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Cisco XDR vs Stellar Cyber Open XDR 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

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
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Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
115
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Cisco XDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Stellar Cyber Open XDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
40th
Average Rating
0.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (43rd), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (29th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (58th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (17th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (24th), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (21st), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (22nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 4.5%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco XDR is 1.5%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Stellar Cyber Open XDR is 2.1%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks4.5%
Cisco XDR1.5%
Stellar Cyber Open XDR2.1%
Other91.9%
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
 

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.
Fred Parks - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Consultant at W.C. Bradley Co.
Centralized visibility has transformed incident investigations and now cuts response time dramatically
Workflows could definitely be easier to work with. Workflows are automated tasks that can be kicked off inside of a playbook. When someone is responding to something, they can click a button and it will perform automated tasks for them inside of these other products. The product can actually control the behavior of a firewall and you can write a rule in a firewall from Cisco XDR without having to go into the firewall software. However, if it is not a native workflow automation, it is very difficult to create your own. It is not intuitive and you almost have to be a developer and get really good with the API. This could definitely be improved on, particularly the custom workflow automation. Another thing that could be improved is Cisco documenting how it makes decisions, because there are certain factors or criteria that it uses from the source products. Cisco XDR gets all of its data from the integrations, so if you do not integrate anything, it is not going to do anything. Sometimes in these integration products, such as Secure Network Analytics or Cisco Security Exposure, they could be generating some type of alert and you do not necessarily see that in Cisco XDR. This is because it knows, maybe because of these other products, it is not really a big deal and is not big enough to raise an incident. However, I do not think Cisco does a great job in explaining what those rules are, such as why this happens and how this happens. This can cause some questions and some concern. I think it is doing the right thing, but I think it would be better if they had a rule set to say, based on this data, this is how the product actually works.
Hrishiraj Bhattacharjee - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder & CEO at Team Karimganj
Correlates incidents, allows for quicker identification and helps prioritize investigations
The only challenge is, and that’s where we come into play, it’s a pretty high-tech platform. So, it’s difficult for small and medium-sized organizations to manage it on their own. It’s a very complex system. It requires a lot of expertise. All my guys who work on it have gone through certification from Stellar itself. There are three different certifications that you need to complete. Only then are you certified by Stellar to work on it. It’s a very complex platform. Not everyone can use it. A simple IT engineer or system admin won’t be able to handle it because it’s quite complex. You need to have an understanding of the industry, the subject, and the tool. So, just purchasing this tool or license and then using it on your own would be very difficult to configure and manage on a day-to-day basis. The pricing model is not suitable for small and medium companies, particularly small companies. The minimum pricing model they have is suitable for companies with more than one thousand users. So, if someone has 50 to 100 users, like typical small companies, it’s difficult for them because the cost involved is high. Stellar would charge you for those thousand users, but you do not need all those users. So what are they going to do? I guess Stellar does not want to target small companies directly and maybe relies on resellers and MSPs like us to sell it. So, that is something I would recommend changing. Otherwise, it’s a great tool, but because of the pricing model, small companies are unable to leverage the advantage of this beautiful tool. So, the pricing model should be suitable for small and medium businesses. The product currently has vulnerability monitoring and everything. But if they could also do something about vulnerability management and maybe patch management, that would be nice.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Based on my experience with Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, I highly recommend it due to its quick response to zero-day attacks and low utilization from end-user devices."
"I recognize that Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is one of the best products in its category regarding capabilities."
"There has been a significant reduction of approximately 70% to 80% in our internal MTTR and MTTD metrics, now around five to eight minutes whereas previously it was hours, which has helped tremendously."
"The product has an intuitive dashboard."
"The solution doesn't need a high level of technical training."
"The product is mostly automated, and we do not have to make decisions, because all the decisions are made by the product itself and we are not required to create any custom policies since the policies that are created are well defined in the product itself."
"Traps pays for itself within the first 16 months of a three-year subscription."
"Cortex XDR can integrate the firewalls and determine the tendencies of the attacks. It's a new generation antivirus, with protection endpoints and detection response. It is very easy to use and everybody can operate the solution."
"Since implementing Cisco XDR, our organization has improved its incident response process and overall SOC visibility."
"Cisco XDR is one of the most matured systems available."
"I appreciate the granularity of what I get from Cisco XDR the most."
"Cisco XDR offers threat intelligence and links with the Firewall."
"Before using Cisco XDR, I sometimes did not detect malicious activities in my client's environment, but since implementing this solution, my mean time to detect has reduced and my mean time to respond has fallen within the acceptable threshold, positively impacting my organization as I can detect and respond to threats in time."
"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."
"My advice for other organizations considering Cisco XDR is that it offers proactive security measures that are really very helpful."
"The features of Cisco XDR benefit my company since time is money. When outages happen and when a customer can't reach the internet, they get agitated. Therefore, the quicker we can mitigate an issue, our customers get happier in a quicker fashion."
"Stellar Cyber Open XDR offers these functionalities at a more affordable price, making it easier for me to position it with price-sensitive customers."
"It can integrate with almost any cybersecurity tool available in the market."
 

