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Cortex XSIAM vs IBM Security QRadar comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

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
5.1
Cortex XSIAM automates over 50% of workflows, saving up to $500k, benefiting understaffed teams with quick ROI.
Sentiment score
7.5
IBM Security QRadar is praised for efficient monitoring, low costs, valuable analytics, and beneficial long-term security investments.
With SOAR, the workflow takes one minute or less to complete the analysis.
Investing this amount was very much worth it for my organization.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
Cortex XSIAM support receives mixed feedback, with premium plans praised for expert guidance but needing improved responsiveness overall.
Sentiment score
6.1
IBM Security QRadar's customer service is praised overall, though technical support quality varies, with notable regional differences.
With premium support, core Palo Alto technical experts handle issues directly.
It is ineffective in terms of responding to basic queries and addressing future requirements.
The Palo Alto support team is fully responsive and helpful.
They assist with advanced issues, such as hardware or other problems, that are not part of standard operations.
Support needs to understand the issue first, then escalate it to the engineering team.
The support is really good; for instance, if a critical ticket is submitted, you will get paged right away as it gets logged, and their analyst will look into it, letting you know as soon as possible so you can work on it.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
Cortex XSIAM is praised for its scalability in enterprise and cloud, though some seek better on-premises capabilities.
Sentiment score
7.4
IBM Security QRadar is scalable and flexible, accommodating thousands of users and devices, though some express pricing concerns.
Without proper integration, scaling up with more servers is meaningless.
Cortex XSIAM is highly scalable.
For EPS license, if you increase or exceed the EPS license, you cannot receive events.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Cortex XSIAM is praised for its robust cloud-based stability, offering reliable performance with minimal and swiftly handled issues.
Sentiment score
7.6
IBM Security QRadar is generally stable, though some users face challenges with updates, configurations, scalability, and high log volumes.
The product was easy to install and set up and worked right.
Overall, Cortex XSIAM is stable.
I think QRadar is stable and currently satisfies my needs.
The product has been stable so far.
 

Room For Improvement

Cortex XSIAM needs enhancements in performance, pricing, support, integration, UI intuitiveness, AI analytics, and identity management expansion.
IBM Security QRadar users seek improvements in interface design, integration, automation, cost-efficiency, and advanced analytics for better usability.
Obtaining validation for integrations from Palo Alto takes around eight months, which is quite long.
Cortex XSIAM needs improvements in terms of data onboarding, parsers, and third-party integration supports.
Cortex XSIAM is on the expensive side and requires substantial improvement in pricing.
We receive logs from different types of devices and need a way to correlate them effectively.
If AI-related support can suggest rules and integrate with existing security devices like MD, IPS, this SIM can create more relevant rules.
IBM Security QRadar does not support Canvas, so we had to create custom scripts and workarounds to pull logs from Canvas.
 

Setup Cost

Cortex XSIAM pricing is high but competitive, with costs varying based on add-ons, licensing, and regional differences.
IBM Security QRadar is costly yet efficient, priced on Events Per Second, and offers negotiable, simplified annual licensing.
The first impression is that XSIAM would be more expensive than others we tried.
The product is very expensive.
Cortex XSIAM is pretty expensive, and the licensing process is not very comfortable.
Splunk is more expensive than IBM Security QRadar.
 

Valuable Features

Cortex XSIAM offers advanced security automation, machine learning detection, and seamless integration, enhancing threat management and forensic investigation.
IBM Security QRadar is a scalable, user-friendly platform praised for rapid insights, advanced machine learning, and integration capabilities.
The advanced visualization capabilities of the product are important for understanding security trends in an organization.
One of the valued aspects of the product is its use of artificial intelligence to detect security vulnerabilities.
The flexibility for creating manual workflows stands out.
Recently, I faced an incident, a cyber incident, and it was detected in real time.
IBM is seeking information about IBM QRadar because a part of QRadar, especially in the cloud, has been sold to Palo Alto.
We have FortiSOAR and IBM Resilient for IBM Security QRadar orchestration.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cortex XSIAM
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
13th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (5th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (7th)
IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
210
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (6th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (17th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (8th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Cortex XSIAM is 2.9%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 7.2%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Security QRadar7.2%
Cortex XSIAM2.9%
Other89.9%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

AKASH MAJUMDER - PeerSpot reviewer
Incident response times have significantly reduced with efficient device integration and log parsing capabilities
Cortex XSIAM needs improvements in terms of data onboarding, parsers, and third-party integration supports. Additionally, a future update request is to enable tagging of endpoints in groups, similar to a feature available in Cortex XDR. The AI analytics need fine-tuning because some use cases are not working from my side.
Mahmoud Younes - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable installation and diverse use cases provide strong value
IBM Security QRadar has some areas for improvement. We have missed some DSM components. We need to customize logs where there is no DSM or connector for certain products. We can integrate but we have missed the DSM, which is the connector to pass logs coming from different applications. For example, with a university customer, we tried onboarding Canvas service. IBM Security QRadar does not support Canvas, so we had to create custom scripts and workarounds to pull logs from Canvas.
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Comparison Review

VS
Jun 28, 2015
Qradar vs. ArcSight
Continuing with the SIEM posts we have done at Infosecnirvana, this post is a Head to head comparison of the two Industry leading SIEM products in the market – HP ArcSight and IBM QRadar Both the products have consistently been in the Gartner Leaders Quadrant. Both HP and IBM took over niche SIEM…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business88
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise102
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cortex XSIAM?
It is an effective solution in terms of performance and functionalities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cortex XSIAM?
The cost of Cortex XSIAM in the India market differs from other regions. When considering competition, from a sales perspective, the pricing is acceptable.
What needs improvement with Cortex XSIAM?
The main area for improvement is the user interface intuitiveness - specifically how quickly users can grasp the portal functionality. For SOC analysts, the focus should be on improving the speed o...
What are the biggest differences between Securonix UEBA, Exabeam, and IBM QRadar?
It mostly depends on your use-cases and environment. Exabeam and Securonix have a stronger UEBA feature set, friendlier GUI and are not licensed based on capacity (amount of logs and information in...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Security QRadar?
When comparing with Splunk, IBM Security QRadar's cost is reasonable. Splunk is more expensive than IBM Security QRadar.
 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cortex XSIAM vs. IBM Security QRadar and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.