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Bitdefender GravityZone XDR vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

 

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

Bitdefender GravityZone XDR
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (21st)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (8th), Container Security (7th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (2nd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (7th), Compliance Management (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Bitdefender GravityZone XDR is designed for Extended Detection and Response (XDR) and holds a mindshare of 0.7%, up 0.6% compared to last year.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP), holds 13.4% mindshare, down 16.7% since last year.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
 

Featured Reviews

Sazzad Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
AI improves incident response with quick auto response capability
I am using Bitdefender GravityZone XDR in my capacity as a CTO and a partner or reseller of Bitdefender I find that the auto-response capability is most valuable. It improves incident response times. I also appreciate the overall utilization of AI to enhance security posture. The product could…
Vibhor Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
A single tool for complete visibility and addressing security gaps
Currently, issues are structured in Microsoft Defender for Cloud at severity levels of high, critical, or warning, but these severity levels are not always right. For example, Microsoft might consider a port being open as critical, but that might not be the case for our company. Similarly, it might suggest closing some management ports, but you might need them to be able to log in, so the severity levels for certain things can be improved. Even though Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a way to temporarily disable certain alerts or notifications without affecting our security score, it would be better to have more granularized control over these recommendations. Currently, we cannot even disable certain alerts or notifications. There should be an automated mechanism to design Azure policies based on the recommendations, possibly with AI integration. Instead of an engineer having to write a policy to fix security gaps, which is very time-consuming, there should be an inbuilt capability to auto-remediate everything and have proper control in place. Additionally, enabling Defender for Cloud at the resource group level, rather than only at the subscription level, would be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It provides an in-depth analysis and gives recommendations, along with a historical search capability."
"Scalability is pretty easy. It's easy to increase the capacity. You can just add on licenses to the existing license, and the duration of the license can be adjusted. For example, you've already bought a license for a year, and you want to add some more users. We can just add on licenses for the remaining period so that the entire organization can have the same expiry date. That makes renewal easier."
"I appreciate the overall utilization of AI to enhance security posture."
"I find that the auto-response capability is most valuable."
"I would rate GravityZone XDR more than nine out of ten."
"The solution has an automatic patch management capability."
"The HyperDetect feature in GravityZone XDR is effective."
"Good compliance policies."
"The solution is quite good and addresses many security gaps."
"This is a platform as a service provided by Azure. We don't need to install or maintain Azure Security Center. It is a ready-made service available in Azure. This is one of the main things that we like. If you look at similar tools, we have to install, maintain, and update services. Whereas, Azure Security Center manages what we are using. This is a good feature that has helped us a lot."
"Defender for Cloud is an improvement over Trend Micro, our previous solution. We like integrating our endpoints and visualizing everything in one place. It provides comprehensive coverage for endpoints, servers, and overall environmental security."
"One of the features that I like about the solution is it is both a hybrid cloud and also multi-cloud. We never know what company we're going to buy, and therefore we are ready to go. If they have GCP or AWS, we have support for that as well. It offers a single-panel blast across multiple clouds."
"The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is its ability to assess an environment and give us a clear idea of what security components are lacking and which are not."
"The most valuable feature is the comprehensive overview across different workloads. It allows us to see protection not just across one workload, such as virtual machines, containers, infrastructure, or data, but across all our workloads. This overall visibility is really helpful."
 

Cons

"The resource consumption is high for Bitdefender GravityZone XDR, nearly using one gigabyte of RAM, especially on Windows 10 and 11."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"Another area of improvement is CPU utilization. CPU utilization could be improved."
"The resource consumption is high for Bitdefender GravityZone XDR, nearly using one gigabyte of RAM, especially on Windows 10 and 11."
"The product could be improved by offering a single panel for the management of all Bitdefender products. Additionally, there might be a need to simplify the interface in the future."
"The product could be improved by offering a single panel for the management of all Bitdefender products."
"It's not very mature, and additional costs are involved."
"The documentation could be much clearer."
"I would like to see better automation when it comes to pushing out security features to the recommendations, and better documentation on the step-by-step procedures for enabling certain features."
"I rate Microsoft support five out of 10. It gets better once you're escalated past the first and second levels. It's difficult to get the necessary support when tickets are first opened."
"I would like to see more connectors and plugins with other platforms."
"We would like to have better transparency as to how the security score is calculated because as it is now, it is difficult to understand."
"One of the main challenges that we have been facing with Azure Security Center is the cost. The costs are really a complex calculation, e.g., to calculate the monthly costs. Azure is calculating on an hourly basis for use of the resource. Because of this, we found it really complex to promote what will be our costs for the next couple of months. I think if Azure could reduce the complex calculation and come up with straightforward cost mapping that would be very useful from a product point of view."
"The documentation and implementation guides could be improved."
"The vulnerabilities are duplicated many times."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's not the price of the software itself that makes it expensive. It's because you have to buy a VM; you have to buy additional hardware. All those things make it slightly costlier."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"Defender's basic version is free, which is good. Many of our teams are evaluating the paid version against third-party products."
"I rate Microsoft Defender a three out of ten for affordability. The price could be a little lower."
"Understanding the costs of cloud services can be complicated at first. As with a lot of things in the cloud, it can be quite hard to understand the end cost, but it becomes clearer over time. Early on, the lack of transparency is a challenge. Microsoft does not tell you the cost when they launch something. It is clever marketing, and there is room for improvement there. There should be clarity from the start."
"The licensing cost per server is $15 per month."
"There is a helpful cost-reducing option that allows you to integrate production subscriptions with non-production subscriptions."
"Security Center charges $15 per resource for any workload that you onboard into it. They charge per VM or per data-base server or per application. It's not like Microsoft 365 licensing, where there are levels like E3 and E5. Security Center is pretty straightforward."
"Azure Defender is definitely pricey, but their competitors cost about the same. For example, a Palo Alto solution is the same price per endpoint, but the ground strikes cost a bit more than Azure Defender. Still, it's pricey for a company like ours. Maybe well-established organizations can afford it, but it might be too costly for a startup."
"Our clients complain about the cost of Microsoft Defender for Cloud."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
16%
Computer Software Company
16%
Hospitality Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Bitdefender GravityZone XDR?
Scalability is pretty easy. It's easy to increase the capacity. You can just add on licenses to the existing license, and the duration of the license can be adjusted. For example, you've already b...
What needs improvement with Bitdefender GravityZone XDR?
The product could be improved by offering a single panel for the management of all Bitdefender products. Additionally, there might be a need to simplify the interface in the future.
How is Prisma Cloud vs Azure Security Center for security?
Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening across your ecosystem. It also has great remote workforce capabilities and supports a...
What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Microsoft and others in Extended Detection and Response (XDR). Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.