No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

FortiXDR vs IBM Security QRadar comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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 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), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (6th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
FortiXDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
30th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
217
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (6th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (2nd), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (2nd), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (12th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (5th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 4.7%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FortiXDR is 1.5%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 3.2%, up from 2.6% 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 Networks4.7%
IBM Security QRadar3.2%
FortiXDR1.5%
Other90.6%
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.
LL
Integration capabilities enhance compatibility across various cloud environments
I have extensive experience using Fortinet solutions, especially FortiXDR. I have implemented perimeter security in Azure, utilizing features such as web application firewall, application control, and security management.  I specialize in security for data centers, using various Fortinet solutions…
HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Have managed daily asset and alert monitoring effectively but have encountered limitations with manual processes and interface usability
It's still very manual and doesn't work on its own. It's still in an early stage and not on par where we can consider it a really successful detection system. The accuracy is not there. The UI could be better when compared to Sentinels where we can use flags and tagging. It could be much more user-friendly. IBM Security QRadar has all features and is fully competitive with other SIEM tools, but when it comes to user-friendliness, a new user takes time to get used to it. More intuitive, user-friendly interfaces and more helpful documentation would be beneficial. The query searching and data fetching could be faster. In large to very large organizations with around 5,000 or 6,000 assets or beyond, even with proper configurations and RAM and hardware backing up, the query is fairly slow.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."
"The solution's stability is generally good."
"Cortex Xnor's playbooks predefine the workflow of the automation, such as response processes, alert triggering, and enriching the context, collecting relevant indicators such as hashes, IP addresses, or domains efficiently and can detect and block malicious attacks with firewalls."
"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."
"The stability is pretty good except for one or two cases, and based on the performance, it's been okay with pretty high performance, no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze."
"Stability is one of the features we like the most."
"The solution allows us to gain remote access without the user's knowledge and take the necessary actions on the device."
"One thing that I like about Cortex XDR is its ability to detect all the suspicious or malicious binaries, and it can integrate with Palo Alto Firewall."
"Our customers are satisfied with FortiXDR."
"The most valuable feature of FortiXDR is it integrates well with other Fortinet solutions, such as Fortinet firewall, FortiMail, FortiSandbox, Forti Fabric, switches, and access points. Whatever the flow of the traffic comes in or goes out, the entire traffic can be managed and monitored properly."
"The most valuable feature of FortiXDR is its ability to block clients, providing comprehensive endpoint protection."
"FortiXDR is valuable for its integration capabilities with one hundred percent compatibility with other vendors in cloud environments like Google, Oracle, and Microsoft."
"The product is stable enough."
"The most valuable feature of FortiXDR is its ability to block clients, providing comprehensive endpoint protection."
"FortiXDR is valuable for its integration capabilities with one hundred percent compatibility with other vendors in cloud environments like Google, Oracle, and Microsoft."
"I really like the feature we have with the logs, that if there are any credit card numbers being used, like a PII, you can just use rejects and you can mask it."
"The product helps increase development speed, and the customization is very good, as are the dashboards and the security."
"The product is great; it does good correlation for events, it does good general analysis, and it has good apps as well."
"Technical support is good; my personal experience was fantastic, they are always good and we have never had any problems."
"This product collects all of the system logs and analyzes them to see if there are any security threats, or there have been any attacks."
"What I like the most about it is that you can very easily install and configure it, and as compared to other SIEM solutions, for which you need to know and do a lot more to prepare your SIEM environment, QRadar is much simpler to install and configure."
"The simplicity of the solution is the best feature."
"The ability to correlate large amounts of data into rules that provide real-time alerting is the most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"I would like to see some additional features related to email protection included."
"Previously, the endpoint would leave the environment, not being on our VPN, essentially unable to interact with the server to upload files. It was unable to retrieve new file verdicts. It was using a thing called "local analysis" to determine if something was a malicious file or not. There was no dynamic analysis."
"The solution could improve by providing better integration with their own products and others."
"In reporting they should have a customizable dashboard due to the fact that C-level people don't like reporting to the IT department. They prefer to have a real-time dashboard. That kind of dashboard needs to have various customizations."
"Basically, they don't provide customer support tools just to investigate the logs."
"The onboarding process could be better."
"In the next release, I would like to see more UI improvements. Their UI is a bit basic. When we are speaking about Palo Alto Networks they are the big company, so they can improve the UI a little bit. The UI, the reports, the log system can all be improved."
"The GUI could be improved. It's a little bit cumbersome. It could be more user-friendly."
"They could change their licensing costs to make it more affordable for smaller businesses."
