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)

23rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Vulnerability Management (38th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (17th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (16th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (14th), Software Supply Chain Security (14th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th), Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) (9th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (9th)

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 (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (2nd), AIOps (1st), AI Observability (1st)

Featured Reviews

Nuno-Santos

Cybersecurity Analyst at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Has improved real-time threat detection and unified cloud protection through AI and automation

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is creating some confusion in terms of names because this is recent. They changed the names of the products and are now clarifying their offer. The family of the products is not easy to follow because it's very recent. Regarding the generative AI security tool, I know for sure it's Agentic. Based on my experience with Palo Alto, I can suggest what Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks could make better or what additional functions could be added. This is the best tool in the market. It's not the time to tell what they could do better because it's a recent tool. The market is now adopting it. Our experience doesn't show that they need to do more.

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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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"When I reflect on the ways we used to track down issues, I can't imagine how we ever managed before Datadog."

"The ability to create custom dashboards has been incredibly useful, allowing us to visualize key metrics and KPIs in a way that makes sense for different teams and stakeholders."

"The most valuable feature of Datadog is its logs."

"Datadog will positively impact my organization by allowing me to handle ticket resolutions at a much faster pace and bring productivity by reducing the number of support engineers required at the monitoring level."

"It has enhanced the performance of my team."

"It has empowered all our platform engineers with a very powerful and easy to use monitoring system."

"We enjoy the multistep API tests."

"Overall, the Data UI and the usability of customer features continue to improve."

More Datadog pros

Cons

"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."

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

"The dashboard could be improved. It would be helpful to get a view of specific things that we need to monitor for our application."

"The query performance could be improved, particularly when handling large datasets, as slower response times can hinder efficiency."

"They need to offer better/more customization on what logs we get and making tracing possible on Edge runtime logs is a real requirement."

"Billing should be more transparent."

"Ingesting data from various sources to monitor the log metrics of the system can always improve so that, if something goes wrong, the right teams are alerted."

"It would be great if usage metrics were automatically created and we could create custom metrics, instead we ended up building some of our own stuff to track and alert on our own usage."

"We'd like to see more advanced incident management capabilities integrated directly into the platform."

"It can have a more modernized pricing mechanism. We're actually working with them to figure out how to become more modular and have a better and more modernized pricing mechanism. The issue with Datadog is that you have to buy the whole suite of different products, and you kind of get stuck in the old utilization of 40% of their suite. Most organizations today break down between application development, networking, and security. Therefore, there should be a way to break down different modules into just app dev, infosec, networking, etc. Customers have various needs across their business lines, and sometimes, they're just not willing to have tools that they're not using 100%. AppDynamics is probably a little bit better in terms of being modular."

More Datadog cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"While it is an expensive product, I would rate the pricing level at four out of five."

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

"This solution is budget friendly."

"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."

"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."

"It has always scaled for us. Cost scales up too, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. It's reasonable for what they're providing."

"The solution's pricing depends on project volume."

"It has a module-based pricing model."

More Datadog pricing and cost advice

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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

12%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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

January 2026

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

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January 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