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Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 9, 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

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Sponsored
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Bitdefender GravityZone Ext...
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
29th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Network Detection and Response (NDR) (13th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (26th)
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
212
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (4th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.6%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 5.5%, down from 9.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint5.5%
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.6%
Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR)0.8%
Other90.1%
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
 

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Process Expert at A.P. Moller - Maersk
Gained full visibility and streamlined threat detection through behavior-based insights and AI integration
Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth. We have fine-tuned our security policies and allowed different levels of policies to get rid of those false positives. Currently, we are getting a fairly good amount of incidents that are not false positives or benign, but actionable items. The process is streamlined. In the initial days, the operations used to get involved in a lot of benign and other activities, but now the process is streamlined. We are leveraging the auto-detection and remediation plans. The operations teams are now more involved in other business roles as well, not just looking into the logs and fetching out what's happening there. They have fixed a lot of things. Initially, they didn't have IAC code drift detection, cloud posture management, or security posture management, but they have those now. They purchased different vendors and did a merger with that. They have now Prisma Cloud that gets integrated and now they are working with Cortex Cloud. Everything that was negative has now been addressed, and the product altogether looks to be in a very better and mature shape now. Currently, it's more or less detecting the workloads with AI-based best practices. Since most organizations are consuming AI agents and other things, we are looking forward to seeing what other feature enhancements Palo Alto can support in that.
reviewer2165952 - PeerSpot reviewer
Company Advisor
Automated protection has reduced our management time and keeps all client environments consistently secure
Reporting in Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) could be improved. It has some reporting in it, but it's a little cumbersome to work with, so the reporting that is there could be improved. The analytics dashboards of Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) are quite useful, and they are nice in that we can see an overview very quickly and drill down into specific issues or specific clients. The dashboards are quite good, though it would be nice if we had the same with automated reports. It would be much more useful for us to have that via email or having a report. The only downside that we find is that the product is a little bit slow.
Robert Arbuckle - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Analyst III at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Automatically isolates threats and integrates with logging to reduce response time
Overall, I would evaluate the Microsoft support level that I receive at probably about a seven, but that depends on the day. It has been spotty. We have had issues where the urgency level of the Microsoft support is not as high as ours, especially during a data breach or potential data breach situation. We have had issues with some of the offshore support being lackluster. One specific thing that comes to mind is we were on a support call with our CISO on the call, and the Microsoft agent, who did not actually work for Microsoft, is one of the vendors that Microsoft uses for support, said, "Just to set expectations, my lunch break is in an hour and I am going to go away then." For us, it was already ten o'clock at night and we had been working on this for a couple of hours, trying to get a security engineer on with us. For him to tell us that he was going to go away and have lunch, it was, "Okay, but go find somebody else if you need to." It was just the lackluster approach, and it seemed like he did not really care. We seem to get a lot of this when we get non-Microsoft support. I can identify areas for improvement with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, as it is kind of a convoluted mess to try to take care of false positives. Especially when they have been identified as false positives but they keep going off over and over again. It is great for my pocketbook because it generates a lot of on-call action, but I would really prefer more sleep at two o'clock in the morning than dealing with false positives. I would say that the unified portal for managing Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is suitable for both teams as they are all in there. It would be great if they would stop moving things around and renaming things, which makes sense. The new XDR portal is pretty nice. Being able to have it central again inside of the regular Security Center without having to open up two windows is helpful. Overall, I think it is pretty good. There is always going to be something that could be improved, such as alerting and the ability to modify alerts would be a little bit helpful to have. Being able to add more data into the alerts and turn off alerts that are not as useful would be beneficial. It is hard to say what the quantitative impact the security exposure management feature has had on our company's security, because a lot of it is kind of subjective. I think we are sitting at around a fifty percent score still, and a lot of it is just kind of unusual circumstances that we cannot really implement without breaking the organization.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One thing that I like about Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, it is detecting all the suspicious or malicious binaries, and it has integration with Palo Alto Firewall."
"Cortex XDR is stable, offering high quality and reliable performance."
"The behavior-based detection feature is valuable."
"It is an easy-to-use tool."
"Traps pays for itself within the first 16 months of a three-year subscription."
"From a single pane of glass, you can easily manage all of your endpoints."
"The solution allows us to make investigations. Other XDR solutions also provide similar capabilities but for investigation, Cortex XDR is better."
"The tool is easy to use."
"We are using Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus for the threat protection and security of our network."
"The best thing about Bitdefender is that it has got top-notch features and it is not tied to specific countries like some other antivirus tools."
"The product is easy to use."
"The threat detection rates are exceptionally good, better than most of the competition."
"We moved from Sophos antivirus to Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR), and ever since then, we've been very happy with the product."
"The quarantine computer functionality is very good for me."
"The best features in the product, as a reseller, are the integrated SOC; integration with a SOC is one of the advantages."
"Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus is highly stable."
"Defender for Endpoint saves me a lot of time because I have all the alerts and information in one application."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has been secure and there is zero maintenance required because it updates with Microsoft Windows."
"Windows is a great tool that I have used; it has helped my organisation in achieving what it does daily and protected our data in a great way."
"Since we started using this product, we have not had any breaches."
"It is stable and very easy to use."
"It's free. There is no additional cost. It's part of Windows."
"We saw a return on our investment within the first two years."
"Defender's analytics are much better than CrowdStrike's."
 

