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Malwarebytes Teams vs Microsoft Defender for Business comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 15, 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 Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Malwarebytes Teams
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
24th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender for Busi...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
14th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.8%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Malwarebytes Teams is 1.6%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Business is 1.4%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.8%
Microsoft Defender for Business1.4%
Malwarebytes Teams1.6%
Other93.2%
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.
reviewer2594097 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Executive Officer at a wholesaler/distributor with 11-50 employees
Exceptional malware protection with regular updates and behavior-based detection
There are no built-in backups or integrated backup options, which could be an opportunity. The free version is effective, however, the paid version is pricey compared to it. Other customers have mentioned issues with false positives. It lacks enterprise-level management and more enterprise functionality. CrowdStrike and SentinelOne are much more enterprise-grade solutions. Malwarebytes has limited integration with cybersecurity tools and lacks enterprise integrations because it is not an enterprise product.
Paritosh Jani - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate VP (Managed Information Technology Services) at Dev Information Tech Pvt Ltd
Has delivered automated threat response and streamlined integration with advanced tools
The best features of Microsoft Defender for Business include it coming as an XDR solution which provides automated investigations, remediations, and endpoint detection and response. Moreover, it can be tightly integrated with vulnerability management or detecting vulnerabilities and pushing them to the SIEM solution. I utilize the advanced threat hunting feature of Microsoft Defender for Business and find it helpful; it's good and improving with every update. Microsoft Defender for Business integrates effectively with the Microsoft ecosystem as with Azure Sentinel, and it has a two-way natural integration. Apart from that, it also integrates with industry SIEM solutions such as Splunk.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Stability-wise, it is good; I did not hear about any issues in terms of stability, and Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks can be trusted completely."
"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."
"We've had a significant increase in blocking with a decrease in false positives, because it's looking at how the files work, not just a list of files that it's been told to look for."
"The information the dashboard provides is very clear."
"The good thing about the product is that it's always scanning."
"The tool's use cases are relevant to security."
"Cortex is the best solution for avoiding security breaches, malware attacks, and other kinds of security issues."
"We can visualize and control the activities in the environment from anywhere."
"I would recommend Malwarebytes because it's quite secure and able to prevent ransomware."
"The solution has helped to increase staff productivity by ten percent."
"It enhanced our performance in our company."
"The most valuable features of Malwarebytes are the agents, user experience, efficiency of the findings, and MDR features."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that I can use it wherever I want, be it at the office, at home, or even outside."
"I have just discovered it to be exceptionally good at finding that stuff."
"For a company with about 100 or more PC units, the solution is quite effective, makes monitoring easy, offers a lot of reporting, and provides protection for many applications including Windows and Zoom."
"The central management of devices from different sites is a very good feature; this has made them much easier to manage."
"The security features in Microsoft Defender for Business that have been most effective for our company include the way it's built-in and intertwined into all the operating systems, giving us a good opportunity to holistically block things for the organization using that tenant."
"I rate Microsoft Defender for Business a 10 out of 10."
"I haven't had any problems with the tool's stability."
"Because Microsoft Defender for Business is a native solution to Microsoft 365, it has contributed to my organization's proactive defense strategies by saving time on integration."
"Microsoft Defender for Business stands out due to its ease of use, particularly due to the fact that many of my customers already use Microsoft and Azure."
"Microsoft Defender for Business works well with the Microsoft Azure Security ecosystem, including Defender for Endpoint and Office 365 Cloud."
"The interface is quite user-friendly."
"The most effective features of Microsoft Defender for Business include its threat detection and response capabilities in managing vulnerabilities and ransomware attacks."
 

