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Microsoft Defender XDR vs Uptycs comparison

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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

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
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Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
6th
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
8th
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (4th)
Uptycs
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
65th
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
45th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (65th), Container Security (55th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (34th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (45th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (23rd), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.5%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 2.5%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Uptycs is 0.5%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.5%
Microsoft Defender XDR2.5%
Uptycs0.5%
Other93.5%
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.
reviewer2812758 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infosec at a government with 10,001+ employees
Integrated defenses have unified threat hunting, phishing simulations, and identity investigations
I appreciate Microsoft Defender XDR's MDE, Microsoft Defender tool, which has Attack Simulator. Instead of doing a phishing campaign and getting a separate tool, Microsoft Defender XDR does it all. These features of Microsoft Defender XDR have helped us conduct a phishing campaign quarterly, which has been beneficial. I also appreciate the fact that it has Defender for Office integrated, Defender for Identity, and everything integrated together. I would describe the process of using Microsoft Defender XDR to prioritize incidents in my security operations as quite decent. I appreciate the automatic alerting system where any incidents or alerts we receive come directly to our email. From there, we can open the email, go directly to Microsoft Defender XDR, and start our investigations and remediations. I perceive the integration of security and identity access management in Microsoft Defender XDR as affecting my identity protection strategies very well because it is well integrated with Purview, integrated well with Entra ID, and integrated well with Exchange. I especially appreciate MDO, the Office product. If anything happens and I want to conduct an investigation, it takes me directly to Exchange, where I can also investigate any emails or phishing incidents. Instead of going to different portals, everything can be done from Microsoft Defender XDR. If necessary for further investigation, Microsoft Defender XDR then directs me to that environment. I would assess the integration of AI in guiding security actions within Microsoft Defender XDR as quite positive. Recently, Security Copilot went big, and it is beneficial that I can use that, especially to write KQL. I can do threat hunting features and intelligence all within using Microsoft's Security Copilot. It also has a nice AI feature for threat hunting. I know that all the Defender logs go to Sentinel, and I can pull it up from Microsoft Defender XDR or from Sentinel. The fact that I can actually do all that within Microsoft Defender XDR is a nice feature. In the top module, I can do threat lookups, and I can actually type KQLs in Microsoft Defender XDR and look up incidents. Predictive shielding has had a nice impact on my proactive security measures. It is beneficial that it has, similar to Entra ID, a secure score. For me to improve the product, the secure score helps me out. If I rate it from highest to lowest, I can see what things I can improve. Secure score helps me see what areas I can improve in Microsoft Defender XDR to increase my score and bring it to 80 or more. Knowing Microsoft Defender XDR from using it since 2019, before COVID days, I know that they have improved significantly. It is much more user-friendly and has a very nice vulnerability feature that I find handy and useful. The fact that this feature integrates into Intune is also very decent.
SangramGupta - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Consultant at Deloitte USI
Centralized visibility has improved risk-based vulnerability management but onboarding still needs simplification
From my perspective, the features of Uptycs that stand out more for my projects and organization are the vulnerability management, endpoint visibility, and asset inventory management features. I can share two specific outcomes that show this positive impact using Uptycs. First, it reduces significant time and effort from the asset inventory point of view because previously I needed to scan all of the assets which were in scope, but now I only scan those assets that are currently active and in scope, and the CMDB and asset inventory receive proper updates of those assets. Secondly, in vulnerability prioritization, I receive all the prioritized vulnerabilities so I can prioritize and mitigate or remediate them as soon as possible, which reduces the overall time of remediation as well.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I don't have to do much monitoring with it; I don't have to have anybody manually looking at this, it gives us reports, and it lets us know if something needs to be addressed, and we can easily address it."
"Its interface and pricing are most valuable, and it is better than other vendors in terms of security."
"The product has an intuitive dashboard."
"It can automatically correlate events and logs, which is very helpful for an IT administrator. It can correlate different kinds of malware activities over a network, agent, or host system. You do not need to do it manually. It is a good feature. It is also a user-friendly solution. We have deployed it on the cloud because our space does not provide any flexibility for on-premises deployment, but Palo Alto has added some flexibility to install it on-premises. It must be like the same Cortex XDR agent for all the VPN services, web filtering services, and everything else."
"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."
"What I like about Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is that it is a comprehensive solution that contains everything the organization may need when using endpoints."
"Being a cloud solution it is very flexible in serving internal and external connections and a broad range of devices."
"I generally believe that Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is probably the best in the market right now."
"Scanning, vulnerability reporting, and the dashboard are the most valuable features."
"The most valuable aspect is undoubtedly the exploration capability"
"Microsoft Defender is stable."
"The comprehensiveness of Microsoft's threat detection is good."
"I like how Microsoft XDR and the other Microsoft products are integrated into a single unified security stack covering identity access management, endpoint protection, email, cloud applications, etc."
"The incident-level visibility across the cyber attack chain when using Microsoft Defender XDR is great."
"Microsoft Defender XDR has significantly improved our operational security."
"The integration with other Microsoft solutions is the most valuable feature."
"They have multiple great features."
"I have seen a return on investment from using Uptycs, saving almost 25 to 30 percent in terms of asset investigations or asset inventory management and vulnerability prioritization, which is significant."
 

