I'd prefer updates and fixes from the cloud to avoid headaches and save time."
"The solution must improve its management features."
"Reporting in Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) could be improved."
"Some customers would like additional features that aren't available through the current GravityZone platform. Some feedback has been about the deletion of other software not going smoothly during the installation of Bitdefender, particularly the removal of previous software like Sophos."
"Adding a feature like Data Loss Prevention would be beneficial."
"The management features could be improved, particularly in terms of better integration with Intune, Microsoft's cloud-based management solution."
"The dashboard should be easier to use. There is also improvement needed in the reporting when it comes to exporting or scheduling reports."
"It would be helpful if the solution could scan faster when it comes to scanning attachments to emails."
"Improving scalability, especially for very large tenants, could be beneficial for Microsoft Defender XDR."
"The technical support from Microsoft Defender XDR has been disappointingly slow, to the point that I am considering not renewing my unified support contract."
"Microsoft Defender XDR can be improved as a solution because it's still quite costly; it's part of E5, E5 security, so the cost is still quite high, especially considering SME and C customers, or SMB customers."
"Troubleshooting in Microsoft 365 Defender can be inefficient."
"Microsoft Defender XDR is not a full-fledged EDR or XDR."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is "expensive" and flexible."
"It has a higher cost than other solutions, like CrowdStrike or Microsoft’s EDR tools, but it reduces the cost of our operations because it’s a new generation antivirus tool."
"It has reasonable pricing for the use cases it provides to the company."
"I am using the Community edition."
"The solution is expensive. It's pricing is on a yearly-basis."
"The pricing is a little bit on the expensive side."
"The price of the product is not very economical."
"Its pricing is kind of in line with its competitors and everybody else out there."
"Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus is pretty average, meaning it's not cheaper, but it's pretty good. It has average pricing."
"We have purchased licenses for the use of Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus. The price of the solution is reasonable but could be better."
"I believe the pricing is fair and acceptable. I consider it to be reasonable and satisfactory."
"On average, we pay around 55 euros per user for the services and features we receive."
"Defender plan 1 is tenant-wise, and Defender plan 2 is per-user, which makes it more expensive. To have certain features, you would need to purchase the E5 license. For all of the capabilities that the tool provides, the price, though it can be high, is fair."
"Sometimes 365 Defender is expensive, but it can be moderate, depending on the organization's size and the license type. We're satisfied with the cost because it gives us a product that protects our entire environment with DLP. To compromise some cost, of course, we are to complete the most secure environment."
"Microsoft is not competitive with the pricing of the solution. The competitors are able to offer lower discounts. The price of the solution is higher."
"The price could be better. Normally, the costs depend on the country you're located in for the license. When we were in the initial stage, we went with the E5 license they call premium standard. It cost us around $5.20 per month for four users."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender XDR is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
13%
University
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
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 Business46
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise52
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise1
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise28
Large Enterprise41
 

Questions from the Community

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. Sentinel One
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. SentinelOne SentinelOne offers very detailed specifics with regard to risks or attacks. ...
Comparing CrowdStrike Falcon to Cortex XDR (Palo Alto)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Both Cortex XDR and Crowd Strike Falcon offer cloud-based solutions th...
How is Cortex XDR compared with Microsoft Defender?
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security solution. The tool reduces the attack surface,...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus?
The pricing and licensing of Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) is reasonable. We moved fr...
What needs improvement with Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus?
Reporting in Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) could be improved. It has some reporting i...
What is your primary use case for Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus?
Our customers typically use Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) primarily as an antivirus s...
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,...
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 trigg...
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 isolati...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
GravityZone Ultra Plus
Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Archdiocese, Northstar, SeSa, W&W Informatik, Yamaha Motor Europe
Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) vs. Microsoft Defender XDR and other solutions. Updated: May 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.