Cons

"The connection to the internet has not performed as expected."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks could improve its user interface, which is more complicated compared to competitors such as SentinelOne."
"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."
"As an improvement, I would like to see enhanced connection speeds."
"There are some false positives."
"I don't like that they have different types of licenses. For example, if users select a license, they think they will have all the platforms they need to improve their network or security. But after some time, Palo Alto Networks changed their licensing, and some of the features that, for example, were free at the beginning now have a cost. I think the integration can be improved. For example, a lot of tools are just integrated through APIs."
"There's an overall lack of features."
"For working with the solution, you only really need a web browser, however, we've found that working on Chrome, for example, is horrible."
"The technical support could be improved; we find we have to make several requests before an issue is looked into."
"There hasn't been an ROI because we haven't had an event that would cause this software to do something. Therefore, at this point, it has just been a cost to us because we haven't gotten anything out of it."
"The free version is effective, however, the paid version is pricey compared to it."
"The EPP solution lacks the sophisticated artificial intelligence required for automating reports and letting you know about things in real-time. It stops a suspicious activity in real-time, but it doesn't let you know in real-time. You have to look at a report, and then you find out that something is wrong. You have to manually kick off a scan. With the Advanced EDR solutions, Malwarebytes has the ability to alert you in real-time, but they still don't do automatic remediation or quarantining of devices. That is something that you still have to do manually. So, the endpoint protection piece, which is just like their basic endpoint protection, lacks AI. For the advanced detection and response piece, there is an add-on that comes with it, but it still doesn't go far enough in terms of automatic remediation of viruses. It won't separate that virus from your network if something happens. You have to manually go there and do it."
"Notifications are lacking."
"The online reporting needs to be improved. Currently, we have to look at it online, and if we want to download a report, it just downloads as an Excel file. It's just raw information. There needs to be some way to better display it when it's downloaded."
"This solution reports far too many false positives!"
"Overall, I haven't found any ways the solution lacks in features or usability."
"We faced some issues while running some applications on Mac."
"The solution's AI is notorious for false positives, and the time you have to spend training it is ridiculous."
"Talking with the tool's technician about any problem is very complicated."
"The pricing of Microsoft Defender for Business has a long way to go since people are still preferring solutions such as CrowdStrike and Palo Alto."
"Defender's reporting is rather scattered, and its URL filtering mechanism doesn't really work."
"Defender's threat protection should be fine-tuned to reduce false positives. It could be more targeted, reflecting a continuous evolution in detecting. Also, it could be easier to integrate into other environments."
"The security could always be improved."
"I have an open case for close to two months with no responses or updates, except for an email response, and I've made four or five phone calls regarding the Microsoft Interconnect for AD and cloud tenant."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If one wishes to work with another team or large number of users at a future point, he must purchase a license for them."
"Our customers have expressed that the price is high."
"I did PoCs on products called Cylance and CrowdStrike. Although, I consider these products and they were also good, when it come to cost and budgetary factors, Traps has been proven to be better than the other two products. It is quite cost-effective and delivers all the entire solution which we require."
"It is "expensive" and flexible."
"The solution has one subscription for endpoint protection and one subscription for detection and response. The two licenses combined give you the BRO version."
"This is an expensive solution."
"This is an expensive solution."
"It has a yearly renewal."
"It is really expensive. We've got between 30 and 40 licenses every year, and for the number of licenses that we have, we're finding that Malwarebytes on average costs between $900 and $1,000 more per year than comparable options. We're paying about $3,300 per year for these licenses. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the product's pricing a seven."
"Malwarebytes is a cost-effective product."
"Its licensing is annual. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee."
"The platform pricing is competitive with other antivirus products."
"I believe the retail price is between $40 and $50 per copy."
"The cost may be something in the ballpark of $20-25 a year per computer."
"I would say that it's affordable. It costs much less than Sentinel One, CrowdStrike, or anything of that nature. But, at the same time, you are getting what you pay for. So I would say it's one of the best when you're comparing traditional NextGen AVs like Webroot that aren't the best in the bunch."
"Since we're a nonprofit, we get pretty good discounts on the tool."
"The tool's cost has been a little high, but I do not think it was terrible."
"It has to get more competitive because we are starting to see some of the competitors providing better pricing, and some of it, of course, is to gain market share. The Defender product pricing is probably a little higher than the competitors."
"Defender for Business is included by default with an Office 365 premium subscription."
"The tool is cheap, while some other solutions are more expensive. I remember the tool cost about five euros for a workstation or for a user on a monthly basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise55
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
 

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 Malwarebytes?
I really hate the automatic rebilling without officially confirming it with me. It's an annoyance and they should at ...
What needs improvement with Malwarebytes?
It takes up too much space when it's trying to run in the background.
What is your primary use case for Malwarebytes?
My primary use case is that it's protecting me against malware.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Business?
Our thoughts on the pricing for Microsoft Defender for Business are that we wish it could be better. If the pricing w...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Business?
I see room for improvement in Microsoft Defender for Business, particularly regarding the consolidation of all securi...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Knutson Construction
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Malwarebytes Teams vs. Microsoft Defender for Business and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.