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Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs Rapid7 InsightIDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 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...
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
6th
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Rapid7 InsightIDR
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
39th
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
23rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (23rd), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (10th), Threat Deception Platforms (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.4%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rapid7 InsightIDR is 1.2%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.4%
Rapid7 InsightIDR1.2%
Other95.4%
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
 

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.
SohailHyder - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Cyber Security at Super Secure
Has supported compliance needs for mid-sized organizations but lacks customization and advanced integration
If we pitch Rapid7 InsightIDR against solutions such as SIEMs from Splunk or LogRhythm, it is not as customizable as a SIEM solution is. This is where it can improve if we keep in front the feature sets of a complete SIEM solution. Most common in the market is QRadar, but it is depleting now. It has been taken over by some other products such as Splunk and LogRhythm. If we compare these things with Rapid7 InsightIDR, then there are definitely some gaps that need to be filled. Data retention is also one concern because Rapid7 InsightIDR is cloud-based and operates on a subscription model. Whatever data you want to retain, it has to be paid for separately or it has a cost. Other solutions that are on-premises can have their own infrastructure or they provide some data retention for a month or in some capacity-wise, they provide that solution to them which makes them more attractive.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its ability to react to cyber data attacks is awesome. That is pretty much the use of it. What blows your mind is the ability to access your assets remotely and see what is actually going on with them. You can not only see them in a console. You can also react very rapidly to your assets that are compromised."
"Palo Alto Networks Traps improves our security posture and lowers risk by providing next-gen methods to combat against modern threats on all the major platforms."
"After deploying Traps, we saw the performance of the network improve by 65 to 70 percent."
"The user interface of the solution is sophisticated and straightforward."
"Cortex XDR's most valuable feature is its intelligence-based dashboards."
"My advice for anybody who is considering Cortex XDR is that it is a complete solution, and has very good features."
"Cortex XDR alerts us on the dashboard when there's a threat, which allows us to restrict that user and helps secure our infrastructure."
"The dashboard is customizable."
"I rate Rapid7 nine out of 10 for affordability"
"The log aggregation and storage provided by InsightIDR has shown no issues with scalability; aggregating over one hundred millions events daily."
"Log search allows us to dive deep into aggregated logs and query all event types at once.​"
"It gives all the advantages of a SIEM, however, using clever AI, it looks for patterns of behavior rather than just flooding me with all the alerts."
"Intelligent alerting to avoid the common problem of alert fatigue associated with traditional SIEMs."
"InsightIDR’s ability to process millions of transactions per day, and to notify me of the most critical ones, is priceless. InsightIDR has the alerts tuned, and has the ability to quickly drill down to determine the threat level."
"The web interface is great — very useful and user-friendly."
"The solution provides satisfying native integration features"
 

Cons

"The solution needs better reports. I think they should let the customer go in and customize the reports."
"It would be good if they could make an exception for applications."
"I would like to see them include NDR (Network Detection Response). Then it would work well with SIEM Response."
"The dashboard could use some significant improvement, just making it more useful with more information."
"While using Cortex, I noticed some aspects that could be improved, such as increasing the synchronization speed between XDR and Xnor."
"The solution eats memory of the computer, unlike anything I've ever seen."
"For working with the solution, you only really need a web browser, however, we've found that working on Chrome, for example, is horrible."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is a strong tool, but it is true that digesting information sometimes makes the tool go a little bit slower."
"One thing that springs to mind is easier API integration with ITSMs."
"InsightIDR is only available in a cloud version. Some of our customers prefer an on-prem solution because they want to manage the security within their environment."
"One of the things that could be better is digital forensics. It is there, but it can be better."
"If we pitch Rapid7 InsightIDR against solutions such as SIEMs from Splunk or LogRhythm, it is not as customizable as a SIEM solution is."
"InsightIDR is only available in a cloud version. Some of our customers prefer an on-prem solution because they want to manage the security within their environment."
"Customised alert recipients need to be added to allow better first-line action and quicker response. Configurable honeypots would be a welcome addition."
"Rapid7 InsightIDR is not intuitive to search for logs. It should be more user-friendly and improve the dashboards. We should be able to use ready-made templates instead of having to build one."
"The searching feature in Rapid7 InsightIDR needs to evolve"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't recall what the cost was, but it wasn't really that expensive."
"It has reasonable pricing for the use cases it provides to the company."
"When we first bought it, it was a bit expensive, but it was worth it. The licensing was straightforward."
"Our customers have expressed that the price is high."
"Very costly product."
"The solution has one subscription for endpoint protection and one subscription for detection and response. The two licenses combined give you the BRO version."
"The cost depends on your chosen license type, like Pro or other licenses."
"The return on investment is from the user side because we have seen the performance of it increase the delivery time of the product if we are using too many web-based and on-premise applications. In indirect ways, we saw the return of investment in terms of performance and user satisfaction increase."
"Licensing is by endpoint and amount of retention time (at least ours is). Default retention was one year, but we are able to push the retention further if needed. There's also a provide-your-own-S3 option for longer retention if you don't want to pay for the additional retention years in your Rapid7 agreement."
"The pricing is good, and it is not very expensive."
"I rate Rapid7 InsightIDR's price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"Licensing is straightforward. If, for some reason, you don’t meet the minimum licensing requirements, there is a third-party managed service that can help."
"​Accurately predict your licensing counts as this is a subscription based product.​"
"It is on a yearly basis. For our own company, for about 250 users, it was 16,000 euros a year."
"The solution has a mid-range price point in the market"
"Rapid7 InsightIDR charges us based on the endpoints we connect to."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise49
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise6
 

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. The ability to reverse damage caused by ransomware with minimal interruptions to...
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 that are very scalable, secure, and user-friendly. Cortex XDR by Palo Alto offers ...
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, applies behavioral-based endpoint protection and response, and includes risk-ba...
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What needs improvement with Rapid7 InsightIDR?
If we pitch Rapid7 InsightIDR against solutions such as SIEMs from Splunk or LogRhythm, it is not as customizable as a SIEM solution is. This is where it can improve if we keep in front the feature...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
InsightIDR
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Liberty Wines, Pioneer Telephone, Visier
Find out what your peers are saying about Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. Rapid7 InsightIDR and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,915 professionals have used our research since 2012.