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IBM Security QRadar vs Sentinel 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.1
IBM Security QRadar offers high ROI through cost-effectiveness, threat mitigation, SOAR integration, and valuable data insights, satisfying users.
Sentiment score
6.0
Sentinel tracks user behavior to prevent security issues, offering financial gain typically within a three-year lease period.
With SOAR, the workflow takes one minute or less to complete the analysis.
AWS gives the chance to implement a solution out of the box with use cases that are already in IBM Security QRadar.
Investing this amount was very much worth it for my organization.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.1
IBM Security QRadar's customer service effectiveness varies with regional differences, personnel expertise, and response times impacting user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
4.5
Clients find Sentinel service excellent overall, but some face delays and difficulties, especially with low-priority issues.
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
7.4
IBM Security QRadar offers strong scalability and flexibility, adapting effortlessly to diverse security needs across various industries.
Sentiment score
8.0
Sentinel efficiently scales and integrates with systems, favored by large organizations for enterprise-grade performance in extensive environments.
For EPS license, if you increase or exceed the EPS license, you cannot receive events.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
QRadar is reliable and efficient, with stability issues often linked to misconfigurations or updates rather than the software itself.
Sentiment score
8.0
Sentinel is generally stable, with some users noting Java-related issues and region-specific outages, but high ratings overall.
I think QRadar is stable and currently satisfies my needs.
The product has been stable so far.
 

Room For Improvement

IBM Security QRadar users seek better third-party integration, usability, enhanced AI, reporting, support, visualization, and API/cloud features.
Sentinel requires improved web integration, user interface, customization, documentation, and dashboard simplicity, while addressing regional outages and cost concerns.
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.
Price is always a consideration, so the price would be nice if it were lower.
 

Setup Cost

IBM Security QRadar is pricey, ideal for large enterprises, with flexible EPS-based pricing, often more costly than competitors.
Sentinel is a subscription-based enterprise solution with competitive pricing, offering discounts and regular updates, requiring a support contract.
Splunk is more expensive than IBM Security QRadar.
It was costly mainly because of the value you can get right now compared to other solutions.
It depends on how much you want to spend.
They nearly always bill it in dollars, so if it can be billed in our currency, that would be helpful and fixed in our currency.
 

Valuable Features

IBM Security QRadar offers scalable, user-friendly security with advanced analytics, seamless integrations, and effective threat detection capabilities.
Sentinel excels with its scalable, user-friendly design, integrating advanced threat detection and automated incident response, enhancing security management.
Recently, I faced an incident, a cyber incident, and it was detected in real time.
IBM Security QRadar gives the opportunity to improve the time to market of the releases with a great evaluation of cybersecurity breaches.
IBM is seeking information about IBM QRadar because a part of QRadar, especially in the cloud, has been sold to Palo Alto.
Sentinel's best features include that it's a very easy product to use.
 

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 (7th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (18th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (8th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (11th)
Sentinel
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
19th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 7.0%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sentinel is 3.9%, up from 2.5% 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 QRadar7.0%
Sentinel3.9%
Other89.1%
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.
Simon Johnston - PeerSpot reviewer
Simple antivirus solution integrates well but could improve pricing and currency options
I don't really have experience working with these solutions. I promote them for our clients, but I don't work with them. I can't share my experience with these tools as I make assumptions about that. For both Adlumin and CrowdStrike, both confirm that they're scalable and enterprise-ready and all those kinds of things. We haven't had any specific problem with either of those. We just have a preference for which one we would prefer. If somebody says they want to use a different one from the one that we prefer, then we have to find reasons why they aren't. But scalability is not one of the reasons that one is better over the other. I don't really have advice for people that are looking into using Sentinel; just do your research across what is available. On a scale of one to ten, I rate Sentinel a seven.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions are best for your needs.
871,408 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business90
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise102
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
 

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, setup cost, or licensing with IBM Security QRadar was costly. It was costly mainly for the things we used to use it for. The customers used to pay the price, but it was one of the prob...
What do you like most about NetIQ Sentinel?
The solution lets us get all the logs properly and regularly monitor customer infrastructure.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetIQ Sentinel?
I don't have too many comments overall about pricing as we're in South Africa, so it makes more sense if it's billed in rand. They nearly always bill it in dollars, so if it can be billed in our cu...
What needs improvement with NetIQ Sentinel?
I'm not sure what the room for improvement is for Sentinel. It needs to stay current, and it does, so I suppose that's fine. I don't have a high demand for what it should do. Price is always a cons...
 

Also Known As

IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
NetIQ Sentinel, Novell SIEM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Faysal Bank, GaVI, Handelsbanken, ISC Mªnster, Lambeth Council, Swisscard, The Municipality of Siena, Tukes, University of Dayton, University of the Sunshine Coast
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security QRadar vs. Sentinel and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
871,408 professionals have used our research since 2012.