Cons

"In terms of areas of improvement, we have not completed our review of the product. We're also looking at other products. So, it's a little bit hard to tell what could be different because we have not completed the review of this product, but based on our experience so far, its implementation is quite complex."
"Currently, we are monitoring all USB drives and ports but we would like to improve our device control capabilities."
"The solution eats memory of the computer, unlike anything I've ever seen."
"The solution should add unwanted malicious hash values to a block list so that whenever the action is triggered, it will automatically prevent the malicious content."
"The onboarding process could be better."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks can improve mobile integration to allow access to the console."
"The price could be a little lower."
"They've been having some issues with updating their endpoint agents, and it has been quite frustrating."
"The technical support from Microsoft Defender XDR has been disappointingly slow, to the point that I am considering not renewing my unified support contract."
"The Defender agent itself is more compatible with Windows 10 and Windows 11. Other than these two lines, there are so many compatibility issues. Security is not only about Microsoft. The core technical aspects of it are quite good, but it would be good if they can better support non-Microsoft solutions in terms of putting the agents directly into VMware and other virtualization solutions. There should be more emphasis on RHEL and other operating systems that we use, other than Windows, in the server category."
"The design of the user interface could use some work. Sometimes it's hard to find the exact information you need."
"The patching capability should be there. Patching is something that you cannot do even though you see the vulnerabilities present in your environment. For patching, you have to depend on another solution."
"At times, when we have an incident email and we click on the link for that incident, it opens a pop-up, but there is nothing. It has happened a couple of times."
"At times, there may be delays in the execution of certain actions and their effects."
"There could be a way to proactively monitor unusual activity ."
"Since all of our databases are updated and located in the cloud, I would like additional support for this."
"We end up facing a lot of issues after upgrades."
"Regarding improvements for Uptycs, I suggest simplified onboarding for complex cloud environments because the current onboarding method is complex and requires checks with the support team."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price was fine."
"It has a yearly renewal."
"I don't recall what the cost was, but it wasn't really that expensive."
"The price of the solution is high for the license and in general."
"The pricing is a little bit on the expensive side."
"We didn't have to pay any additional fee for the cloud instance. It just came with the renewal, which was nice."
"I feel it is fairly priced."
"The cost of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is $55 to $90 USD per endpoint per month."
"The bundling of software makes it easier to manage our setup, but Microsoft purposefully obfuscates this through marketing ploys to hide costs."
"Microsoft Defender XDR is priced high."
"Defender XDR is included in the E5 license, but it's a bit too expensive."
"I believe the pricing is fair and acceptable. I consider it to be reasonable and satisfactory."
"Understanding the subscription model has been a bit challenging, as every feature or requirement comes with an additional cost."
"Microsoft Defender XDR is expensive."
"The licensing fee for Microsoft 365 Defender is fair."
"It has consistently offered highly appealing academic pricing, with distinct rates for higher education and general educational purposes."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Construction Company
13%
Computer Software Company
6%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise51
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise28
Large Enterprise41
No data available
 

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 Microsoft 365 Defender?
My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Microsoft Defender XDR is that we are on an E5 license,...
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?
From my perspective, Microsoft Defender XDR can be improved with better visibility in certain areas where I can trigg...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft 365 Defender?
My main use cases for Microsoft Defender XDR are telemetry, advanced hunting, and the ability to perform host isolati...
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Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Comcast, Crossbeam, Flexport, Greenlight Financial, Lookout Security, PayNearMe
Find out what your peers are saying about CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Microsoft and others in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR). Updated: May 2026.
899,645 professionals have used our research since 2012.