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IBM Security QRadar vs IBM Watson for Cyber Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

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

IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
212
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)
IBM Watson for Cyber Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
58th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 6.5%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Watson for Cyber Security is 0.5%, up from 0.2% 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 QRadar6.5%
IBM Watson for Cyber Security0.5%
Other93.0%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Elena Stefanovska - PeerSpot reviewer
Knowledgeable support, reliable, and useful compliance policies
IBM Watson for Cyber Security can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud and it is used as a SIEM solution The most valuable features of IBM Watson for Cyber Security are ease of use and out-of-the-box reports and compliance policies. Additionally, if there are aspects that are missing IBM add…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The timeline and machine learning features are great."
"Most of the features are good. It is an excellent solution."
"Network-Based Anomaly Detection (NBAD): Using NetFlow, JFlow, SFlow, or QFlow (all 7 layers), offenses are detected as a response when a rule is triggered."
"The detection rate is good and the false positive rate is low."
"I have found IBM QRadar to be stable."
"Search capabilities are sufficient for most tasks."
"The stability is good."
"Vulnerability data, network data and the like, are part of correlation and detection."
"The customer support is very good."
"The most valuable feature of this product is innovation, where the research and upgrading of technology never ends."
"The most valuable features of IBM Watson for Cyber Security are ease of use and out-of-the-box reports and compliance policies. Additionally, if there are aspects that are missing IBM add them in the next release."
"IBM Watson for Cyber Security is very stable."
 

Cons

"Sometimes it takes time to load queries, but other than that, it performs excellently."
"Improving the integration with IBM Server for MetaMask for correlation rules would be beneficial. Currently, I use Sentinel in Azure, and I would prefer creating one rule to roll it out to both Sentinel and QRadar. However, this is not possible because QRadar lacks this capability."
"You can scale IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics, but it has room for improvement."
"The modularity could be improved."
"Certain updates—especially when using Azure—don't apply directly. Our engineering team must invest additional effort to implement these updates. However, the tool's cloud-based version poses no issues. However, upgrading the product can sometimes be challenging for on-premises instances."
"Pricing model could be more cost-effective."
"I would like to see the update process simplified."
"They should speed up the incident response and also, at the same time, reduce the amount of manual effort that is required."
"This is an expensive product, so making it more cost-effective would be an improvement."
"They need to continue to build the AI capabilities."
"In the future, I would like to see threat intelligence included."
"The dashboard could improve in IBM Watson for Cyber Security."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is based on the EPS model."
"The solution has a licensing model that is based on events per second so it scales to need and budget."
"The pricing is good."
"IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics is an application framework and you can install many applications without any additional costs."
"On a scale of one to ten, I rate the price a one, where one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is a cheap product."
"The cost of this product is expensive."
"Pricing and licensing are competitive. Their new licensing options allow logs to bypass the correlation engine for a flat rate, which is also appealing for log data that is compliance-driven for a small amount of money."
"There are different types of subscriptions available. We were on an annual subscription, but our customers typically choose the two years subscription option."
"The price of this solution should be lower, although I understand why IBM charges a premium price."
"IBM Watson for Cyber Security is very simple to license and is priced well."
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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
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business90
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise103
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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?
The pricing for IBM Security QRadar is not the best, but it's not the worst. It depends on how much you want to spend. The last time I worked with this technology was in 2023. The pricing reflects ...
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Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security QRadar vs. IBM Watson for Cyber Security and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
873,085 professionals have used our research since 2012.