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Azure Firewall Manager vs Microsoft Purview Information Protection 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

Azure Firewall Manager
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
26th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Firewall Security Management (11th)
Microsoft Purview Informati...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Data Governance (7th), Data Privacy Management Software (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Azure Firewall Manager is 1.3%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview Information Protection is 2.4%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Purview Information Protection2.4%
Azure Firewall Manager1.3%
Other96.3%
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

Sikkander  Batcha - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at CloudIQ
Has managed traffic effectively but lacks visibility and advanced control features
Azure Firewall is typically behind other vendor firewalls because we don't see what kind of traffic is traveling through it. That is one drawback. The main drawback is that we need log support from Azure Firewall, which can be quite costly. There is no login feature in Azure Firewall because only the IAM feature is available in the Azure site; we manage it only through the Azure portal, not through any other portal. Other vendors, such as Palo Alto, provide GUI or CLI interfaces to manage their firewalls, whereas we only manage Azure Firewall through the Azure portal. In the future, I would like to see additional features in Azure Firewall Manager to make it more competitive, such as technologies like App-ID and User-ID that Palo Alto has. Azure Firewall currently only allows traffic based on layer four and sometimes layer seven, so they need to improve in those areas compared to other vendors.
Abhi T - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Director at LTI - Larsen & Toubro Infotech
Achieve comprehensive data protection with reliable performance and room for enhanced discovery accuracy
The product is still in a growing phase. I could see that many use cases in their product are not capable enough in terms of detecting or protecting. Compared to other products, they are in the middle of bringing their solution up to the mark, so it is not a full-grown solution. They have to get more accurate results in terms of data discovery and classification. The second thing is their support; support from Microsoft takes a lot of time to get a response from their support team. The third thing is their OCR capability is not that great in terms of identifying the documents. We would love to see response times of less than 24 hours. Additionally, there is no way to check the policy's current status in terms of whether it got synced or not. You have to wait and test the use cases after 24 hours or after 48 hours, and once it starts working, then it appears the policy got implemented.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Azure Firewall Manager centralizes network security management with a hub and spoke architecture."
"The most valuable feature is the web firewall, as it is easy to install and does not require any plugins for your browser."
"From a traffic management perspective, it's a good firewall because it's automatically scalable based on the traffic availability."
"The solution is very easy to set up."
"The most valuable feature of Azure Firewall Manager is the testing and configuration."
"The best feature of Azure Firewall Manager is that it is easy to maintain and configure."
"We are utilizing Azure Entra ID for group labeling, so Active Directory, or now it is Entra ID, securing our application for everyone who accesses it, and Azure Firewall Manager is definitely securing our projects and all its features are fine."
"The tool's support is good."
"The scalability of Microsoft Purview Information Protection is excellent."
"My advice to other organizations considering this product is that it is best in the business if you are a heavy Microsoft shop."
"Before using it, we had a lot of unlabeled data, and the tool helped us quickly and accurately label a large number of documents."
"The UI is user-friendly, and I have observed that it improves further each year."
"The user interface is nice and it's very user-friendly on that front."
"The features I like the most about Microsoft Purview Information Protection include the ability to set different retention policies, which have benefited my organization by being crucial in maintaining taxpayer anonymity when communicating with government employees."
"We can restrict access or specify who can see sensitivity labels, which can be based on the classification level. We can encrypt restricted content and limit who can see that from an internal view, too, so Purview is a powerful tool."
"Microsoft Purview Information Protection integrates with the productivity and security tools that my customers use regularly, allowing them to avoid using multiple information protection solutions."
 

