No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Forescout Platform vs Forescout XDR comparison

Sponsored
 

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...
Sponsored
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (6th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Forescout Platform
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
19th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (6th), IoT Security (4th), Endpoint Compliance (2nd)
Forescout XDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
47th
Average Rating
6.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
SOC as a Service (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 4.6%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Forescout Platform is 1.2%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Forescout XDR is 0.5%, up from 0.1% 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 Networks4.6%
Forescout Platform1.2%
Forescout XDR0.5%
Other93.7%
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.
AshishKumar Rai - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Comprehensive visibility has strengthened endpoint control and automated threat response across networks
When it comes to improving Forescout Platform, I have faced some issues recently, particularly with the switch integration part. When integrating a switch, it asks for the vendor type, and often it does not match. For example, one series of HP switches may not be found in that vendor list. This leads to frustration because you have to check again with different HP models, and once you integrate a switch, you cannot edit the vendor list without removing it. Other issues are being worked on, particularly related to switch integration. I believe they will be fixed in the next upgrade or patch fix. There are no major issues, but the configuration changes needed for the switch model are necessary, and I think it would help if during integration, an admin user could check the password or credential used, as they currently cannot see the password after it is entered and saved.
Utpal Sinha - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Network Engineer at Momentive
Provides efficient network access control, but its support services need improvement
We use the product for network access control The product has valuable features for cloud IoT device enhancement, intelligent threat detection, etc. We can easily quarantine any computer if it gets hacked. The product's support services have limitations. We have to connect with their senior…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is easy to use and does not consume a lot of hardware resources."
"Implementing Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks has had a significant impact on my security analyst workload because it becomes much easier."
"If the user leaves our premises or network, Palo Alto Traps will still be on that endpoint and will still apply our policies."
"The protection offered by this product is good, as is the endpoint reporting."
"Cortex is the best tool for endpoint detection, and I have used it to verify hashes or domains to identify malicious activity, trigger playbooks that automate and gather endpoint logs, block malicious processes, and update incident tickets, showcasing end-to-end processes with automation in investigation and reducing the analysis workflow."
"The solution is a new generation XDR that has a lot of artificial intelligence modules."
"The level of security I get for my endpoints and servers is extremely valuable."
"We use Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks for its ability to detect based on behavior rather than simple virus scan to prevent malicious activities."
"The solution offers very good management; it allows for good detection of all the vendor products we have on-site."
"The initial setup is straightforward; we had to implement the solution in a short timeframe and we managed to do it in one month as a managed service, and Forescout Platform is easy to deploy as the fastest NAC solution that you can deploy in a large environment."
"Forescout CounterACT has allowed us to better open our access and control wireless access globally from our HQ. This allows us to monitor the network access for every office globally. This has improved overall security, reducing risk and opening up the opportunity to provide greater end user flexibility."
"This is clearly the best product for the NAC use cases in this field for Forescout."
"The virtual firewall available on this solution is great and assists us in securing our servers, and the threat prevention feature provides complete visibility, making it very helpful in detecting, blocking, and monitoring heavy scanning on the system."
"This product allows monitoring and control of the PC fleet across the company."
"The most valuable feature for us is the visibility into all connected devices."
"Without installing agents or without doing manual work, you can automatically know the inventory of your devices in your organization."
"The product has valuable features for cloud IoT device enhancement, intelligent threat detection, etc."
 

