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Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Sentinel comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.7
Cortex XDR secures data, reduces malware, lowers costs, and replaces systems, enhancing user satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Sentiment score
7.3
Microsoft Sentinel enhances ROI with improved security, cost savings, automation, and faster threat detection, benefiting organizations efficiently.
They appreciate the rich telemetry data from the solution, as it provides in-depth threat identification.
If a customer is already using Microsoft’s ecosystem, the ROI can be positive due to seamless integration.
We attribute our growth to Sentinel.
From a risk perspective, it's about mitigating risk, and as mentioned earlier, we haven't missed many things since we've had the offering in market—only a couple of minor incidents.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
Cortex XDR support is praised for responsiveness but criticized for delayed responses and knowledge gaps in certain regions.
Sentiment score
6.7
Microsoft Sentinel support is responsive and helpful, though basic support can be slow, with some preferring community resources.
Every vendor has similar support; it depends on how the case is handled and raised.
Their support is efficient and responsive whenever I raise a ticket through my portal.
Their solutions' integration simplifies resolving issues compared to those caused by third-party products.
Working with a Sentinel engineer helped us tune settings effectively.
When my team needs to escalate issues to Microsoft, especially for Microsoft Sentinel, the response is fast through their French entity.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Cortex XDR offers scalable, efficient data handling across Linux, Mac, and Windows, praised for simplifying large enterprise management.
Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Sentinel offers scalable, adaptable security solutions using Azure, ideal for various organizations with its flexible and updated features.
Office 365 and Exchange are running on it, covering about 35,000 users efficiently.
As our organization uses Microsoft Azure and Defender, everything grows together, and we can integrate various features seamlessly.
Being a SaaS solution, the scalability of Microsoft Sentinel is robust.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Cortex XDR is praised for its stability and reliability, with minor issues noted but generally offering seamless protection.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Sentinel is highly reliable, with 99.9%+ availability and occasional minor issues, maintaining stability across diverse environments.
Cortex XDR is stable, offering high quality and reliable performance.
So far, we have not experienced any issues, and it has been stable from the beginning.
In the past two years, our team hasn't encountered any issues with the stability of Microsoft Sentinel from an operations perspective.
I need to be aware of deprecated connectors as they may disconnect, but the data continues to be sent with a need for quick adaptation.
 

Room For Improvement

Cortex XDR struggles with integration, high memory, false positives, limited features, complex setup, and lacks enhanced support and customization.
Microsoft Sentinel users seek better integration, user-friendliness, documentation, AI capabilities, and customizable features with improved performance and pricing.
The inclusion of this feature would allow the application of DLP policies alongside antivirus policies via a single agent and console, making it more competitive as other OEMs often offer DLP solutions as part of their antivirus products.
Cortex XDR could improve its sales support team, including better commission structures and referral programs.
We have some tools, such as our off-site Meraki firewalls, that have not fully integrated with Sentinel.
Currently, we are happy to have a way in the middle with not so much cost, but it would be nice to have the ability to enhance the automation of workflows based on learned incidents.
There are complexities in calculating the right pricing tier for different customers, which makes it difficult for me as a consultant during upfront pricing.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers view Cortex XDR as expensive yet flexible, offering scalable licensing with varying costs based on features and users.
Microsoft Sentinel's usage-based pricing offers strong value with extensive integration, but cost unpredictability concerns some users.
Cortex XDR is perceived as expensive by some customers, yet offers dynamic pricing.
Compared to competitors such as CrowdStrike and Sophos, the pricing of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is similar to CrowdStrike but more expensive than Sophos.
Microsoft Sentinel offers more capabilities than Bastion, with a more intuitive experience.
Setting up the right cost model for customers is intricate, requiring careful consideration of various components and licensing tiers.
The ingestion costs for the data analytics is usually the highest cost.
 

Valuable Features

Cortex XDR excels in cybersecurity with advanced detection, ease of use, and integration, offering scalable, efficient threat management.
Microsoft Sentinel provides AI-driven automation, robust threat detection, scalability, and seamless integration for comprehensive security operations within the Microsoft ecosystem.
It incorporates AI for normal behavior detection, distinguishing unusual operations.
The product provides automation responses in case of a threat attack, severity assessments, centralized manageability, and comprehensive compliance features, resulting in reduced costs.
Microsoft Sentinel's ability to correlate data from multiple sources and its detection capabilities are essential.
Microsoft Sentinel has improved cost efficiency, which is one of the key areas we're able to win business against the ability to have threat intelligence.
Microsoft Sentinel's ability to correlate data from multiple sources enhances our threat detection capabilities beyond what is a simple data lake solution by filtering out the noise and consolidating the signal down to a meaningful level that is easier to investigate and see.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Ranking in AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (7th), Ransomware Protection (1st)
Microsoft Sentinel
Ranking in AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 10.7%, down from 12.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 9.3%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

NiteshSharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Automated threat response and behavioral control improve security measures
I recommend adding a data loss prevention (DLP ( /categories/data-loss-prevention-dlp )) solution to Cortex XDR ( /categories/extended-detection-and-response-xdr ) by Palo Alto Networks. The inclusion of this feature would allow the application of DLP ( /categories/data-loss-prevention-dlp ) policies alongside antivirus policies via a single agent and console, making it more competitive as other OEMs often offer DLP solutions as part of their antivirus products. Additionally, multi-tenancy and multi-cloud features are not available and should be considered for inclusion.
Ivan Angelov - PeerSpot reviewer
Threat detection and response capabilities enhance investigation processes
My security team has been using Microsoft Sentinel for around two years. We also have Bastion and SolarWinds as part of our monitoring tools. We use a three-way tool, alongside Microsoft Sentinel, in our environment The most valuable features for us include threat collection, threat detection,…
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

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...
Is there a common threat intelligence tool that aggregates multiple threat intelligence sources?
Yes, Azure Sentinel is a SIEM on the Cloud. Multiple data sources can be uploaded and analyzed with Azure Sentinel and its Threat Hunting functionality with AI available as templates or customized ...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
Which is better - Azure Sentinel or AWS Security Hub?
We like that Azure Sentinel does not require as much maintenance as legacy SIEMs that are on-premises. Azure Sentinel is auto-scaling - you will not have to worry about performance impact, you will...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Azure Sentinel
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. Microsoft Sentinel and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
856,874 professionals have used our research since 2012.