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CylanceENDPOINT vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

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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

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Sponsored
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
122
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (3rd), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
CylanceENDPOINT
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
63rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
212
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (6th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd), Agentic Endpoint Security (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.8%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CylanceENDPOINT is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 6.4%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint6.4%
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.8%
CylanceENDPOINT0.3%
Other89.5%
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

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.
Raphael Haroun  Ikyagh - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Administrator at Letshego
Stable, good for malware detection and prevention
I use it for general endpoint protection and the usual stuff like malware detection and prevention It secures my environment.  One thing that could be easier is initiating scans. If I want to scan an extra drive, it should be more straightforward. It's a bit clunky. I have been using it for…
Robert Arbuckle - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Analyst III at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Automatically isolates threats and integrates with logging to reduce response time
Overall, I would evaluate the Microsoft support level that I receive at probably about a seven, but that depends on the day. It has been spotty. We have had issues where the urgency level of the Microsoft support is not as high as ours, especially during a data breach or potential data breach situation. We have had issues with some of the offshore support being lackluster. One specific thing that comes to mind is we were on a support call with our CISO on the call, and the Microsoft agent, who did not actually work for Microsoft, is one of the vendors that Microsoft uses for support, said, "Just to set expectations, my lunch break is in an hour and I am going to go away then." For us, it was already ten o'clock at night and we had been working on this for a couple of hours, trying to get a security engineer on with us. For him to tell us that he was going to go away and have lunch, it was, "Okay, but go find somebody else if you need to." It was just the lackluster approach, and it seemed like he did not really care. We seem to get a lot of this when we get non-Microsoft support. I can identify areas for improvement with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, as it is kind of a convoluted mess to try to take care of false positives. Especially when they have been identified as false positives but they keep going off over and over again. It is great for my pocketbook because it generates a lot of on-call action, but I would really prefer more sleep at two o'clock in the morning than dealing with false positives. I would say that the unified portal for managing Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is suitable for both teams as they are all in there. It would be great if they would stop moving things around and renaming things, which makes sense. The new XDR portal is pretty nice. Being able to have it central again inside of the regular Security Center without having to open up two windows is helpful. Overall, I think it is pretty good. There is always going to be something that could be improved, such as alerting and the ability to modify alerts would be a little bit helpful to have. Being able to add more data into the alerts and turn off alerts that are not as useful would be beneficial. It is hard to say what the quantitative impact the security exposure management feature has had on our company's security, because a lot of it is kind of subjective. I think we are sitting at around a fifty percent score still, and a lot of it is just kind of unusual circumstances that we cannot really implement without breaking the organization.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The stability of the solution is very good. We have about 100 users on it right now, and we use it twice a week."
"Cortex XDR is stable, offering high quality and reliable performance."
"The tool is designed to scale for large enterprises and handle large volumes of data."
"It has pretty much everything we need and works well within the Palo Alto ecosystem."
"Traps has drastically reduced our endpoint attack surface via advanced detection capabilities, sandboxing of never before seen programs, and by drastically limiting where executables can launch in the first place."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"The most valuable features are the fact that it was running in the background and it would intercept any weird stuff, and the fact that it would send things directly to the cloud for sandboxing. It's quite practical."
"From the Palo Alto side, whatever they buy, they integrate that really well into their integration suite, and that makes a massive difference."
"It secures my environment."
"The antivirus features are very useful."
"I like Defender's reporting and logging features. The email alerts are also helpful. It's hard sometimes to sift through the email, especially if you're an IT firm managing hundreds if not thousands of endpoints, but we find email reporting useful. For example, last Tuesday, we learned of new vulnerabilities that were discovered as a result of the previous patches. The endpoints without those patches triggered alerts in Defender."
"For threat-hunting, I'll put some threats in a test scenario. I've downloaded known viruses that are out in the public for testing. They're not really a virus but they've got a signature. Defender for Endpoint will automatically find those, quarantine them for me, and alert me to what it did. It gives me "automated eyes.""
"The visibility into threats that the solution provides is pretty awesome... This is something that makes me think, "Wow, okay. If I had my own organization, I would probably get this too." It stops the threat before an employee gets phished or something gets downloaded to their computer."
"It comes included with the Windows license."
"It's one of the best antiviruses on the market."
"It's effective against most types of infection, and the firewall is perfect for protection."
"Defender is an antivirus program available at a lower price than other products, like Symantec, McAfee, etc."
 