Cons

"Dashboards do not allow everyone to see what's happening."
"Although I would say this product is highly-rated, it could probably do more because nothing does everything that you want."
"A better pricing plan would make this product more competitive."
"The solution should enhance the ADR and reporting."
"Cortex XDR could improve its sales support team, including better commission structures and referral programs."
"Every 30 or 40 days, there's a new version and we need to go and make sure our customer's laptops are upgraded."
"It's more focused on network communication. If a customer wants to increase the level of protection and start working with documents, it's impossible to integrate these features into the system. It's more of a communication-oriented system than a content security-oriented system."
"If you compare it to SentinelOne, which has more functionalities and detection capabilities on an open platform, the pricing on SentinelOne is far more reasonable and cheaper than Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks."
"More detailed analysis during the authentication process, especially for troubleshooting access issues. We have found that troubleshooting RADIUS controls is quite arduous, as it is today. A trace function could easily resolve this by providing a means by which access issues from a certificate to passwords or accounts could easily be identified and remediated."
"Sometimes the switch management interface doesn't display accurate information which relates to false positives on individual switch access errors."
"Forescout Platform would benefit from using AI. Everything has to be set up manually, but AI can learn and suggest rules over time. It also lacks visualization, and some interface configurations need improvement. The visualization seems a couple of years behind compared to other products."
"Initially, the implementation of the Forescout Platform took some time to figure out. The reason is we are a manufacturing unit and we have certain silos that are insulated areas where certain systems will not connect to the internet or to the LAN. Since there are many parts of it, we have to have an inclusive view of all those systems. It took a while for us to initially implement, but after a few months, everything worked well."
"Multitenancy should be included in the next version so it could be used as a managed service provider."
"As a user, if I am using a laptop that is Wi-Fi connected, Forescout identifies my port connectivity as one user license, and if I take that same laptop with the same username to a wired network, which is also the same network that is used for the Wi-Fi connection, Forescout detects it as a separate license."
"The initial setup was complex, but that was due to the nature of the network architecture."
"The patch management ability of the solution needs to be re-examined."
"The product is more expensive than other vendors in terms of features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution has one subscription for endpoint protection and one subscription for detection and response. The two licenses combined give you the BRO version."
"In terms of the cost Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is very expensive because we are a Mexican company and when you translate dollars to pesos the cost is very high. The solution is very expensive for Mexican companies. I understand that they have international prices, but I do not think it offsets the price enough for many companies in countries, such as Mexico. The amount it is reduced is not a massive percentage."
"If one wishes to work with another team or large number of users at a future point, he must purchase a license for them."
"This is an expensive solution."
"Cortex XDR's pricing is ok."
"The price is on the higher side, but it's okay."
"The price of the solution could be reduced. I have customers that have voiced that the solution is good for the value but if I want to sell more of the solution the price reduction would help."
"The price was fine."
"We have a very clear licensing model for business. I don't have to have a Ph.D. to be able to understand the licensing model as you might need for other solutions. If I know exactly what we want, it can tell you which license you need. The solution is easy for purchasing, ordering, and ease of deployment as well."
"5,000 user licenses will cost you between seven and eight million dollars, compared to 20 million for Aruba."
"The fact that we were allowed to spin up as many servers as we had need of to support our geographic requirements while paying for licensing as an enterprise truly set Forescout apart from the crowd and improved the way we could design our access."
"The price of the solution is reasonable. We have paid for the license for five years. We have integration with Symantec AV for orchestration, and we have an additional license."
"I would rate Forescout Platform's pricing as four out of five."
"Forescout Platform is on the expensive side."
"They base the license on the number of devices, which is quite misleading."
"Time savings in finding rogue devices as well as identifying potentially unwanted devices on the network has saved the organization time and money."
"The product is more expensive than other vendors in terms of features."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions are best for your needs.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise52
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise45
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 advice do you have for others considering Forescout Platform?
Forescout is a very powerful NAC product that does not rely on port level configuration. It can detect and block unau...
What advice do you have for others considering Forescout Platform?
I would rate the Forescout Device and Visibility Control Platform at a six out of ten.
What advice do you have for others considering Forescout Platform?
I recommend doing a compression demo. If people use it, they will buy it. So they have to see the product in place. T...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Forescout Platform, CounterACT for Endpoint Compliance, ForeScout CounterACT
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
NHS Sussex, SAP, SEGA, Vistaprint, Miami Children's Hospital, Pioneer Investments, New York Law School, OmnicomGroup, Meritrust
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, TrendAI and others in Extended Detection and Response (XDR). Updated: June 2026.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.