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MetaDefender vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

MetaDefender
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
37th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (37th), Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) (38th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (19th)
Microsoft Defender for Clou...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (4th), Microsoft Security Suite (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of MetaDefender is 0.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is 1.8%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps1.8%
MetaDefender0.9%
Other97.3%
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

Eido Ben Noun - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Architect at Diffiesec
Multi‑engine detection has significantly improved secure file transfers and threat prevention
Some feedback indicated that it takes too much time to configure certain policies because there are many options. Some people appreciate this because you can configure anything, but I believe MetaDefender should have a wizard or general policies that can be used for 80 percent of customers. I use the expanded file type and archive coverage feature sometimes, especially for customers who try to scan large archives with the deep scan capabilities of OPSWAT and Deep CDR. This provides full protection because it scans every single file, but sometimes it takes too long. When discussing CAB files or archives for patching or server updates and BIOS updates and operating system updates, the scanning process takes too long, and it was difficult for customers who sometimes decided not to scan because the scanning time was excessive. I use the reporting and audit visibility features. Some capabilities are lacking in reporting because we do not have full statistics that are easy for users to understand. If something requires checking and then referring to documentation to understand it, that is too much for most users. When looking at one of the statistics, you can see how many files have been scanned and then you see a number out of 500 or a different number if you change it. It is not a number of files or scan processes; it is a number of files inside a file. When you scan a PowerPoint presentation file, for example, it counts as forty different files because of all the sub-files. I understand from customers that when they look at the visualization data or statistics, they do not understand what is happening there. Most customers I see do not use the file-based vulnerability assessment feature. It has some good results about vulnerabilities, but I am not certain if it is that helpful because many organizations, when they deploy a file and see that there are vulnerabilities, still deploy it because it is part of the code. It can produce results, but those results do not cause any action. Many products have something more advanced than vulnerabilities and static scoring. They have tools that can inform you about a vulnerability, whether the vulnerability is exploitable, if it is weaponized, and if someone can use this vulnerability in your environment. The file-based vulnerability feature works, but for most people, they do not take any action based on the results or block files because of file-based vulnerabilities.
FV
Security and Continuity Manager at Rolinco NV
Deployment has been seamless with insightful data categorization and enhanced control
The features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps that I have found most valuable include the overall portal view, with bubble graphs which give us insight into what goes where in the categorization, nowadays with Generative AI but all kinds of categorization, collaboration, etc. That central view of the portal is very useful for us. The impact of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps on our organization's ability to assess and manage app related risks has been significant because we have more visibility. Therefore, we can add more control, and we have already done so. This was not possible in the old solution, in the old CASB solution with Netskope. We now can see on the spot, and we do that almost weekly, what the end users are utilizing, which cloud providers or cloud apps they're using. The visibility into OAuth apps provided by Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is very good. The visibility into risk and risk management of our organization's Generative AI apps is very nice, as you can choose the category Generative AI and then see exactly what traffic has been going to and from Generative AI in the cloud. This makes us very insightful on what is used within the company. We have some policies on blocking specific Generative AI, and we use within our company one particular AI part, which is CoPilot of Microsoft. In this way, we can see what the end users are using other than CoPilot, and that makes us more in control. The effectiveness of the integration of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps with Defender XDR and defending against SaaS attacks is very intuitive. It works immediately if we create a new policy or in Purview or in Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, or when we make an app unsanctioned by blocking it, then it is almost immediately, or at least within a couple of hours, effective on all the endpoints where the EDR is running. This gives us much better control over things than before.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the simplicity, the way it works out of the box. It's pretty easy to run and configure. The integration of the network devices with the ICAP server was easily done."
"OPSWAT is the best alternative."
"I like the alert policies because they are quite robust. It has some built-in templates that we can easily pick up. One of them is the alert for mass downloads, when a particular user is running a massive download on your SharePoint site."
"Shadow IT discovery is the feature I like the most."
"Better logging allows us to find problems and take appropriate steps to lock them out."
"There are a lot of features with benefits, including discovery, investigation, and putting controls around things. You can't say that you like the investigation part but not the discovery. Everything is correlated; that's how the tool works."
"The ability to sanction unsanctioned apps using Secure Score benchmarking, included in Cloud, is also beneficial."
"One of the most valuable features is auditing. Some of the other protection services have issues with auditing. Microsoft Defender for Cloud has an excellent auditing technique that helps us avoid the risk of filtering or information loss. You can use different tools to guarantee these things. It allows you to conduct an in-depth exploration of applications, users, and files that are harmful or suspicious. You can also enhance your security setup by creating personalized rules or policies that help you better control traffic in the cloud."
"The product helps us with privileged identity management to control who has access to what and for how long."
"The integration within the entire Defender suite is highly valuable because it allows for communication between different components and offers pretty decent correlations."
 

