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Cisco XDR vs Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

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

Cisco XDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
15th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (5th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (8th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of Cisco XDR is 1.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 4.8%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks4.8%
Cisco XDR1.9%
Other93.3%
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
 

Featured Reviews

Joseph Houghes - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Architect at Pure Storage
flexible reporting and analytics boost data-driven security responses
The feature I appreciate the most about Cisco XDR is the flexibility for a user to be able to create their own reporting and dashboards. I would say I got to stop beta testing myself. I am testing what can be customized the most with it. Being able to ingest all the analytics and make it something that's either meaningful to them or to their own leadership is a big plus. It's not just what the product is at launch; you have the ability to customize and make it useful to your business to actually get real, purposeful information out of just a swamp of data. The features of Cisco XDR have actually benefited the organization significantly by allowing us to do the outputs of specific data and even filtered subsets of the data. We can do the same reporting but only deliver in either reports or dashboards the information about the systems that a specific team is responsible for, or the larger teams that multiple departments or IT silos roll up into. We're basically able to just modify the filters and have the same reports in the same dashboards where it's all the same; 99% of the work is the same.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of my favorite features of Cisco XDR is the automation tool, which saves a lot of time because we can craft these automations and workflows."
"The feature I appreciate the most about Cisco XDR is the reliability."
"The feature I appreciate the most about Cisco XDR is the flexibility for a user to be able to create their own reporting and dashboards, ingest all the analytics, and make it something meaningful to their business to actually get real, purposeful information out of just a swamp of data."
"Cisco XDR is built primarily for enterprise endpoint security, integrated onto endpoints with logs integrated into SIEM, and it is used for security investigations, malware impact investigation, and tracking particular security incidents through integration of different logs, where endpoint logs are very important, providing detail about processes run by potential malware and any call-outs made to command and control."
"Technical support from Cisco is good and very helpful."
"Cisco XDR offers threat intelligence and links with the Firewall."
"My advice for other organizations considering Cisco XDR is that it offers proactive security measures that are really very helpful."
"I appreciate the granularity of what I get from Cisco XDR the most."
"The positive impacts I see from Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks include a complete 360-degree view of our security posture altogether, being a uniform platform where we are ingesting logs from multiple resources."
"WildFire AI is the best option for this product."
"Stability is a primary factor, and then there's the ease of distribution and policy management."
"Being a cloud solution it is very flexible in serving internal and external connections and a broad range of devices."
"It can automatically correlate events and logs, which is very helpful for an IT administrator. It can correlate different kinds of malware activities over a network, agent, or host system. You do not need to do it manually. It is a good feature. It is also a user-friendly solution. We have deployed it on the cloud because our space does not provide any flexibility for on-premises deployment, but Palo Alto has added some flexibility to install it on-premises. It must be like the same Cortex XDR agent for all the VPN services, web filtering services, and everything else."
"Based on my experience, I would recommend Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks to other people."
"From a single pane of glass, you can easily manage all of your endpoints."
"The management capabilities, allow an IT organization to get quite a good picture of attempted cyber attacks."
 

Cons

"Improvements in Cisco XDR revolve around performance."
"When we first started with Cisco XDR in August, everybody was having issues. There were three people in our organization, including me, who couldn't even log in to Cisco XDR."
"Cisco XDR can be improved by addressing the upfront cost."
"Cisco XDR can be improved by addressing the upfront cost. Everything matters for us since we're small, mom and pop, so every dollar counts."
"Regarding the pricing aspect of Cisco XDR, I think the price is a bit expensive."
"If we have a list of domains we need to block, such as 4,000 domains, I can only block 100 domains at a time because if I put in more than 100 domains, I hit that 2,000 character max and can't continue with an investigation. Being able to put in all 4,000 domains, without a character limit or observable limit, would make doing those case books a whole lot easier and blocking those domains a whole lot easier too."
"They need to provide better pricing and bundle XDR licenses with products like Meraki solutions or Firepower Threat Defense."
"My only complaint about Cisco XDR is related to licensing, which is complicated."
"Dashboards do not allow everyone to see what's happening."
"The solution should offer more dashboards and they should be better customized."
"It is not easy to sell Cortex XDR, not because it isn't a good tool. Its marketing needs to be improved."
"It's very time-consuming to log support issues and the people that answer the tickets aren't very knowledgeable."
"Product might have some bugs."
"I would like to see better protection, specifically to protect email applications."
"The connection to the internet has not performed as expected."
"We have found that there are times Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks does not detect some of the viruses, we have to use another protection solution called Kaspersky."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing of Cisco XDR is a bit complicated. The cost can depend on what it is, and the process can be a little complicated."
"I did PoCs on products called Cylance and CrowdStrike. Although, I consider these products and they were also good, when it come to cost and budgetary factors, Traps has been proven to be better than the other two products. It is quite cost-effective and delivers all the entire solution which we require."
"Compared to CrowdStrike, Cortex XDR is an expensive solution."
"If one wishes to work with another team or large number of users at a future point, he must purchase a license for them."
"The pricing is okay, although direct support can be expensive."
"The price of the solution could be reduced. I have customers that have voiced that the solution is good for the value but if I want to sell more of the solution the price reduction would help."
"I don't have any issues with the pricing. We are satisfied with the price."
"Cortex XDR's pricing is ok."
"The tool's price is moderate."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
9%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business43
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise44
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco XDR?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been intriguing. I used to work for a Cisco partner, and I still have friends there with whom I discuss comparisons regarding some hardwar...
What needs improvement with Cisco XDR?
Improvements in Cisco XDR revolve around performance. The less performance it utilizes to run at high configuration levels, the better it becomes, so all vendors need to continue working on keeping...
What is your primary use case for Cisco XDR?
As a security consultant, I use multiple SIEM and XDR solutions, so cumulatively, I can say I have used Cisco XDR for around one year.
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. The ability to reverse damage caused by ransomware with minimal interruptions to...
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 that are very scalable, secure, and user-friendly. Cortex XDR by Palo Alto offers ...
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, applies behavioral-based endpoint protection and response, and includes risk-ba...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco XDR vs. Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.