Cons

"The solution should offer more dashboards and they should be better customized."
"They are charging for Network Traffic Analyzer (NTA) services, so if the per GB data could be provided at a certain level free of cost or at the same cost which the customer is taking for the entire bundle, that would be better."
"A little bit more automation would be nice."
"I have run into some detection issues with Cortex XDR. It needs to be better at detection of internal attacks."
"Based on our experience so far, its implementation is quite complex."
"The solution lags to the real-time scenarios here and there."
"Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR does not detect malicious activity like in other anti-virus solutions like Trend Micro and Windows with Cisco."
"The product's pricing could be better."
"Adding a feature like Data Loss Prevention would be beneficial."
"Detection and response is a disadvantage that could be improved."
"The solution must improve its management features."
"The solution seems to be pretty amateur for an EDR solution, and it should be more in sync in terms of features, with solutions such as FireEye and SentinelOne."
"I would like automatic issue fixing for users without needing to physically open the PC. I'd prefer updates and fixes from the cloud to avoid headaches and save time."
"Some customers would like additional features that aren't available through the current GravityZone platform. Some feedback has been about the deletion of other software not going smoothly during the installation of Bitdefender, particularly the removal of previous software like Sophos."
"Reporting in Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) could be improved."
"The scanning is slow when it is working with incoming emails."
"A single dashboard would be a significant improvement."
"With regards to the interface, a challenge I found was that there was not enough documentation on how to tune it. I had to read multiple sources on the internet to learn how to configure the tool appropriately."
"The major area for improvement is the integration with a managed service provider."
"Right now, the solution provides some recommendations on the dashboard but we don't have any priorities; it's a mix of all the vulnerabilities and all the security recommendations, and I would like to see some priority or categorization of high, medium, and low so that we can fix the high ones first."
"One thing that was lacking in Defender was web filtering. Its web filtering wasn't as comprehensive. Sophos was a little bit better than Defender for blocking URLs or installing programs."
"They're in the process of pulling more things together. They can continue with the integrations and provide a better way of seeing the impact of security changes, especially on the endpoint side. Before we actually flip the switch, we should be able to see the impact of security changes on the business or business applications. It would prevent breaking any business applications."
"I think the overall portal of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint could be improved; sometimes there's moving around to different spots and it's a little hard to navigate, so getting used to that was perhaps the biggest hurdle."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution has one subscription for endpoint protection and one subscription for detection and response. The two licenses combined give you the BRO version."
"Compared to CrowdStrike, Cortex XDR is an expensive solution."
"I don't recall what the cost was, but it wasn't really that expensive."
"We didn't have to pay any additional fee for the cloud instance. It just came with the renewal, which was nice."
"The price of the solution is high for the license and in general."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is quite an expensive solution."
"Traps pays for itself within the first 16 months of a three-year subscription. This is attributed to OPEX savings, as security teams spent less time trying to identify and isolate malware for analysis as a result of a reduction in malware incidents, false positives, and breach avoidance."
"It has a higher cost than other solutions, like CrowdStrike or Microsoft’s EDR tools, but it reduces the cost of our operations because it’s a new generation antivirus tool."
"Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus is pretty average, meaning it's not cheaper, but it's pretty good. It has average pricing."
"We have purchased licenses for the use of Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus. The price of the solution is reasonable but could be better."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comes with Windows 10, and it's free. But for you to be able to manage it in the cloud and use the console, you need to have either an Office 365 E5 subscription or a Microsoft M365 subscription. You need to buy an extra license."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is included with a Microsoft E5 license."
"The solutions price could be cheaper."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is more affordable compared to some other endpoint solutions."
"The E5 license is the one that I recommend because it comes with Cloud App Security, which is a good thing to have on top of Microsoft Defender."
"The nice thing about Defender and Sentinel is that the cost is based on the data logs that you ingest from the Defender endpoints and data connectors. I don't have to buy a 25- or 50- or 1,000-user or enterprise license. I can buy one license at a time."
"The solution comes as part of Microsoft Windows."
"The solution comes as a part of Windows 10 and it is covered under its license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise55
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise1
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise44
Large Enterprise97
 

Questions from the Community

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. Sentinel One
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. SentinelOne SentinelOne offers very detailed specifics with regard to risks or attacks. ...
Comparing CrowdStrike Falcon to Cortex XDR (Palo Alto)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Both Cortex XDR and Crowd Strike Falcon offer cloud-based solutions th...
How is Cortex XDR compared with Microsoft Defender?
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security solution. The tool reduces the attack surface,...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus?
The pricing and licensing of Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) is reasonable. We moved fr...
What needs improvement with Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus?
Reporting in Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) could be improved. It has some reporting i...
What is your primary use case for Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Plus?
Our customers typically use Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) primarily as an antivirus s...
Which offers better endpoint security - Symantec or Microsoft Defender?
We use Symantec because we do not use MS Enterprise products, but in my opinion, Microsoft Defender is a superior sol...
How does Microsoft Defender for Endpoint compare with Crowdstrike Falcon?
The CrowdStrike solution delivers a lot of information about incidents. It has a very light sensor that will never pu...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint?
We have been discussing pricing, setup cost, and licensing, and we are currently on an E3. We are discussing going to...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
GravityZone Ultra Plus
Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Archdiocese, Northstar, SeSa, W&W Informatik, Yamaha Motor Europe
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Bitdefender GravityZone Extended Detection and Response (XDR) vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.