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Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Sentinel 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.7
Microsoft Defender XDR provides high ROI by consolidating security tools, streamlining operations, and enhancing security, despite licensing costs.
Sentiment score
7.1
Microsoft Sentinel offers mixed ROI, improving efficiency and security, with high initial costs but potential positive long-term returns.
We can quarantine and isolate a device within minutes.
Microsoft Defender XDR has saved me at least 50% of my time.
Ever since we turned on the M5 feature set back in June, we have seen a reduced number of potentially malicious clicks and faster alerting when incidents occur.
If a customer is already using Microsoft’s ecosystem, the ROI can be positive due to seamless integration.
We attribute our growth to Sentinel.
From a risk perspective, it's about mitigating risk, and as mentioned earlier, we haven't missed many things since we've had the offering in market—only a couple of minor incidents.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.2
Microsoft Defender XDR's support is timely and responsive, yet smaller organizations experience slower, less effective assistance than larger ones.
Sentiment score
6.6
Microsoft Sentinel support is generally positive, with quick responses and valuable documentation, though high-tier issues exist.
You get stuck in low-level support for way longer than you should, instead of them escalating the issue up the chain.
It's critical to escalate SEV B issues immediately to a domestic engineer.
Once issues are escalated to the second or third layer, the support is much better.
Their solutions' integration simplifies resolving issues compared to those caused by third-party products.
Working with a Sentinel engineer helped us tune settings effectively.
When my team needs to escalate issues to Microsoft, especially for Microsoft Sentinel, the response is fast through their French entity.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Defender XDR scales well for various organizations, efficiently supporting growth and flexibility despite some network deployment challenges.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Sentinel efficiently scales in diverse environments with easy integration, automatic scaling, and satisfactory performance, despite cost concerns.
Microsoft Defender XDR shows tremendous scalability, much more so than on-premises solutions.
Microsoft Defender XDR scales pretty well.
It is suitable for enterprise-level deployment but has room for improvement.
Office 365 and Exchange are running on it, covering about 35,000 users efficiently.
As our organization uses Microsoft Azure and Defender, everything grows together, and we can integrate various features seamlessly.
Being a SaaS solution, the scalability of Microsoft Sentinel is robust.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Defender XDR is praised for high stability, reliable performance, minimal issues, frequent updates, and prompt issue resolution.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Sentinel is stable and reliable, with minimal downtime, excellent uptime, and occasional minor manual interventions needed.
The service has remained consistently online, with any issues isolated to specific components, suggesting a well-designed and modular architecture.
The services within our ecosystem have been reliable, meeting their SLAs.
It provides high-fidelity signals.
So far, we have not experienced any issues, and it has been stable from the beginning.
In the past two years, our team hasn't encountered any issues with the stability of Microsoft Sentinel from an operations perspective.
I need to be aware of deprecated connectors as they may disconnect, but the data continues to be sent with a need for quick adaptation.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender XDR requires enhancements in speed, integration, automation, AI, ease-of-use, and industry-specific threat intelligence.
Microsoft Sentinel users desire better integrations, clearer features, improved speed, enhanced AI, and streamlined processes for effective use.
The licensing process needs improvement and clarification.
Improvements are needed in automated response capabilities.
Some inconsistencies exist between blades, which could be improved for a more seamless user and UI experience.
We have some tools, such as our off-site Meraki firewalls, that have not fully integrated with Sentinel.
Currently, we are happy to have a way in the middle with not so much cost, but it would be nice to have the ability to enhance the automation of workflows based on learned incidents.
There are complexities in calculating the right pricing tier for different customers, which makes it difficult for me as a consultant during upfront pricing.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender XDR pricing is seen as complex but fair, with high costs alleviated in bundled Microsoft 365 packages.
Microsoft Sentinel's cost perception varies, offering flexibility and integration benefits, yet data volume can significantly impact expenses.
There are certainly savings when using Microsoft Defender XDR, which can range from 30%, 40%, and even up to 50%.
I would rate the pricing as eight out of ten, indicating it is a reasonable cost for the product.
Microsoft purposefully obfuscates this through marketing ploys to hide costs.
Microsoft Sentinel offers more capabilities than Bastion, with a more intuitive experience.
Setting up the right cost model for customers is intricate, requiring careful consideration of various components and licensing tiers.
The ingestion costs for the data analytics is usually the highest cost.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender XDR integrates tools for comprehensive security, offering threat detection, automation, identity protection, and enhanced efficiency.
Microsoft Sentinel integrates seamlessly with Microsoft tools, using AI for threat detection, automation, and providing comprehensive threat management.
With Microsoft threat intelligence information, it detects various types of threats, including insider attacks, malicious content, and data exfiltration.
This allows us to secure our systems in advance and proactively improve security, rather than waiting for incidents to occur.
Once we have it on the security dashboard, we can see a real-time storyline.
Microsoft Sentinel's ability to correlate data from multiple sources and its detection capabilities are essential.
Microsoft Sentinel has improved cost efficiency, which is one of the key areas we're able to win business against the ability to have threat intelligence.
Microsoft Sentinel's ability to correlate data from multiple sources enhances our threat detection capabilities beyond what is a simple data lake solution by filtering out the noise and consolidating the signal down to a meaningful level that is easier to investigate and see.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
102
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (2nd)
Microsoft Sentinel
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
98
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 6.5%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 4.8%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Defender XDR6.5%
Microsoft Sentinel4.8%
Other88.7%
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

MohtesanShaikh - PeerSpot reviewer
Experience improves security management and simplifies threat protection
I have created automated investigations, and while they work, they operate rather slowly in the Microsoft portal. If I automate something, it takes considerable time; if I do it manually, I can complete it in a quarter of the time. The automation response being slow is the main concern; when an incident occurs or if I run a remediation, it takes significant time to complete the remediation. There are some limitations regarding the scalability of Microsoft Defender XDR with specific licensing. For SMB customers, there is only Microsoft Defender for Business, and if they want more features such as XDR features and automation investigation or incident response, they need to purchase Defender for Endpoint. We are currently using the EDR.
Ivan Angelov - PeerSpot reviewer
Threat detection and response capabilities enhance investigation processes
My security team has been using Microsoft Sentinel for around two years. We also have Bastion and SolarWinds as part of our monitoring tools. We use a three-way tool, alongside Microsoft Sentinel, in our environment The most valuable features for us include threat collection, threat detection,…
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise37
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise41
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft 365 Defender?
Microsoft Defender XDR provides strong identity protection with comprehensive insights into risky user behavior and potential indicators of compromise.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft 365 Defender?
The pricing for Microsoft Sentinel operates on a pay-as-you-go model based on data ingestion. I recall that Defender XDR pricing is based on the number of endpoints.
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?
For Microsoft Defender XDR ( /categories/extended-detection-and-response-xdr ), there is currently no ability to reset passwords for on-premises accounts, which is a key challenge. Incident managem...
Is there a common threat intelligence tool that aggregates multiple threat intelligence sources?
Yes, Azure Sentinel is a SIEM on the Cloud. Multiple data sources can be uploaded and analyzed with Azure Sentinel and its Threat Hunting functionality with AI available as templates or customized ...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
Which is better - Azure Sentinel or AWS Security Hub?
We like that Azure Sentinel does not require as much maintenance as legacy SIEMs that are on-premises. Azure Sentinel is auto-scaling - you will not have to worry about performance impact, you will...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
Azure Sentinel
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender XDR vs. Microsoft Sentinel and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.