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Malwarebytes Teams vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint 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
6.8
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (6th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Malwarebytes Teams
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
26th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
212
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (5th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.8%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Malwarebytes Teams is 1.7%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 6.8%, down from 10.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint6.8%
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.8%
Malwarebytes Teams1.7%
Other87.7%
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.
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

"Stability is one of the features we like the most."
"If you are looking for security, mainly for advanced threat prevention from ransomware and malware attacks, I would recommend Cortex."
"The normal protection was really effective, and we detected situations that if we didn't have Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, it's highly likely that we would have been affected, but it protected the infrastructure."
"Cortex covers everything I need. It's a perfect solution. Cortex provides a different level of visibility because it's an extended EDR, allowing you to grab logs from the network and firewalls. Palo Alto invented the concept of the extended EDR or XDR."
"After deploying Traps, we saw the performance of the network improve by 65 to 70 percent."
"Cortex is the best tool for endpoint detection, and I have used it to verify hashes or domains to identify malicious activity, trigger playbooks that automate and gather endpoint logs, block malicious processes, and update incident tickets, showcasing end-to-end processes with automation in investigation and reducing the analysis workflow."
"Overall, it's a great platform; it integrates very well with other solutions from Palo Alto and also with our vendors, the ease of use is excellent, I love the root cause analysis from Cortex, which is amazing, and in a few clicks you can have the full root cause."
"There has been a significant reduction of approximately 70% to 80% in our internal MTTR and MTTD metrics, now around five to eight minutes whereas previously it was hours, which has helped tremendously."
"The pricing of the product is very good."
"I was very satisfied with Malwarebytes in terms of its antivirus abilities."
"Considering the overall management of the system and seeing what is being protected, it is doing a great job."
"We have a small IT team, and being able to manage even a small fleet of devices that are out in the field and being able to respond and remediate really quickly from the cloud-based console has been really helpful for us."
"The behavior-based detection is very nice, and it combats zero-day threats by looking for anomalous behaviors."
"The platform is straightforward to install."
"It prevents us from having to re-image computers if they are found to be harboring malware."
"The protection is really good with Malwarebytes. It's also user friendly and quite easy to set up."
"The price of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is reasonable, as other solutions, such as ClowdStrike, are more expensive."
"It's stable."
"Its real-time security is the most valuable."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is beneficial because we are using Microsoft Windows and all the core solutions are made by Microsoft, such as the authentic platform, operating system, and antivirus protection. It is a heterogeneous environment. We had to use third-party solutions before and update everything separately. For example, the policy for antivirus. With Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, when Microsoft Windows receives updates it will update with it. This is one main advantage of this solution."
"Since we started using this product, we have not had any breaches."
"Microsoft Endpoint saved us from a lot of potential problems."
"It's really stable. I've used a lot of stuff, a lot of products, like ESET and Kaspersky. None of them are comparable with this one. This one is much better."
"The stability is great, it just keeps getting more and more stable and as it matures it's going to be very good."
 

Cons

"The dashboard could use some significant improvement, just making it more useful with more information. It has a limited amount of information right now. It is customizable, but I'd love to see a better out-of-box dashboard."
"Cortex XDR could improve its sales support team, including better commission structures and referral programs."
"The server sometimes stops continuously to check things so it would be helpful to receive access updates or technical reasons."
"There's an overall lack of features."
"It automatically detects security issues. It should be able to protect our network devices while operating autonomously."
"Being able to filter the events to see those that are related to the actual alert would save time spent by the engineer."
"We would also like to have advanced tech protection and email scanning."
"Although I would say this product is highly-rated, it could probably do more because nothing does everything that you want."
"The stability and performance of the solution are areas with shortcomings that need improvement."
"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."
"The product's stability needs improvement."
"It would be better if updates could be downloaded, and deployed, on-premises to avoid low bandwidth causing issues."
"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."
"Requires increased efficiency in terms of detecting false positives."
"Malwarebytes should improve its mobile compatibility."
"Even though we're satisfied with the product, we don't like the bait-and-switch pricing style."
"Where we stand right now, compared to other products that are there in the market, they still have to work on their threat intelligence and the overall maturity of detecting the malware."
"Sometimes, there are difficulties in downloading a file considered as malicious."
"It makes your Surface devices hot. It is resource-intensive. It strains your CPU, not more than other file scanners around, but it also does a lot more. When you are transmitting files or data, it is continuously scanning the traffic and analyzing it bit by bit to see what's going on, and that, of course, is costly in terms of CPU. It is CPU intensive, and if you are on battery, it drains your battery fast. That's the only drawback that it has."
"We would like to see more tools for managing on-premises security... Sometimes, we have the tools, like Defender, to manage security in the cloud, but because we are so focused on the cloud, we forget the fact that we need to be sure about the security of the on-premises environment, specifically Active Directory."
"I would like to see better integration with their other security products to give better visibility from a higher level."
"I would like to be able to set up any kind of protection I want in the firewall, any IP address or any number."
"If you have multi-cloud like Google and AWS, the native solutions are better for those particular cases."
"The time to generate certain alerts on our dashboard can take between 45 minutes to an hour, and I am unsure of the factors that influence this duration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't recall what the cost was, but it wasn't really that expensive."
"It is "expensive" and flexible."
"Traps pays for itself within the first 16 months of a three-year subscription. This is attributed to OPEX savings, as security teams spent less time trying to identify and isolate malware for analysis as a result of a reduction in malware incidents, false positives, and breach avoidance."
"We didn't have to pay any additional fee for the cloud instance. It just came with the renewal, which was nice."
"Cortex XDR’s pricing is very reasonable."
"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 has a yearly renewal."
"The tool's price is moderate."
"The cost may be something in the ballpark of $20-25 a year per computer."
"The price of Malwarebytes is in the middle range compared to other vendors."
"The platform pricing is competitive with other antivirus products."
"Yearly, it is around $50 per client."
"It is expensive."
"Its licensing is annual. 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."
"Because Microsoft Defender comes as an add-on, it can be a bit expensive if you're trying to buying it separately. Another option is to upgrade, but the enterprise licenses for Microsoft can also be quite a bit pricey. Overall, the cost of Microsoft Defender compared to that of other endpoint detection solutions is slightly higher."
"It is free. It is included in Windows 10."
"There is no license needed, the solution comes with Microsoft Windows."
"It is built into Windows 10. If our clients are using Microsoft Defender, the cost goes away for them."
"We are using the free version."
"It isn't cheap, but it's reasonable and fair."
"If we are acquiring everything in a single place, the front end becomes cost-effective."
"The license cost is around $35 per machine, which is not expensive compared to other products."
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Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise53
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise45
Large Enterprise96
 

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.
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
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Knutson Construction
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Malwarebytes Teams vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
904,899 professionals have used our research since 2012.