Cons

"The documentation is not well written, and I often need to talk with support."
"Some capabilities are lacking in reporting because we do not have full statistics that are easy for users to understand."
"I would like to see them include more features in the older licenses. There are some features that are not available, such as preventing or analyzing cloud attacks."
"I want them to enhance in-session policy."
"The insights could be improved, especially in reporting."
"There are some features, such as user navigation content filtering, that are disabled by default, and it probably makes sense to enable them by default."
"We would like to get more information from the endpoint. I don't get enough detailed information right now on why something failed. There is not enough visibility."
"Sometimes the support is actually lacking."
"Defender could integrate better with multi-cloud and hybrid environments. It requires some additional configuration to ingest data from non-Azure environments and integrate it with Sentinel."
"They need to improve the attack surface reduction (ASR) rules. In the latest version, you can implement ASR rules, which are quite useful, but you have to enable those because if they're not enabled, they flag false positives. In the Defender portal, it logs a block for WMI processes and PowerShell. Apparently, it's because ASR rules are not configured. So, you generally have to enable them to exclude, for example, WMI queries or PowerShell because they have a habit of blocking your security scanners. It's a bit weird that they have to be enabled to be configured, and it's not the other way around."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We bought a three-year license, and that was pretty expensive. We agreed that it was really worth buying. It could be cheaper, but we understand that quality comes at a price."
"The E5 license offers everything bundled. People are moving to Microsoft because you buy one license and it gives you everything."
"It has fair pricing. You pay for what you get. As far as I know, there are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."
"The product's pricing seems fair."
"We utilize the Microsoft E5 licensing, which encompasses the entire Microsoft suite; however, it is costly."
"Its pricing is on the higher side. Its price is definitely very high for a small-scale company. As an enterprise client, we do get benefits from Microsoft. We get a discounted price because of the number of users we have in our company. We have a premier package, and with that, we do get a lot of discounts. There are no additional costs. It only comes in the top-tier packages. Generally, the top-tier license is the best license that you can get for your organization. If you want, you can buy it separately, but that's not a good idea."
"I'm not totally involved in the pricing part, but I think its pricing is quite aggressive, and its price is quite similar to Netskope. Netskope has separate licensing fees or additional charges if you want to monitor certain SaaS services, whereas, with MCAS, you get 5,000 applications with their Office 365. It is all bundled, and there's no cost for using that. You only have the operational costs. In the country I am in, it is a bit difficult to get people with the required skill sets."
"The cost could be improved when you need to pay for anything. For example, refreshing files takes time to load, though it may be my Internet. To improve the refresh time, Microsoft says that we need to pay for a Premium license, and I don't like paying for things that help make a solution better."
"Microsoft offers bundle discounts and a pay-as-you-go option."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Healthcare Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise19
 

Questions from the Community

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Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Microsoft Cloud App Security?
Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-native solution, unifying multiple features like DNS-layer security, threat intelli...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Cloud App Security?
At the time of implementation, when the size of our organization was small, it was a more affordable product. Since all our productivity applications were on O365, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Cloud App Security?
The fidelity of the signal in Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps has been a challenge in some areas. There have been instances where the alerts generated have been false positives. A lot of work has...
 

Also Known As

OPSWAT MetaDefender, MetaDefender Core
MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.
Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft, Proofpoint and others in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP). Updated: December 2025.
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