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Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Rapid7 InsightIDR comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 9, 2024

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 Detection and Response (EDR)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
212
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (4th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
Rapid7 InsightIDR
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
32nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (23rd), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (11th), Threat Deception Platforms (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.6%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 5.5%, down from 9.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rapid7 InsightIDR is 1.3%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint5.5%
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.6%
Rapid7 InsightIDR1.3%
Other89.6%
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
 

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.
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.
Prajwal Chougale - PeerSpot reviewer
SOC L2 Analyst at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Centralized threat hunting has improved alert accuracy and simplifies incident investigations
I would say there are two areas for improvement: the reporting dashboard that provides insights or reports weekly or monthly lacks detailed information about how logs are being ingested. While the details are there, they could be more concise and easier to understand for any level of authority. The second area is alert tuning; compared to Microsoft Sentinel, Rapid7 InsightIDR provides fewer alerts with more static alert functionality and lacks dynamic alerting exposures. There could be improvements to learn from past alert activities for more dynamic alert configurations. These two areas are the main areas for improvement; everything else is good.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I recognize that Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is one of the best products in its category regarding capabilities."
"Cortex XDR is a simple platform that's easy for administrators and users. You have a lot of flexibility to change or customize the features."
"It is an easy-to-use tool."
"They have a new GUI which is just fantastic."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks saves time in various ways, although the user interface is fairly standard."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks should be a stable solution."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The multi-layered approach to the product gives you confidence that it will stop exploits, ransomware, worms, or viruses from compromising endpoints, essentially providing peace of mind."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is quite good. We haven't really experienced any issues with it."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has improved a lot over the years and it is a lot better now."
"We have liked the fact that it comes with Microsoft Windows 10 and it is constantly updated with all new virus definitions. It is also updated with new security features on a regular basis."
"The most likable feature of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is the sheer number of features and data it provides."
"The most valuable feature is that it is easy to use; the solution is already there when you load Windows."
"I've started to test it from the security point of view. There are plenty of features that are interesting, but at this time, the XDR functionality is most valuable. It is endpoint security on steroids."
"I would recommend this solution to others if they don't have many third-party tools."
"This product is flexible, and it is very easy to get updates from the Microsoft website."
"I rate Rapid7 nine out of 10 for affordability"
"It improved my organization by building a security alerting program."
"InsightIDR helps us investigate an environment to discover information about incidents."
"I have seen that Rapid7 InsightIDR provides security to the networks and endpoints in the company."
"I like the tool's user analysis feature."
"The web interface is great — very useful and user-friendly."
"The platform offers unlimited storage and agent-based solutions."
"Previously, when something happened, such as when a hacker was attacking one of our customers, we were always behind, or we did not know that we were hacked until the ransomware started, but with the Rapid7 solution, at every step, we could online see what a person was doing, and we could prevent ransomware."
 

