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Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR vs Swimlane comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 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

Torq
Sponsored
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
AI-SOC (1st), AI-Powered Security Automation (1st)
Palo Alto Networks Cortex X...
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
SOC as a Service (2nd)
Swimlane
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
12th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
AI-Powered Security Automation (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of Torq is 3.8%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is 8.7%, down from 10.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Swimlane is 2.8%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR8.7%
Torq3.8%
Swimlane2.8%
Other84.7%
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
 

Featured Reviews

AD
Solutions Architect at Swimlane
Automation has streamlined multi-tenant SOC workflows and improves alert handling efficiency
Although the reporting within Torq is not that great, we did ask for many features regarding reporting in Torq, but due to some platform constraints, they could not make the whole dataset available for us to be used in reporting. Except for that, we used some basic reporting. When I used Torq, it was indeed in the early stages of AI capabilities. Only a few customers were allowed to use it, and we were among them. It functioned well as long as we summarized the data properly. If you input garbage, you would get garbage out. Thus, we had to do significant fine-tuning regarding what data context we provided to the AI orchestrator to get meaningful results. In terms of Torq's unified platform approach to AI SOC automation and case management compared to managing multiple point solutions across my security stack, I find it case-centric. The unified view in case management is good since it provides clarity, although there are limitations regarding how many items in case management can be modified at once. Bulk operations are very limited, potentially due to their back-end database or data retrieval processes that can be improved. Regarding improvements for Torq, when we were onboarded, there were aspects we were uncertain about, such as the number of cases that could be generated, what data we could bring in, how many clients we could onboard, and similar concerns. Initially, we also lacked clarity about the number of playbooks or workflows we could build. Different triggers like system triggers, case-based triggers, and others can be employed without restrictions, but when it comes to on-demand and scheduled jobs, there is a limitation based on the subscription and pricing tier that notably caps the number of workflows we can create. No bulk editing across cases was one issue, along with limited filtering related to single grouping constraints. Additionally, the out-of-the-box case templates provided require substantial modifications before they become usable. There is also a feature in the cases for notes that cannot be searched. They are only visible through the UI, which is another area for improvement. The workflow and execution-based charges seem misleading as this was not discussed initially. I am not sure if new customers are made aware of this. It seems that workflows revolving around cases hinder functionality outside of case management, as we have many use cases needing on-demand triggers and schedules for functions like reporting or polling devices. Creating additional workflows to achieve basic functionalities raises costs significantly, which disadvantages customers. While they facilitate optimization and scaling, the support received tends to be very basic. Improvements can be made in that area as well.
Sricharan R - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Application Security Engineer Iv at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Security automation has transformed incident workflows and now reduces response time dramatically
I think the areas of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR that could be improved are mainly in UX. We have communicated with the vendor team about this, but they are prioritizing product functionality over usability because most target customers are technical and understand a primitive UI. They face difficulties in implementing UI changes as their team is stretched. Thus, the UI/UX of the tool needs significant improvement. There are plans on their roadmap, but a lot remains to be done. Parts of the tool run on an older framework, causing slowness. Usability is a broader issue than features alone. This usability problem is common in many cybersecurity tools, unlike customer-facing applications. Some integrations have speed issues and might not function seamlessly with different upstream configurations, requiring manual updates. These are the main pain points we encountered, particularly with UI/UX, integration speed, and the usability of certain inbuilt playbooks.
reviewer1248516 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager, Cyber Security at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Has reduced alert triage time but requires skilled developers for maintenance
One of the disadvantages of Swimlane is that to manage the platform, we need hardcore developers. We have recently seen new products such as Tines and Blink Ops coming into the market, where a person with a good knowledge of APIs and JSON format can manage the platform and create playbooks. Even a security analyst can create some playbooks on those platforms. However, on Swimlane, it's difficult for security analysts since they must mandatorily know Python to create the playbooks. In terms of pricing, Swimlane is on the slightly expensive side. Swimlane is scalable in general, but there are some limitations. It involves maintenance overhead because you need a complete engineer who knows the product in and out to scale it for the on-prem environment, while in a SaaS model, it works without many problems. Installation can be quite complex, especially when we have to use Kubernetes, and if we need to create load balancing. In those situations, it requires a good engineer to deploy the platform. In relation to bugs, sometimes the enrichment playbook we have does not enrich the alert, resulting in missing details, so in those scenarios, the automation team has to manually run the playbook again. Improvements could be made in terms of quality, particularly.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"As an analyst, it has demonstrated potential to reduce workforce requirements and time needed for related activities."
"Since we started working with Torq, I am handling much fewer alerts, it is becoming really easy for me to handle an alert, I have all the information that I need, I do not need to connect to different vendors to receive this information, and the main thing I got from Torq is time, which now helps me to build another automated system and learn."
"Almost four or five hours of work is now completed in four or five minutes."
"What I appreciate most about Torq is that it is an essential part of our system."
"Torq's unified platform approach to AI, SOAR, automation, and case management is superior compared to my experience managing multiple point solutions."
"Torq has helped a lot regarding SOC analyst efficiency."
"If I review about 100 vendors that I might work with, Torq is definitely in the top five that gave me personally investment back, just because every bit of effort I put into Torq eventually became a workflow that gave it back to me."
"Under one SOC tool in Torq, analysts get to know everything within the context of an alert or incident they are working on, and this ability to view the whole picture within Torq is one of the major breakthroughs and best offerings of Torq."
"The most valuable features are simplicity and ease of integration."
"The strengths of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR stem from the fact that it provides functionalities related to patching and URL blocking...It is a scalable solution."
"Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is a good product with enhanced and efficient playbooks, as demonstrated during our use case simulations."
"The performance is great."
"For organizations that are stable with their security operations, like those with around 50 members in their security team running full-phased operations 24/7, Cortex is necessary."
"We've had a very positive experience."
"I chose Cortex XSOAR because the client also has Palo Alto firewalls. I can incorporate the data from the Palo Alto firewalls into Cortex and send it into the same data lake to manipulate that data. It lets me manage and monitor the data in one place."
"The repository of playbooks and the integration between Palo Alto and IBM QRadar are some useful features"
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the support."
"Swimlane saves us 80 to 90 percent of our time by quickly helping us design the journey and efficiently passing information to various components."
"Swimlane has positively impacted my organization by helping us quickly work on alerts and document them, leading to improved response times and efficiency since we are able to work very easily using the amazing UI and the tool."
"The technical support from Swimlane is very good."
"We are using it for a SOAR platform at a Cyber Security company which is MSSP."
"Swimlane enables two SOC analysts to work efficiently as much as ten analysts would without Swimlane, which translates to significant manpower savings."
"On a scale of one to ten, this solution deserves a rating of nine."
"The biggest advantage of Swimlane for us is that it saves time, which in turn helps us in cost-saving."
 

