Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Datadog comparison

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto N...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and Datadog based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs. Datadog Report (Updated: December 2025).

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs. Datadog

December 2025

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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 Cloud by Palo Alto N...

Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

18th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Vulnerability Management (28th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (13th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (13th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (12th), Software Supply Chain Security (8th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th), Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) (6th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (5th)

Datadog

Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

5th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

211

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), Network Monitoring Software (3rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (2nd), AIOps (1st), AI Observability (1st)

Featured Reviews

reviewer1980216

Business Development Manager For Palo Alto Networks at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Unified security platform has simplified multi-cloud protection and improved threat response

From the commercial perspective, we have some limitations because Palo Alto has a minimum number of users of endpoints set at 200, which is quite high for the Italian market. Additionally, there is not a clear MSP model compared to other vendors such as CrowdStrike. These are significant limitations, especially today when managed services are becoming increasingly important for end users. Palo Alto decided to limit some functionalities because they want to stress more on Cortex XSIAM. I do not agree with this strategy because Cortex XSIAM is a completely different market compared to Cortex XDR. This is the main issue of Cortex—the commercial model Palo Alto is implementing. The product is very good; the problem is the commercial model. There are probably some areas for improvement because Palo Alto is growing too much. Today the challenge is to have skilled people, which I believe is the same issue everywhere. I do not agree with this decision.

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Dhroov Patel

Site Reliability Engineer at Grainger

Has improved incident response with better root cause visibility and supports flexible on-call scheduling

Datadog needs to introduce more hard limits to cost. If we see a huge log spike, administrators should have more control over what happens to save costs. If a service starts logging extensively, I want the ability to automatically direct that log into the cheapest log bucket. This should be the case with many offerings. If we're seeing too much APM, we need to be aware of it and able to stop it rather than having administrators reach out to specific teams. Datadog has become significantly slower over the last year. They could improve performance at the risk of slowing down feature work. More resources need to go into Fleet Automation because we face many problems with things such as the Ansible role to install Datadog in non-containerized hosts. We mainly want to see performance improvements, less time spent looking at costs, the ability to trust that costs will stay reasonable, and an easier way to manage our agents. It is such a powerful tool with much potential on the horizon, but cost control, performance, and agent management need improvement. The main issues are with the administrative side rather than the actual application.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Overall, Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is a technically strong product, and I rate it ten out of ten."

"I have seen several benefits from using Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks: It was easy to use and easy to migrate from the IBM platform."

"I have absolutely seen improvements in our incident close rates, with mean time to detect and respond reduced significantly, sometimes by at least forty to fifty percent."

"From a technical standpoint or pricing, Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is a stronger solution in the market at the moment compared to other products from ConnectWise or Symantec."

"Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks has impacted our organization positively by keeping our machines secure and our team using the dashboard to find issues quickly."

"The most beneficial aspect of Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and Palo Alto in general is that there is a single platform for all cloud providers for securitization."

"The AI and automation features in detecting and responding to high-risk threats are impressive; it's one of the best tools regarding AI technology and unifies security in one platform in real-time, improving vulnerability analysis, incident response, and compliance reporting."

"The product has offered increased visibility via logging APM, metrics, RUM, etc."

"Their interface is probably one of the easiest things to use because it lets non-developers and non-engineers quickly get access to metrics and pull business value out of them. We could put together dashboards and give it to people who are non-technical, then they can see the state of the world."

"I find the greatest feature is being able to search across logs from various microservices."

"Datadog has flexibility."

"The ease of use allowed me to get up to speed with log management since it's my first time using Datadog."

"Datadog's learning platform is second to none."

"Real user monitoring has made triaging any possible bugs our users might face a lot easier."

"We have hundreds of microservices, and knowing how top-level requests weave throughout all of them is invaluable."

More Datadog pros

Cons

"From the commercial perspective, we have some limitations because Palo Alto has a minimum number of users of endpoints set at 200, which is quite high for the Italian market."

"Overall, I rate Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks as an eight out of ten. I think that it could improve on price, as I know that the Google solution has the best price, and this is one of the conditions."

"The pricing is high, making ROI challenging to justify, especially during transitions between solutions."

"Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is creating some confusion in terms of names because this is recent."

"The negative aspects or areas for improvement in the product include the fact that the cost might be a bit high, which challenges commercials, but not technically."

"Some aspects of the GUI can be confusing and make it difficult for me to find certain options or navigate where needed."

"Datadog could make their use cases more visible either through their docs or tutorial videos."

"I would also like to see an improvement in the server's data extraction times, as sometimes it can take up to ten minutes to download a report for a critical issue that is costing us money."

"The pricing model can be quite complex and might benefit from more flexible options tailored to different organizational needs."

"The largest pain point we've had with Datadog to this point was onboarding."

"Interactive tutorials could be a game changer."

"I've only been using Datadog for a few months, and at first, it was frankly overwhelming in terms of both the UI and the available capabilities."

"While it’s powerful, the interface can feel cluttered and overwhelming for new users."

"I'm not sure what kind of features are in the roadmap right now, but I encourage the development of features for defining your organization, and allowing the visibility of what kind of metrics you can get. Those features would be really useful for us."

More Datadog cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"If you do your homework, you'll find that if you're really concerned with cost, it's good."

"The price of Datadog is reasonable. Other solutions are more expensive, such as AppDynamics."

"Pricing seems reasonable. It depends on the size of your organization, the size of your infrastructure, and what portion of your overall business costs go toward infrastructure."