Cons

"In general, the price could be more competitive."
"There's an overall lack of features."
"There are some limitations on the Traps agents."
"There are some false positives. What our guys would have liked is that it would have been easier to manipulate as soon as they found a false positive that they knew was a false positive. How to do so was not obvious. Some people complained about it. The interface, the ESM, is not user-friendly."
"Currently, we are monitoring all USB drives and ports but we would like to improve our device control capabilities."
"Fine-tuning the detection policy requires experience because the policy is very complex in Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, and we get high false positive alerts."
"A better pricing plan would make this product more competitive."
"There are some default policies which sometimes affect our applications and cause them to run around. In the hotel industry, we use a different type of data versus Oracle and SQL. By default, there are some policies which stop us from running properly. Because of this, the support level is also not that strong. We have to wait to get a results."
"The interface of Cisco XDR can be improved."
"One area that needs improvement is the limited visibility due to the licensing structure. For more visibility, customers need the advantage or premier licensing, which involves additional costs."
"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."
"Improvements in Cisco XDR revolve around performance."
"Cisco XDR could improve the UI customization experience."
"While Cisco XDR is robust, it could benefit from improvements on the AI side."
"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."
"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."
"I would rate the stability at about five to six. The platform requires some fine-tuning, especially when integrating data sources and creating connectors."
"Support is an issue because they have a limited number of resources."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost depends on your chosen license type, like Pro or other licenses."
"Very costly product."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is quite an expensive solution."
"The solution has one subscription for endpoint protection and one subscription for detection and response. The two licenses combined give you the BRO version."
"The solution is expensive. It's pricing is on a yearly-basis."
"This is 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."
"We pay about $50,000 USD per year for a bundle that includes Cortex XDR."
"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."
"It’s a single license platform."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
21%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise54
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise4
No data available
 

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 Cisco XDR?
The centralized visibility, automation, and reduction in investigation time have provided good operational value for ...
What needs improvement with Cisco XDR?
Cisco XDR could improve the UI customization experience. Some workflows still feel more complex than they need to be,...
What is your primary use case for Cisco XDR?
We mainly use Cisco XDR for centralized threat detection and incident investigation, especially for correlating endpo...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Stellar Cyber Open XDR?
Pricing is a major benefit of Stellar Cyber Open XDR. I rate it between three and four on the cost scale. It offers f...
What needs improvement with Stellar Cyber Open XDR?
I am currently evaluating Stellar Cyber Open XDR in terms of their support. I do not see any major areas for improvem...
What is your primary use case for Stellar Cyber Open XDR?
I use Stellar Cyber Open XDR ( /products/stellar-cyber-open-xdr-reviews ) as a 24/7 security monitoring tool, especia...
 

Also Known As

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

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Information Not Available
Sumitomo Chemical USA, PlastiPak Packaging, University of Denver, Large California State Agency, Large Midwestern American City
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco XDR vs. Stellar Cyber Open XDR and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.