Cons

"Additionally, the documentation for Torq is not very clear. Most of the information is presented in videos, which are not ideal for reading; there are mostly paragraphs and other text-based content."
"We have MCP that we are working with our cloud security platform, and we wanted to connect this MCP to the case management."
"Regarding the pricing of Torq, I would say it is expensive."
"Torq does extensive marketing saying that SOAR is dead and markets itself as an all-in-one solution, but this is not actually true."
"It was able to capture data but was unable to differentiate between the agent hostname we are using and the hostname that resides on the back end of the Internet."
"Even now, we have workflows that are in production that use AI steps and I get different results, making it unusable to some degree."
"The workflow and execution-based charges seem misleading as this was not discussed initially, and creating additional workflows to achieve basic functionalities raises costs significantly, which disadvantages customers."
"I wish Torq's AI assistant for building templated workflows from scratch worked better; when you start with a blank slate, asking AI to help you build or template the workflow out does not go well."
"Corex XSOAR could be improved by reducing the time it takes to process large amounts of data and increasing the number of integrations."
"There is room for improvement in terms of the pricing model."
"It's quite lagging and not very fast."
"It is not a very scalable solution."
"The complexity of Cortex XSOAR has a trade-off with its versatility. The deployment requires integration and the development of integration modules."
"The existing model is good, but if we go for big deployments, I think there are a few challenges in scalability. They use their internal BoltDB, which is good for a medium organization, but for large organizations, they support Elasticsearch, which is too costly."
"For building automation, there is not a lot of good documentation. The documentation is there, but it is not very good from my perspective."
"I think the areas of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR that could be improved are mainly in UX."
"Swimlane can be improved by being faster and quicker so it is easier for us and does not hang sometimes."
"One of the disadvantages of Swimlane is that to manage the platform, we need hardcore developers."
"We faced a lot of issues with the product’s stability."
"Swimlane's search bar is not working effectively, and there is no option to differentiate between two cases at the same time."
"There is a need for enhanced version control in Swimlane. Currently, our version does not support it, making it tough to move changes between environments during significant updates."
"The stability of the solution has room for improvement."
"I would prefer to have more colors added to represent different risks or notations, which can be used for the prioritization of risks and the significance of information."
"Swimlane is not scalable because it is not exposed. Currently, it's a manual component that requires configuration through coding."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It's cheaper compared to its competitors."
"The price of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is expensive."
"It is expensive."
"The pricing is fair. The pricing reflects the value and feature set it offers."
"The solution is expensive."
"From the cost perspective, I have heard that its price is a bit high as compared to other similar products."
"Cortex XSOAR's price could be lower."
"When I first looked at Demisto, it had a price tag of $250,000 but when we finally purchased it, it was $345,000."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Torq?
I do not dislike anything about Torq because it has satisfied all of our use cases and requirements. We contacted sup...
What is your primary use case for Torq?
Initially, we were using Slack for small automations, such as creating pipelines or shutting down servers. For exampl...
What advice do you have for others considering Torq?
I have been working for five years with experience in the IT field. Torq is very good. It manages everything. I would...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR?
Comparing pricing to Micro Focus, they were offering bundles, making it free with their SIEM. For customers, it is ze...
What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR?
Regarding areas for improvement in Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR, I want to highlight one concern about playbook cr...
What is your primary use case for Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR?
My primary use cases for Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR are malware incidents, specifically phishing-related inciden...
What needs improvement with Swimlane?
Customizing workflows or scripts in Swimlane was a bit challenging, perhaps too challenging because of how the code b...
What is your primary use case for Swimlane?
My main use case for Swimlane is security automation workflows, automating most of the daily SOC workflows, especiall...
What advice do you have for others considering Swimlane?
My advice for others considering using Swimlane is to ensure it is the right fit for you and to have someone capable ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Demisto Enterprise, Cortex XSOAR, Demisto
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Cellcom Israel, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, esri, Cylance, Flatiron Health, Veeva, ADT Cybersecurity
LinkedIn, TransUnion, Citrix, Aetna, Perspecta
Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR vs. Swimlane and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,417 professionals have used our research since 2012.