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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
6.9
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (2nd), Microsoft Security Suite (6th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (6th)
Rapid7 InsightIDR
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
25th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (12th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (47th), Threat Deception Platforms (6th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (28th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 4.0%, down from 7.1% 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) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Sentinel4.0%
Rapid7 InsightIDR2.1%
Other93.9%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Kallamuddin Ansari - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Consultant at HR Software Solution
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

"Azure Sentinel works perfectly in this case because we are using Microsoft resources."
"Microsoft Sentinel has positively impacted my organization by improving visibility across all security logs, reducing incident response time through automation, and enabling faster threat detection, which has strengthened our overall security posture and reduced the manual workload for the SOC team."
"It helps to implement connectors for Microsoft solutions, available out of the box and providing real-time integration, including Microsoft 365 Defender (formerly Microsoft Threat Protection) solutions, and Microsoft 365 sources, including Office 365, Azure AD, Microsoft Defender for Identity (formerly Azure ATP), and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, and more."
"The return on investment is massive because with a small amount of money, customers can take advantage of an array of technologies since everything is connected from the Microsoft perspective."
"The Identity Behavior tab furnishes us with the entire history linked to each IP or domain that has either accessed or attempted to access our system."
"The signal correlation and dashboards features of Microsoft Sentinel are fantastic because it correlates the signal logs with other products. The customizable dashboards are also valuable."
"I recommend implementing Sentinel because it's certainly the most powerful SIEM tool."
"For those who want to adopt Sentinel, I'd advise that it's a really one-stop solution for all the security needs."
"Features for user behavior analytics and the rules for attack review are good."
"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."
"Enables the use of honey pots, honey users, and honey files to monitor for suspicious patterns."
"InsightIDR helps us investigate an environment to discover information about incidents."
"We were able to identify criminals attempting to login from China and put a stop on their IP locations."
"The platform offers unlimited storage and agent-based solutions."
"Integration with threat modeling from the Metasploit and InsightIDR repositories."
"I like that it's a cloud-based solution."
 

Cons

"Sentinel can be used in two ways. With other tools like QRadar, I don't need to run queries. Using Sentinel requires users to learn KQL to run technical queries and check things. If they don't know KQL, they can't fully utilize the solution."
"Technical support doesn't understand the features well enough. Their solutions and response time aren't very good."
"When we pass KPIs to the governance department, there's no option to provide rights to the data or dashboard to colleagues. We can use Power BI for this, but it isn't easy or convenient. They should just come up with a way to provide limited role-based access to auditing personnel"
"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."
"From an analyst perspective, Sentinel has to evolve more."
"Microsoft Sentinel could be improved by making the UI more intuitive, simplifying KQL queries for easier use, improving cost visibility and optimization controls, and enhancing performance and query speed when handling large volumes of data."
"The playbook is a bit difficult and could be improved."
"The following would be a challenge for any product in the market, but we have some in-house apps in our environment... our apps were built with different parameters and the APIs for them are not present in Sentinel. We are working with Microsoft to build those custom APIs that we require. That is currently in progress."
"The integration capabilities of the solution have certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"The searching feature in Rapid7 InsightIDR needs to evolve"
"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."
"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 ability to tune the collector for custom logs would greatly help."
"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."
"One thing that springs to mind is easier API integration with ITSMs. We are evaluating a new ITSM and I would like to have InsightIDR create a ticket when an attack is identified, and the ticket would be closed in InsightIDR when the ITSM resolution is completed. This would take out the "single point of failure" we currently have, if the email recipient is somehow absent, in recording the risk appetite for the incident and the actions taken to mitigate or not."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We only pay for the amount of data we bring in, which is fair."
"Currently, given our use case, the cost of Sentinel is justified, but it is expensive."
"Azure Sentinel is very costly, or at least it appears to be very costly. The costs vary based on your ingestion and your retention charges."
"It is certainly the most expensive solution. The cost is very high. We need to do an assessment using the one-month trial so that we can study the cost side. Before implementing it, we must do a careful calculation."
"I am just paying for the log space with Azure Sentinel. It costs us about $2,000 a month. Most of the logs are free. We are only paying money for Azure Firewall logs because email logs or Azure AD logs are free to use for us."
"No license is required to make use of Sentinel, but you need to buy products to get the data. In general, the price of those products is comparable to similar products."
"It is kind of like a sliding scale. There are different tiers of pricing that go from $100 per day up to $3,500 per day. So, it just kind of depends on how much data is being stored. There can be additional costs to the standard license other than the additional data. It just kind of depends on what other services you're spinning up in Azure, or if you're using something like Azure log analytics."
"Pricing for Microsoft Sentinel could always be lower, but it's workable. The ingestion costs for the data analytics is usually the highest cost, but the licensing per Microsoft Sentinel is fairly straightforward and transparent."
"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."
"It is more reasonably priced than other vendors."
"Rapid7 InsightIDR charges us based on the endpoints we connect to."
"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."
"​Accurately predict your licensing counts as this is a subscription based product.​"
"The solution has a mid-range price point in the market"
"The pricing and licensing are competitive."
"It is on a yearly basis. For our own company, for about 250 users, it was 16,000 euros a year."
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Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise46
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
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 needs improvement with Rapid7 InsightIDR?
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...
What is your primary use case for Rapid7 InsightIDR?
I am working with Rapid7 InsightOps and Rapid7 InsightIDR because the requirement is as such from the customer side, particularly the banks. Whatever the requirement is, these are the products that...
 

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: June 2026.
902,417 professionals have used our research since 2012.