"Improvement is needed in the intuitiveness and integration measures of FortiXDR, especially in terms of compatibility."
"Many of the solutions, such as CrowdStrike have an MDR solution where remediation can be provided by the vendor. For example, if there is any zero data threat found, a new threat that the customer is not able to recognize, fix, or understand what needs to be done this feature has to be added in FortiXDR so that the customer feels comfortable."
"The pricing of FortiXDR should be improved."
"Improvement is needed in the intuitiveness and integration measures of FortiXDR, especially in terms of compatibility."
"The pricing of FortiXDR should be improved. It's a point of concern for us."
"They could change their licensing costs to make it more affordable for smaller businesses."
"AI is superb but need improvements."
"There is a shortage of skilled individuals with knowledge about the solution. There is training required."
"The user interface needs improvement."
"It would be good if the program allowed certain profiles to only see certain customer information."
"The technical support from IBM Qradar could improve. I rate the support from IBM Qradar a two out of ten."
"There could be improvements made to the UI, the user interface."
"The solution's technical support works, but sometimes, it can take quite a long time to get a solution from technical support."
"QRadar's issue is it needs to add behavioral analytics."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its pricing is kind of in line with its competitors and everybody else out there."
"The solution has one subscription for endpoint protection and one subscription for detection and response. The two licenses combined give you the BRO version."
"It's the most expensive solution, but features-wise, it's quite strong. It's very good for protection, so the results are very good in the case of protection. I would rate it a two out of ten in terms of pricing."
"Compared to CrowdStrike, Cortex XDR is an expensive solution."
"The pricing is a little bit on the expensive side."
"The pricing seems fair, and I do like the licensing model. You use wherever they are, and it is elastic."
"The solution is expensive. It's pricing is on a yearly-basis."
"It's about $55 per license on a yearly basis."
"This is an expensive solution compared to other vendors, such as Check Point."
"It is overly expensive and overly complex in terms of licensing. They have many different appliances, which makes it extremely difficult to choose the technology. It is very difficult to choose the technology or QRadar components that you should be deploying. They have improved some of it in the last few years. They have made it slightly easy with the fact that you can now buy virtual versions of all the appliances, which is good, but it is still very fragmented. For instance, on some of the smaller appliances, there is no upgrade path. So, if you exceed the capacity of the appliance, you have to buy a bigger appliance, which is not helpful because it is quite a major cost. If you want to add more disks to the system, they'll say that you can't."
"I think that the price is fair, but we can always say that the price could be cheaper."
"It is cheaper than ArcSight."
"This price is a little high, so it's an expensive product."
"Licensing is very expensive, IBM QRadar is a very expensive solution. If you want to minimize costs then IBM QRadar is not for you."
"It is a perpetual license that we have for the event collector. The licensing is done based on the number of events and flows that you receive on this particular device. These are perpetual licenses, which means once you purchase them, they don't expire, which means that the support to IBM is definitely renewed after every one year. We have an enterprise agreement with IBM, which puts the cost in a totally different category as compared to someone who is not an IBM partner and is approaching IBM for this solution. We were able to get massive discounts. To give you an idea, we recently purchased 30,000 event licenses, and it costs around $480,000. It is definitely not a cheap product. We have licenses for about 270,000 events per second and 3 million flows per second. All the appliances and their events and flows are basically clubbed together and charged or rather calculated through a single source. The console receives all the details from all the event processes that we have globally. So, the license that we have is a single license for 270,000 events per second and 3 million flows per second, but that can be managed centrally. I was only part of the secondary purchase, which was 30,000 events per second for about $480,000. You can calculate how much we paid for 270,000 events. Reducing its price would be a compromise. We have already used a lower-priced product in the form of NNT, but we had to get rid of it because it was not doing the job that we actually wanted to do. You get what you pay for."
"It is expensive. It is not a product that I can provide for SMBs. It is a program that I can only provide for really large enterprises."
"I would like for them to lower the price."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions are best for your needs.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
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
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
7%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise49
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business92
Midsize Enterprise39
Large Enterprise106
 

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 FortiXDR?
Comparing to the enterprise level, the pricing is reasonable. However, for some companies, it might be a little high.
What needs improvement with FortiXDR?
They could change their licensing costs to make it more affordable for smaller businesses.
What is your primary use case for FortiXDR?
We are a system integrator and cloud service provider. Although I am in sales and not technical, I am involved with t...
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, friendli...
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 a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Security QRadar?
Pricing and the license of EPS were managed by the governance team. I was not responsible for managing those. I was s...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
No data available
IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
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 FortiXDR vs. IBM Security QRadar and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.