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Microsoft Sentinel vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

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 Sentinel enhances security and efficiency, reducing costs and manual work, with long-term benefits in risk management and compliance.
Sentiment score
6.3
Splunk Enterprise Security improves efficiency and threat detection, reducing time and costs despite its expense for larger organizations.
If a customer is already using Microsoft’s ecosystem, the ROI can be positive due to seamless integration.
senior cyber security at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
We attribute our growth to Sentinel.
Chief Commercial Officer at defend
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.
Chief Operating Officer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
The documentation for Splunk Enterprise Security is outstanding. It is well-organized and easy to access.
DevOps&Cloud Engineer Mentee at CertDirectory.io
We couldn't calculate what would have been the cost if they had actually gotten compromised; however, they were in the process, so every investment was returned immediately.
Business Development Manager at Axians Germany
On average, my SecOps team takes probably at least a quarter of the time, if not more, to remediate security incidents with Splunk Enterprise Security compared to our previous solution.
IT Orchestration Architect at Penn State University
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
Microsoft Sentinel support is responsive and efficient, with premium tiers offering prompt assistance, although complex issues may face challenges.
Sentiment score
6.3
Splunk Enterprise Security is highly rated for support expertise, though some users report delays and inconsistent experiences.
Their solutions' integration simplifies resolving issues compared to those caused by third-party products.
IT Consultant at MAN Truck & Bus SE
Microsoft invests significantly in support, which is crucial for companies.
Director de Microsoft y Transformación Digital at Compucad
Working with a Sentinel engineer helped us tune settings effectively.
Systems Emgineer at a non-profit with 1-10 employees
We have paid for Splunk support, and we’re not on the free tier hoping for assistance; we are a significant customer and invest a lot in this service.
Senior System Administrator at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
I have had nothing but good experiences with Splunk support, receiving timely and helpful replies.
Cyber Security Associate at SAP
We've had great customer success managers who have helped us navigate scaling from 600 gigs to 30 terabytes.
Principal Engineer at Aviatrix
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Sentinel's cloud architecture offers significant scalability and flexibility, easily adapting to organizational needs while accommodating extensive data.
Sentiment score
7.4
Splunk Enterprise Security offers excellent scalability, managing large data volumes and supporting effortless growth across industries.
Office 365 and Exchange are running on it, covering about 35,000 users efficiently.
IT Consultant at MAN Truck & Bus SE
As our organization uses Microsoft Azure and Defender, everything grows together, and we can integrate various features seamlessly.
Systems Emgineer at a non-profit with 1-10 employees
Being a SaaS solution, the scalability of Microsoft Sentinel is robust.
senior cyber security at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
We currently rely on disaster recovery and backup recovery, which takes time to recover, during which you're basically blind, so I'm pushing my leadership team to switch over to a clustering environment for constant availability.
IT Security Engineer at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
It is one of the things that separates it from other tooling, and if not, it is the most scalable solution out there.
Systems Development Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
They struggle a bit with pure virtual environments, but in terms of how much they can handle, it is pretty good.
CTO at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Sentinel is highly stable and reliable, with minimal downtime and efficient data integration, surpassing alternatives like LogRhythm.
Sentiment score
7.5
Splunk Enterprise Security is praised for stability and reliability, despite challenges with resource demands and custom configurations.
So far, we have not experienced any issues, and it has been stable from the beginning.
IT Consultant at MAN Truck & Bus SE
In the past two years, our team hasn't encountered any issues with the stability of Microsoft Sentinel from an operations perspective.
Project Executive at synergyc
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.
senior cyber security at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
They test it very thoroughly before release, and our customers have Splunk running for months without issues.
Splunk System Engineer at a non-tech company with 11-50 employees
Splunk has been very reliable and very consistent.
Principal Engineer at Aviatrix
We need more SMEs, and there is no mechanism to tell us about indexer or search head issues.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Sentinel requires better third-party integration, improved UI, enhanced documentation, simpler pricing, and stronger threat intelligence capabilities.
Splunk Enterprise Security needs UI improvements, better integration, richer documentation, competitive pricing, and enhanced AI and threat detection.
We have some tools, such as our off-site Meraki firewalls, that have not fully integrated with Sentinel.
Systems Emgineer at a non-profit with 1-10 employees
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.
IT Consultant at MAN Truck & Bus SE
There are complexities in calculating the right pricing tier for different customers, which makes it difficult for me as a consultant during upfront pricing.
senior cyber security at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Improving the infrastructure behind Splunk Enterprise Security is vital—enhanced cores, CPUs, and memory should be prioritized to support better processing power.
Resident Consultant (Security Analyst) at helpag
Splunk Enterprise Security is not something that automatically picks things; you have to set up use cases, update data models, and link the right use cases to the right data models for those detections to happen.
Security & Risk Analyst at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
For any future enhancements or features, such as MLTK and SOAR platform integration, we need more visibility, training, and certification for the skilled professionals who are working.
Security Consultant at Matiq
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Sentinel's pricing is complex and costly, yet beneficial for Microsoft stack users with insider knowledge for optimization.
Splunk Enterprise Security offers robust insights but can be costly for high data volumes, challenging affordability for smaller businesses.
It has been beneficial that Microsoft Sentinel is included as part of the Microsoft package, making it more cost-effective.
Senior System Administrator at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees
Microsoft Sentinel offers more capabilities than Bastion, with a more intuitive experience.
Project Executive at synergyc
Setting up the right cost model for customers is intricate, requiring careful consideration of various components and licensing tiers.
senior cyber security at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
I saw clients spend two million dollars a year just feeding data into the Splunk solution.
CTO at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The platform requires significant financial investment and resources, making it expensive despite its comprehensive features.
System Engineer - Security Presales at Raya Integration
I find it to be affordable, which is why every industry uses it.
Vice President Research And Development at OSINT Ambition
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Sentinel excels in integration, scalability, AI, and automation, enhancing threat detection and response with improved efficiency.
Splunk Enterprise Security offers real-time threat detection, customization, and integration, enhancing security operations and data management capabilities.
Microsoft Sentinel's ability to correlate data from multiple sources and its detection capabilities are essential.
Cost Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
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.
Chief Commercial Officer at defend
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.
Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
This capability is useful for performance monitoring and issue identification.
Staff Performance Engineer at ServiceNow
I assess Splunk Enterprise Security's insider threat detection capabilities for helping to find unknown threats and anomalous user behavior as great.
Splunk System Engineer at a non-tech company with 11-50 employees
Splunk Enterprise Security provides the foundation for unified threat detection, investigation, and response, enabling fast identification of critical issues.
Specialist-Infrastructure Opertions at Allianz Technology
 

