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Microsoft Sentinel vs Rapid7 InsightIDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 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

Microsoft Sentinel
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
104
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (6th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th)
Rapid7 InsightIDR
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (8th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (23rd), Threat Deception Platforms (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 4.8%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rapid7 InsightIDR is 2.1%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Sentinel4.8%
Rapid7 InsightIDR2.1%
Other93.1%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Kallamuddin Ansari - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Consultant at ProTechmanize
Centralized monitoring has improved threat response but cost control still needs refinement
Based on real operations used in our corporate IT environment, the key features include log correlation and incident view. Microsoft Sentinel's biggest strength is how it correlates multiple related alerts into a single incident. This significantly reduces alert noise and helps the SOC focus on real threats instead of isolated events. Another valuable feature is KQL-based threat hunting with Kusto Query Language. The flexibility of this language allows us to build custom hunting queries based on our environment's behavior. This is extremely useful for detecting low and slow threats or hidden threats that default rules may miss. Cloud-native scalability and stability is another important feature. Being cloud-native, Microsoft Sentinel scales well for medium to large corporate environments without infrastructure management. Stability has been solid in day-to-day production. SOAR automation using playbooks is a feature we highly recommend. Microsoft Sentinel's SOAR functionality helps automate repetitive SOC tasks like alert enrichment and notification. This saves analyst time and improves response consistency.
SohailHyder - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Cyber Security at Super Secure
Has supported compliance needs for mid-sized organizations but lacks customization and advanced integration
If we pitch Rapid7 InsightIDR against solutions such as SIEMs from Splunk or LogRhythm, it is not as customizable as a SIEM solution is. This is where it can improve if we keep in front the feature sets of a complete SIEM solution. Most common in the market is QRadar, but it is depleting now. It has been taken over by some other products such as Splunk and LogRhythm. If we compare these things with Rapid7 InsightIDR, then there are definitely some gaps that need to be filled. Data retention is also one concern because Rapid7 InsightIDR is cloud-based and operates on a subscription model. Whatever data you want to retain, it has to be paid for separately or it has a cost. Other solutions that are on-premises can have their own infrastructure or they provide some data retention for a month or in some capacity-wise, they provide that solution to them which makes them more attractive.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The connectivity and analytics are great."
"It has a lot of great features."
"The Log analytics are useful."
"You can fine-tune the SOAR and you'll be charged only when your playbooks are triggered. That is the beauty of the solution because the SOAR is the costliest component in the market today... but with Sentinel it is upside-down: the SOAR is the lowest-hanging fruit. It's the least costly and it delivers more value to the customer."
"Sentinel uses Azure Logic Apps for automation, which is really powerful. This allows us to easily automate responses to incidents."
"We have seen at least a 60% increase in efficiency with Microsoft Sentinel and the ability to reduce the MTTD down to under five minutes and MTTR down to under fifteen."
"The part that was very unexpected was Sentinel's ability to integrate with Azure Lighthouse, which, as a managed services solution provider, gives us the ability to also manage our customers' Sentinel environments or Sentinel workspaces. It is a big plus for us. With its integration with Lighthouse, we get the ability to monitor multiple workspaces from one portal. A lot of the Microsoft Sentinel workbooks already integrate with that capability, and we save countless amounts of money by simply being able to almost immediately realize multitenant capabilities. That alone is a big plus for us."
"The log analysis is excellent; it can predict what can or will happen regarding use patterns and vulnerabilities."
"The incident case management is the most valuable feature. Even though there's always something I find I would like to add to that feature, the ability to quickly sort through all the logs, network and endpoint data, etc., and add it to an incident case as part of the investigation, is nice. Having it automatically timeline that additional data into the original incident timeline, and correlate it to other notable events and activities on the network, results in a huge improvement in our overall confidence that we've quickly traced down the right source of an issue."
"I like the tool's user analysis feature."
"InsightIDR’s ability to process millions of transactions per day, and to notify me of the most critical ones, is priceless. InsightIDR has the alerts tuned, and has the ability to quickly drill down to determine the threat level."
"I rate Rapid7 nine out of 10 for affordability"
"Rapid7's reporting is more robust than Tenable's."
"The log aggregation and storage provided by InsightIDR has shown no issues with scalability; aggregating over one hundred millions events daily."
"Very intuitive and easy to set up."
"InsightIDR has allowed us to find potential security issues that we did not know existed, and get remediation quickly."
 

