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Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs Malwarebytes comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 9, 2024

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...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (7th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (4th)
Malwarebytes
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.9%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Malwarebytes is 1.8%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammad Qaw - PeerSpot reviewer
Perfect correlation and XDR capabilities for network traffic plus endpoint security
The solution should force customers to integrate with network traffic to see the full benefits of XDR. If you are not integrating it or feeding in your network traffic, then you are just buying a normal antivirus which doesn't make any sense. You are paying double the price to use the antivirus feature or to say you have XDR, but in reality you are not using it. The solution should include an on-premises option because some customers want only on-premises. It would be hard, but good to do if possible. Open XDR would be beneficial in the future. Right now, the solution is Closed XDR so cannot communicate with the few new vendors in the Open XDR market.
Anas Anas - PeerSpot reviewer
Effective threat predictions, simple to deploy, and light on resources
Malwarebytes's initial setup is simple. It is easy to deploy and configure the policies and the configuration. I deployed Malwarebytes for one customer and I did it in under two days. They had approximately 50 users, it took approximately an hour. The steps I took for the implementation were downloading the Malwarebytes management console from the site, installing it, then running the discovery tool, scanning my network, and checking all of the PCs on my network. It's already pre-configured, you don't need to configure anything. The only configuration that I did on the administration console was some of the exclusion from the scan. This is the only rule that I have created. I rate the initial setup of Malwarebytes a ten out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution allows us to make investigations. Other XDR solutions also provide similar capabilities but for investigation, Cortex XDR is better."
"After deploying Traps, we saw the performance of the network improve by 65 to 70 percent."
"They did what they said. This solution could apply to any scenario."
"The most valuable feature is that you can select remote access of any machine for sandboxing."
"From a single pane of glass, you can easily manage all of your endpoints."
"Provides behavior-based detection which offers many benefits over signature-based detection."
"The stability of this product is very good."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is easy to use and does not consume a lot of hardware resources."
"Being able to carry out a full scan on your system."
"I was very satisfied with Malwarebytes in terms of its antivirus abilities."
"The most valuable feature is that it stops malware, which is important."
"The behavior-based detection is very nice, and it combats zero-day threats by looking for anomalous behaviors."
"It's very versatile and thorough."
"It is intuitive and easy to use. For the most part, it does a good job of catching things. It is good at stopping stuff. I did a couple of tests with a password cracker. I tried to load that on, and Malwarebytes didn't let me do that, which was pretty good. It has a rollback feature that I haven't seen with any other company. If one of your endpoints are hit with mass ransomware, you could actually roll it back. I watched a demo of them do that, and it was pretty sweet."
"The solution has a good management interface."
"The platform is straightforward to install."
 

Cons

"I would like to see some additional features related to email protection included."
"The product's pricing could be better."
"The connection to the internet has not performed as expected."
"It tends to do 99.9% of things. The only thing I'd like is single sign-on authentication into their cloud platform so that my users can be properly authenticated against it."
"The dashboard could use some significant improvement, just making it more useful with more information. It has a limited amount of information right now. It is customizable, but I'd love to see a better out-of-box dashboard."
"The product's pricing needs improvement. They could provide more discounts. Additionally, the dashboard and control panel could be enhanced."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks can improve mobile integration to allow access to the console."
"The solution lags to the real-time scenarios here and there."
"The EPP solution lacks the sophisticated artificial intelligence required for automating reports and letting you know about things in real-time. It stops a suspicious activity in real-time, but it doesn't let you know in real-time. You have to look at a report, and then you find out that something is wrong. You have to manually kick off a scan. With the Advanced EDR solutions, Malwarebytes has the ability to alert you in real-time, but they still don't do automatic remediation or quarantining of devices. That is something that you still have to do manually. So, the endpoint protection piece, which is just like their basic endpoint protection, lacks AI. For the advanced detection and response piece, there is an add-on that comes with it, but it still doesn't go far enough in terms of automatic remediation of viruses. It won't separate that virus from your network if something happens. You have to manually go there and do it."
"Overall, I haven't found any ways the solution lacks in features or usability."
"I would like to see a little more detail in the log. So, when an event occurs, I'd like to know not just when it happened and on what device, but what activity was taking place on the machine at the time so that we can drill down. If we get a false positive, we have to do a lot of research and go back and forth with our end-users to know why it was a false positive. So, having a little more detail around detections and events would probably be my most asked feature."
"The free version is effective, however, the paid version is pricey compared to it."
"We have noticed that when the solution is doing the scanning, all the scanning activities make the device heavier. It slows down your machine."
"The product has major problems in almost every facet of setup and use including setup, configuration, lack of functionality, lack of stability, false positives, questionable reporting, inability to protect from randsomeware and poor technical support and development."
"The product could be improved in blocking malicious traffic, such as communication with known malicious IP addresses."
"The product is a little bit more expensive than the other brands."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is present, but when compared to other competitive products, I would say it is not less expensive; however, when all of the other added values are considered, the price is reasonable."
"The cost of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is $55 to $90 USD per endpoint per month."
"Cortex XDR's pricing is ok."
"It has a yearly renewal."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is an expensive solution."
"Cortex XDR’s pricing is very reasonable."
"This is an expensive solution."
"It has a higher cost than other solutions, like CrowdStrike or Microsoft’s EDR tools, but it reduces the cost of our operations because it’s a new generation antivirus tool."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the product's pricing a seven."
"I believe the retail price is between $40 and $50 per copy."
"Its licensing is annual. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee."
"The licensing is per seat, with clients being a little less expensive than servers. If we need more licenses, we can accomplish that within a day. As Malwarebytes adds new features to their product, such as DNS filtering and a patching module, they want to charge us more even though we're a premium user, which isn't ideal."
"It is really expensive. We've got between 30 and 40 licenses every year, and for the number of licenses that we have, we're finding that Malwarebytes on average costs between $900 and $1,000 more per year than comparable options. We're paying about $3,300 per year for these licenses. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee."
"The platform pricing is competitive with other antivirus products."
"We expect to pay $1,000 USD a month, depending on the number of users."
"Malwarebytes is a cost-effective product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
University
12%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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. 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...
What do you like most about Malwarebytes?
Ten times a day, improved signatures will be downloaded, so it is very up-to-date in terms of malware experience.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Malwarebytes?
I really hate the automatic rebilling without officially confirming it with me. It's an annoyance and they should at least confirm with me, like a month before they bill me.
What needs improvement with Malwarebytes?
It takes up too much space when it's trying to run in the background.
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Knutson Construction
Find out what your peers are saying about Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. Malwarebytes and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.