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
103
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (6th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
374
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (2nd), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 5.0%, down from 7.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 7.4%, down from 10.0% 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 (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security7.4%
Microsoft Sentinel5.0%
Other87.6%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Q&A Highlights

NC
Content Manager at PeerSpot
Sep 01, 2021
 

Featured Reviews

RW
Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
Creates value with advanced investigation capabilities while seeking improved integration with varied platforms
My primary improvement request would be for auxiliary logs, as they represent our biggest need. While we have automated deployments now, Microsoft Sentinel is fairly easy to deploy, although we face challenges with integrations related to AWS and GCP, particularly with Google. The integration challenges arise from both sides; Google tends to be noisy, and we find only ten analytic rules out of the box, necessitating the use of Defender for Cloud for alerts, which indicates a need for better documentation during deployment. The story between UEBA and Defender for Identity and Intra needs to be further explored and defined. There's some confusion on what is happening from a user and entity behavior.
reviewer1469784 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Helps us detect cyber threats quickly and integrate multiple feeds effectively
Overall, the product is good, but when it comes to some infrastructure issues, we have to dig into more logs. There is no straightforward indication of an issue. Health check kind of dashboards are not available. More AI would help us, and more optimization, since security products run more queries. The AI module could suggest solutions, optimizing queries or workload balancing. If the product itself advises on running queries during peak times, it would be similar to what ChatGPT currently offers. We see quite a few issues on stability. Even last week, we faced something, and identifying bottlenecks is not easy. We need more SMEs, and there is no mechanism to tell us about indexer or search head issues. Self-monitoring dashboards could be beneficial. The technical support still requires more improvement. Often, primary support takes a lot of time and forwards most solutions to the engineering side. The primary support team has very limited knowledge to provide.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions are best for your needs.
879,672 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Feb 26, 2015
HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. ​McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm
We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise44
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business109
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise263
 

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...
How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
What do you like most about Splunk?
There are a lot of third-party applications that can be installed.
 

Also Known As

Azure Sentinel
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Sentinel vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,672 professionals have used our research since 2012.