Cons

"It should support more mobile operating systems. That is one of the cons of their infrastructure right now."
"We had a problem with getting our older endpoints up to date, but their newest updates have been really good. I've been pleased with it in terms of what our needs are. It's doing what we want it to do."
"The playbooks could be improved to include more functionalities or actions."
"Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR does not detect malicious activity like in other anti-virus solutions like Trend Micro and Windows with Cisco."
"Technology evolves every day, so it would be nice if it gets more secure. It can also have more integration with other platforms."
"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."
"The MAC agent is not as robust feature-wise as the PC version."
"The solution lags to the real-time scenarios here and there."
"This solution needs to move beyond relying on virus definitions alone and protect the system using behavioral analysis of the processes that are running."
"The interface isn't necessarily intuitive to a nontechnical person. You can get stuck in the little endpoint security portal. Sometimes, if you uninstall a competitive product, the end user doesn't always know if it's running or if they're protected even though it's silently running. There could be a notification, widget, or something that's resident on the screen for at least a bit, especially if you're doing remote support. You want to talk them through it, but sometimes, we're not allowed to look at the PCs we support."
"The automation could be simpler on the mitigation side. It has a learning curve. Otherwise, it's pretty easy."
"Microsoft support could be more knowledgeable."
"It is using a large space in your memory all the time. While an antivirus will use some of your memory, if they could reduce the load of the antivirus to some extent that would be good."
"Right now, the solution provides some recommendations on the dashboard but we don't have any priorities; it's a mix of all the vulnerabilities and all the security recommendations, and I would like to see some priority or categorization of high, medium, and low so that we can fix the high ones first."
"Microsoft Defender in the basic form is not very useful for managing the security environment. The free version is not capable of covering the needs of centralized management, EDR, and behavioral analysis. If you don't have the commercial version, you can't have centralized management and set up the policies and other things. Each client is a standalone installation, which is not useful for security in an enterprise model."
"The management console is something that can be improved."
"Tenable Nessus is easier to deal with. It's more efficient and accurate. InsightIDR is heavier than Tenable in terms of performance and scanning. Rapid7 would be much easier to use if it had a network connector like Tenable. Tenable's connector allows continuous monitoring over the B caps."
"InsightIDR's integration with other solutions could be improved. Also, I'd like more control from the portal over what's happening on the endpoint side. For example, when I see an attack on an endpoint, I want to be able to stop it from the portal."
"I chose eight out of ten because of the analytical rules; they lack dynamic rules, and also due to the dashboard and reporting part."
"One of the things that could be better is digital forensics. It is there, but it can be better. They could provide more on the endpoint detection level."
"Lacks a mobile application."
"I'd like to see a mobile application included and some feature related to the generality of segregation for internal users that access the application."
"I would like to see more development in InsightIDR towards building their SIEM solution and converting it to XDR."
"Rapid7 InsightIDR is not intuitive to search for logs. It should be more user-friendly and improve the dashboards. We should be able to use ready-made templates instead of having to build one."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an expensive solution."
"The price is on the higher side, but it's okay."
"The price was fine."
"The return on investment is from the user side because we have seen the performance of it increase the delivery time of the product if we are using too many web-based and on-premise applications. In indirect ways, we saw the return of investment in terms of performance and user satisfaction increase."
"Cortex XDR's pricing is ok."
"It has reasonable pricing for the use cases it provides to the company."
"I feel it is fairly priced."
"We pay about $50,000 USD per year for a bundle that includes Cortex XDR."
"It is built into Windows 10. If our clients are using Microsoft Defender, the cost goes away for them."
"The solution is free and comes with Windows."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is included with a Microsoft E5 license."
"The solution comes as a part of Windows 10 and it is covered under its license."
"It is free. It is included in Windows 10."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is cost-effective because there's one unified license, and with this unified license, you get the capabilities for your cloud applications, servers, and endpoints as well. Therefore, it saves us a lot of money because the cost with other solutions is for just one piece of OS or maybe an urban environment. The licensing process is not complex as well."
"I don't know the standalone costs. It is my understanding that the M365 E5 is $56 a month or something close to that pricing. That would be for the full suite. Just Defender might be $8 a month. I can't say for sure."
"Microsoft Defender ATP is expensive."
"Rapid7 InsightIDR is a cheaply priced product. On a scale of one to ten, where one is very expensive, and ten is very cheap, I rate the product's price at seven or eight."
"Rapid7 InsightIDR charges us based on the endpoints we connect to."
"It is on a yearly basis. For our own company, for about 250 users, it was 16,000 euros a year."
"It is more reasonably priced than other vendors."
"The pricing of the solution depends on the user. But there is a yearly licensing cost."
"​I am sure that there are cheaper products out there, but none that meet so many of our needs whilst maintaining stability and usability.​"
"Licensing is by endpoint and amount of retention time (at least ours is). Default retention was one year, but we are able to push the retention further if needed. There's also a provide-your-own-S3 option for longer retention if you don't want to pay for the additional retention years in your Rapid7 agreement."
"Licensing is straightforward. If, for some reason, you don’t meet the minimum licensing requirements, there is a third-party managed service that can help."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

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 Business82
Midsize Enterprise44
Large Enterprise97
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise6
 

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,...
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...
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 a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rapid7 InsightIDR?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been very positive; it is cost-effective and offers great ...
What needs improvement with Rapid7 InsightIDR?
I would say there are two areas for improvement: the reporting dashboard that provides insights or reports weekly or ...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
InsightIDR
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Liberty Wines, Pioneer Telephone, Visier
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs. Rapid7 InsightIDR and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.