Cons

"For Azure Firewall Manager, the learning curve for new people is a bit challenging, but the integration should be more straightforward for configuring a centralized system."
"The tool's security features need to improve. It needs also to include a monitoring system for logs. It is also complicated to find a query on the Azure firewall."
"We could do only one-way NAT-ing, where the traffic comes from outside to internal, to Azure, which is fine. However, when we actually do NAT-ed traffic to hit the firewall, that way is not working."
"The configuration and settings require substantial time for learning, particularly for new users. Improvements in ease of configuration would benefit users significantly."
"The price is okay. This said, the solution is certainly expensive in comparison with other cloud services."
"Azure charges for many aspects including scaling, automated scaling deployment, and traffic management, which leads to higher costs."
"With Azure Firewall, the problem is that the NAT-ing still has to be improved."
"There should be a simple one-click deployment for a firewall, rather than a set of setup instructions that include steps such as the DNS configuration, et cetera."
"Microsoft customer service is hit or miss. Sometimes, I get a fast and knowledgeable response, while other times, I've experienced delays and received no resolution."
"I assess its ability to classify data and identify sensitive information as an area where we have not really gotten a lot of progress yet."
"There should be more training and communication regarding new features. I may be missing those communications, but it often seems like changes happen in the Purview portal without notice. Having a roadmap or updates about new releases would be helpful for demonstrating to clients. If things are constantly changing, I sometimes look silly when I log in, and things have moved or changed."
"We don't trust Microsoft Purview Information Protection yet."
"I wouldn't recommend Microsoft Purview Information Protection for petabytes of documents as performance might be affected."
"I see many options such as SharePoint Advanced Management for customers, but that requires a high investment from the customer's end in order to access the premium features of Purview, so it is not easy."
"Purview could better integrate with third-party tools, but I don't have a specific use case for that because It's currently integrated into the managed services we offer to Microsoft customers using E5 licenses."
"I would evaluate Microsoft's customer support for Microsoft Purview Information Protection as not satisfactory. I'm not happy with Microsoft's customer support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is certainly expensive in comparison with other cloud services."
"The price of the solution is reasonable but it is reasonable for the features."
"The price is determined by the enterprise licensing, either the E3 or E5 licensing or the EMS plus security and other feature licensing."
"Initially, Purview's cost seemed quite high because it was for personal use. I was scanning a tiny tenant and thinking, "If I extrapolate this to an enterprise-scale tenant, it will be quite costly." However, I talked to people who had compared it to other products on the market, and they're spending five figures to get started. At least, Purview has a free trial, so you can try some of the features early on."
"The pricing and setup costs are transferred to my clients, who find it affordable and are satisfied with what they receive."
"The product is affordable, and our clients agree. Sensitivity labels come with the MIP license at an additional $2 a month per user, an excellent deal for auto-labeling capabilities."
"The tool's pricing is not a problem for customers because they often purchase it as part of a bundle. With an E5 license, for example, users get access to the entire functionality. This is one of the main reasons why many customers are choosing Microsoft."
"The tool's pricing is fairly low, less than 100,000 for a year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Firewall Manager?
The pricing for Azure Firewall Manager is expensive. In our project, we have used both Palo Alto Firewall and Azure Firewall. Azure charges for many aspects including scaling, automated scaling dep...
What needs improvement with Azure Firewall Manager?
Azure Firewall is typically behind other vendor firewalls because we don't see what kind of traffic is traveling through it. That is one drawback. The main drawback is that we need log support from...
What is your primary use case for Azure Firewall Manager?
My customers are using Azure Firewall Manager, so I'm learning from both documentation and practical knowledge. I usually recommend Azure Firewall Manager for projects such as an animal hospital pr...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview Information Protection?
It is reasonable from what I can say right now because we are using most of the Microsoft tools right now. We are using the managed SQL server of Microsoft. We are using Microsoft Purview Informati...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Information Protection?
In my opinion, Microsoft Purview Information Protection can be improved by having a more seamless user experience and ease of use in protecting both structured and unstructured data.
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Purview Information Protection?
My main use case for using Microsoft Purview Information Protection is protecting our unstructured files.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Information Protection
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Firewall Manager vs. Microsoft Purview Information Protection and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.