"I am not satisfied with its licensing. Its payment is based on the exported data, and there was an explosion of the data for three or four weeks. My customer was not alerted, and there was no way for them to see that there has been an explosion of data. They got a big invoice for one or two months. The pricing model of Datadog is based on the data. The customer was quite surprised about not being alerted about this explosion of data. They should provide some kind of alert when there is an increase in usage."

"Pricing and licensing are reasonable for what they give you. You get the first five hosts free, which is fun to play around with. Then it's about four dollars a month per host, which is very affordable for what you get out of it. We have a lot of hosts that we put a lot of custom metrics into, and every host gives you an allowance for the number of custom metrics."

"The price is better than some competing products."

"It costs the same amount it would if we were hosting it ourselves, so we are incredibly happy with the cost."

"The pricing came up a bit compared to their competitors. It is not that the price has risen, but that the competitors have gone down. They keep adding more features that I would have expected to be baked in at a more nominal price. I have been increasingly dissatisfied with the pricing, but not enough to jump ship."

More Datadog pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solutions are best for your needs.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Performing Arts

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	2

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	80
Midsize Enterprise	46
Large Enterprise	99

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?

The solution is costly, with high-end capabilities suitable for enterprises. It is less affordable for startups or small-scale vendors.

What needs improvement with Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?

Regarding areas for improvement, the tool performs its functions well, but frequent name changes across Palo Alto Networks products can be frustrating for technical teams who must continually adapt...

What is your primary use case for Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks serves as our primary tool for understanding our assets and performing API integration between our multi-cloud infrastructure, specifically AWS and Azure, to gain...

Any advice about APM solutions?

There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...

Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?

With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...

Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?

Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Dynatrace. Dynatrace offers network ...

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Product Reports

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

February 2026

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

Download Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks product report

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February 2026

Overview

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks provides comprehensive cybersecurity management, focusing on enhancing security operations with advanced automation and threat intelligence, addressing complex security challenges efficiently.

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks integrates cloud-scale data analytics and automation to streamline security operations, enabling faster threat detection and response. It leverages AI and machine learning to provide real-time threat intelligence and automate routine tasks, reducing the burden on security teams. Users benefit from improved visibility across networks and greater operational efficiency, making it crucial for enterprises aiming to secure their digital assets against evolving cyber threats.

What are the key features of Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?

Automated Threat Detection: Identifies and mitigates threats in real-time using AI algorithms.
Advanced Analytics: Provides in-depth data insights for proactive threat prevention.
Incident Management: Streamlines incident response with automated workflows.
Scalable Architecture: Offers flexibility to grow with organizational needs.

What benefits or ROI should you expect from Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks reviews?

Increased Efficiency: Automation reduces manual efforts in threat management.
Enhanced Security Posture: Improved visibility leads to better threat preparedness.
Cost Savings: Minimizes expenses related to manual threat detection and response.
Scalability: Grows with the organization, reducing the need for constant upgrades.

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is favored in sectors like finance, healthcare, and telecommunications, where data security is paramount. Its ability to integrate with existing infrastructure and provide real-time insights makes it a preferred choice for securing sensitive information and ensuring compliance within industry regulations.

Palo Alto Networks

Datadog integrates extensive monitoring solutions with features like customizable dashboards and real-time alerting, supporting efficient system management. Its seamless integration capabilities with tools like AWS and Slack make it a critical part of cloud infrastructure monitoring.

Datadog offers centralized logging and monitoring, making troubleshooting fast and efficient. It facilitates performance tracking in cloud environments such as AWS and Azure, utilizing tools like EC2 and APM for service management. Custom metrics and alerts improve the ability to respond to issues swiftly, while real-time tools enhance system responsiveness. However, users express the need for improved query performance, a more intuitive UI, and increased integration capabilities. Concerns about the pricing model's complexity have led to calls for greater transparency and control, and additional advanced customization options are sought. Datadog's implementation requires attention to these aspects, with enhanced documentation and onboarding recommended to reduce the learning curve.

What are Datadog's Key Features?

Sharable Dashboards: Facilitate collaboration with customizable, intuitive dashboards.
Extensive Integrations: Seamlessly connects with tools like Slack and AWS to support workflows.
APM and RUM: Provides deep insights into application performance and user interactions.
Real-Time Tools: Enables agile responses to system issues with real-time monitoring.
Unified Tagging and Visualization: Eases management of complex systems with simplified visualization.

What Benefits and ROI Should Users Look For?

Efficient Troubleshooting: Centralized logging speeds up the identification and resolution of issues.
Streamlined Workflows: Integrations with popular tools enhance operational efficiency.
Improved Observability: Comprehensive monitoring improves system reliability and performance.
Resource Optimization: Efficient microservices and container management leads to better cloud resource utilization.
Responsive Alerts: Customizable alerts ensure timely identification of critical issues.

In industries like finance and technology, Datadog is implemented for its monitoring capabilities across cloud architectures. Its ability to aggregate logs and provide a unified view enhances reliability in environments demanding high performance. By leveraging real-time insights and integration with platforms like AWS and Azure, organizations in these sectors efficiently manage their cloud infrastructures, ensuring optimal performance and proactive issue resolution.

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Adobe, Samsung, facebook, HP Cloud Services, Electronic Arts, salesforce, Stanford University, CiTRIX, Chef, zendesk, Hearst Magazines, Spotify, mercardo libre, Slashdot, Ziff Davis, PBS, MLS, The Motley Fool, Politico, Barneby's