Cons

"The downsides of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks are that in many incidents, when I enter the causality chain, there are numerous logs."
"However, if you do not have Palo Alto in your environment, you are paying these additional services just for Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, so it is not a cost-effective solution."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks can improve mobile integration to allow access to the console."
"It is a complex solution to implement."
"I would rate it an 8 rather than a 10 mainly because there is still room to improve the user experience around complex investigations, including alert tuning and third-party integration."
"I have seen lagging with Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks. There was one time when we faced a threat actor trying to gain access to our system. When our team utilized the tool, we were all on the same dashboard and we faced a lag issue at that time of around five minutes, which was quite significant."
"We would also like to have advanced tech protection and email scanning."
"One thing that was missing was the integration part. Currently, they don't have out-of-box integration with IBM QRadar, or if they have the integration, the integration doesn't work well."
"One thing that could be easier is initiating scans."
"The solution could always be more secure."
"Threat intelligence has the potential for improvement, particularly by integrating more sources."
"Lacks some additional integration."
"Integrating this with third-party systems has some complexity involved."
"Service Requests. Noncritical cases with MDE technical support teams tend to be queued for over a week before the first customer engagement."
"There is no behavior analytics for devices and endpoints. There is no behavior-based protection."
"At times, the other antivirus products are now doing AI, in terms of understanding the behavior of the system and determining when there's an anomaly. This is something that Defender can improve on."
"The GUI is very complex, particularly for normal users who work on it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing for Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR can be costly, especially when it comes to a hundred users. A license is required for each user, and the subscription must be renewed on a yearly basis."
"I don't recall what the cost was, but it wasn't really that expensive."
"It is cost-effective compared to similar solutions. It fits for the small businesses through to the big businesses."
"The tool's price is moderate."
"If one wishes to work with another team or large number of users at a future point, he must purchase a license for them."
"This is an expensive solution."
"It's about $55 per license on a yearly basis."
"I don't have any issues with the pricing. We are satisfied with the price."
Information not available
"Licensing fees are paid annually through a partner."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is more affordable compared to some other endpoint solutions."
"You don't need to worry about the renewal and purchase of antivirus products. It is bundled with Windows 10, so you don't need to worry about separately purchasing any antiviruses."
"I recently switched from education to private business, and all I can say is that private business licensing from Microsoft is not cheap until you hit certain quantities or scale. That does not mean that it is not comparable to other industries. It is similar pricing, but it is still crazy to me how much you pay for a client. I feel it is high, but it is in line with other vendors."
"The cost is high, compared to other products in the market, if you look at it as a separate product. If you look at the cost where it is part of a bundle, the cost is okay."
"When customers haven't deployed the solution and don't have licenses, it can be expensive to start from scratch."
"Pricing for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is competitive. Out of the bundle, you will get a lot of security, if I talk about Microsoft E5, for example, and get a lot of benefits. If the customer goes and purchases a different solution, it will cost more, so pricing for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is quite reasonable at the moment. There isn't any challenge in terms of pricing, for example, I didn't see a customer who pulled back because of the price. Some prices could be negotiable, and sometimes, as a sales point, the two become negotiable, but they don't bill one and pull back because of the pricing. If you have an E5 license, you get everything."
"The solution comes as part of Microsoft Windows."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
No data available
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise57
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise44
Large Enterprise97
 

Questions from the Community

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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,...
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Which offers better endpoint security - Symantec or Microsoft Defender?
We use Symantec because we do not use MS Enterprise products, but in my opinion, Microsoft Defender is a superior sol...
How does Microsoft Defender for Endpoint compare with Crowdstrike Falcon?
The CrowdStrike solution delivers a lot of information about incidents. It has a very light sensor that will never pu...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint?
We have been discussing pricing, setup cost, and licensing, and we are currently on an E3. We are discussing going to...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
No data available
Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Information Not Available
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Find out what your peers are saying about SentinelOne, Microsoft, CrowdStrike and others in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP). Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.