Cons

"We have been working with multiple customers, and every time we onboard a customer, we are missing an essential feature that surprisingly doesn't exist in Sentinel. We searched the forums and knowledge bases but couldn't find a solution. When you onboard new customers, you need to enable the data connectors. That part is easy, but you must create rules from scratch for every associated connector. You click "next," "next," "next," and it requires five clicks for each analytical rule. Imagine we have a customer with 150 rules."
"Microsoft Sentinel should continue adding support for several other security brands because sometimes you have a firewall from a different brand and if you cannot correlate or integrate that seamlessly, it creates multiple points of checking information, which diminishes efficiency."
"Sentinel should be improved with more connectors. At the moment, it only covers a few vendors. If I remember correctly, only 100 products are supported natively in Sentinel, although you can connect them with syslog. But Microsoft should increase the number of native connectors to get logs into Sentinel."
"Only one thing is missing: NDR is not available out-of-the-box. The competitive cloud-native SIEM providers have the NDR component. Currently, Sentinel needs NDR to be powered from either Corelight or some other NDR provider."
"At the network level, there is a limitation in integrating some of the switches or routers with Microsoft Sentinel. Currently, SPAN traffic monitoring is not available in Microsoft Sentinel. I have heard that it is available in Defender for Identity, which is a different product. It would be good if LAN traffic monitoring or SPAN traffic monitoring is available in Microsoft Sentinel. It would add a lot of value. It is available in some of the competitor products in the market."
"Currently, the watchlist feature is being utilized, and although there have been improvements, it is still not fully optimized."
"Sometimes, it is hard for us to estimate the costs of Microsoft Sentinel."
"The SOC optimization feature of Microsoft Sentinel does not appear applicable at the moment in terms of data management and cost efficiency."
"Customised alert recipients need to be added to allow better first-line action and quicker response. Configurable honeypots would be a welcome addition."
"The reporting is the weakest aspect. There needs to be multi-level grouping for events (for example, group by user and destination). Right now, we can do a group by user and a separate table or group by destination. But I'd be more interested in where a person was logging into instead of who was logging in or where he was logging in."
"The searching feature in Rapid7 InsightIDR needs to evolve"
"The integration capabilities of the solution have certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"There are certain limitations with Rapid7 that I am working on."
"The product allows us to make only 30 custom rules."
"I feel it would greatly benefit from more supported log sources."
"Rapid7 doesn't integrate well with all our security tools from various vendors, so we plan to switch. Many of our solutions work with Rapid7, but some do not. We are already searching for a replacement already."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is consumption-based pricing. It is an affordable solution."
"I have worked with a lot of SIEMs. We are using Sentinel three to four times more than other SIEMs that we have used. Azure Sentinel's only limitation is its price point. Sentinel costs a lot if your ingestion goes up to a certain point."
"The pay-as-you-go model is beneficial to customers."
"Some of the licensing models can be a little bit difficult to understand and confusing at times, but overall it's a reasonable licensing model compared to some other SIEMs that charge you a lot per data."
"There are no additional costs other than the initial costs of Sentinel."
"Pricing is pay-as-you-go with Sentinel, which is good because it all depends on the number of users and the number of devices to which you connect."
"We are charged based on the amount of data used, which can become expensive."
"Microsoft Sentinel requires an E5 license."
"It is more reasonably priced than other vendors."
"The pricing of the solution depends on the user. But there is a yearly licensing cost."
"It is on a yearly basis. For our own company, for about 250 users, it was 16,000 euros a year."
"The pricing and licensing are competitive."
"Rapid7 InsightIDR's pricing is reasonable but we have challenges with the Minimum Order Quantity. It is not reasonable for customers who have less than one hundred devices. If they can reduce Minimum Order Quantity, it is good. You have to pay around 5000-6000 dollars per year for the product. The pricing includes maintenance and support costs."
"The solution has a mid-range price point in the market"
"Rapid7 InsightIDR charges us based on the endpoints we connect to."
"Rapid7 InsightIDR is priced very well and is cost-effective."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise45
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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 asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What do you like most about Rapid7 InsightIDR?
During simulations or demonstrations, the tool generates alerts, providing details such as the specific application, its origin, and potential threats. For instance, it can identify if an applicati...
 

Also Known As

Azure Sentinel
InsightIDR
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
Liberty Wines, Pioneer Telephone, Visier
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Sentinel vs. Rapid7 InsightIDR and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.