JFrog Xray vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

JFrog and Microsoft are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. JFrog is ranked #37 with an average rating of 7.0, while Microsoft is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.1. JFrog holds a 1.5% mindshare in VM, compared to Microsoft’s 3.9% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of JFrog users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

JFrog Xray and Microsoft Defender for Cloud both operate in the security and vulnerability management sector. Microsoft Defender for Cloud often takes the lead because of its expansive feature set, which justifies its higher pricing, notwithstanding JFrog Xray's benefits in pricing and support.

Features: JFrog Xray integrates with Artifactory for seamless scanning and vulnerability detection, offers deep scanning in Docker files, and manages dependency files without internet access. Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides robust security analytics, detailed threat intelligence for cloud infrastructures, and compliance policies and alerts for multi-cloud environments.

Room for Improvement: JFrog Xray could enhance its deployment flexibility and may face challenges in reducing configuration complexities. It could also improve on customer support consistency. Microsoft Defender for Cloud can improve user experience for non-Microsoft platforms, streamline multi-subscription security management, and enhance micro-segmentation configuration, which currently requires detailed manual effort.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers a streamlined deployment, especially for those entrenched in the Microsoft ecosystem, with strong guidance during setup. JFrog Xray provides multiple deployment options suited for varied development environments, though it may demand more manual configuration. While support services are dependable, they might differ based on specific needs.

Pricing and ROI: JFrog Xray is frequently noted for being cost-effective, appealing to environments focused on DevOps and CI/CD pipelines due to lower initial setup costs. In comparison, Microsoft Defender for Cloud is at a higher pricing tier, reflecting its extensive feature suite valuable for large-scale enterprise deployments, offering significant ROI with its comprehensive security capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed JFrog Xray vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

JFrog Xray vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

January 2026

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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

Zafran Security

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 1.1%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of JFrog Xray is 1.5%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 3.9%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud	3.9%
Zafran Security	1.1%
JFrog Xray	1.5%
Other	93.5%

Vulnerability Management

Featured Reviews

Reviewer6233

Works at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

Has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal

While Zafran Security is already a powerful tool, there are areas where it could be further improved to provide even greater value. One key area for enhancement is the searching capabilities within its vulnerabilities module. By incorporating the ability to create Boolean searches, users would gain the ability to apply more complex filters and customize their search criteria. This would greatly enhance the precision and efficiency with which security teams can identify and prioritize vulnerabilities. Having such tailored search capabilities would save time and resources by narrowing down vast lists of vulnerabilities to those that meet specific parameters relevant to our unique risk environment. Additionally, integrating more robust reporting and visualization tools would be advantageous. Enhanced dashboards that offer customizable visual representations of risk configurations and threat landscapes would facilitate better communication with stakeholders, making it easier to explain vulnerabilities and the rationale behind certain security measures. This would also aid in demonstrating the improvements and value derived from existing security investments to leadership and non-technical team members.

Read full review

Anand Nanwana

DevOps Engineer at Syvora

Offers flexibility across clouds and easy credential management while interface improvements are needed

For JFrog Xray, the Artifactory and package repositories are valuable features. There are many benefits from JFrog Xray. For example, with other registries such as ECR, we can use the images only in the AWS cloud. With JFrog, we can use this registry from any cloud or work locally as well. JFrog can support multiple packages, such as NuGet package, pip, and other technologies. It can be used for Terraform as well. The credential management is very easy in JFrog. For instance, when using GitHub action as a CI/CD tool, I just need to create a token and set up JFrog CLI there and give access to the repository. With multiple repositories, I can generate a token for a specific repository, add that token in the GitHub secret, fetch from the CI/CD, run the command JFrog CLI, and authenticate through the token. Then we can push the images into JFrog.

Read full review

David Birhange

Director, Cloud and Modern Workplace at Informanix Technology Group

Brings together cloud security insights through a unified view and supports agentless protection for virtual machines

Copilot and similar features are already being used, though not necessarily for Microsoft Defender for Cloud specifically. We are trying to get more experience before rolling out most of Microsoft Defender for Cloud's AI capabilities. This is definitely on our to-do list, and the priority is urgent as we seek to learn more about these capabilities. The GenAI threat protection from Microsoft Defender for Cloud has not been enabled yet. There are many unknowns with AI applications. AI agents will operate while you're not present, whether you are sleeping or awake, and it's unclear whether there would be any exfiltration of data or how data is being managed. Microsoft Purview is being used extensively, and there is significant development going on with DSPM that will be rolled out to address security concerns. Data labeling and proper demarcation for sensitivity of data before it is received are being actively pursued.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"With Zafran Security, it integrates with your security controls, allowing you to take that risk score and reduce it based on the controls in place or increase the risk based on different factors, such as if the issue is internet reachable or if there's an exploit in the wild."

"Overall, we have seen about eighty-seven percent reduction of the number of vulnerabilities that require urgency to remediate, specifically the number of criticals."

"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."

"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."

"Zafran is an excellent tool."

"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."

"The most valuable features of JFrog Xray are its curation capabilities, its native integration with Artifactory, scanning for vulnerabilities, and license compliance features."

"With JFrog, we can use this registry from any cloud or work locally as well, and it can support multiple packages such as NuGet, pip, and other technologies including Terraform, making credential management very easy."

"JFrog Xray shows us a list of vulnerabilities that can impact our code."

"The most valuable feature of JFrog Xray is the display of the entire internal dependencies hierarchy."

"If multiple dependencies and vulnerabilities are found in a project, JFrog Xray is intelligent enough to tell you which vulnerability to target first."

"I would say that this solution has helped our organization by allowing us to automate a lot of the processes."

"The most valuable features of JFrog Xray are its curation capabilities, its native integration with Artifactory, scanning for vulnerabilities, and license compliance features."

"The solution is stable and reliable."

More JFrog Xray pros

"We saw improvement from a regulatory compliance perspective due to having a single dashboard."

"The most valuable features are the security recommendations provided by Defender for Cloud."

"Defender for Cloud provides a complete DevOps security package for cloud services."

"The solution's coordinated detection and response across devices and identities is impressive because it is complete."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is stable and reliable as advertised."

"The solution is up-to-date with the latest updates and identified threats."

"We can create alerts that trigger if there is any malicious activity happening in the workflow and these alerts can be retrieved using the query language."

"There is no better tool found to protect workloads in Azure than Microsoft Defender for Cloud."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

Cons

"Initially, we were somewhat concerned about the scalability of Zafran due to our large asset count and the substantial amount of information we needed to process."

"The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvements."

"I think the ability to have some enhanced reporting capabilities is something they can improve on, as they have good reports but we have asked for some specific reporting enhancements."

"The speed of JFrog Xray should improve. Other solutions have better performance."

"Reporting is crucial, but it is lacking in the current tool. Every organization seeks specific data points rather than general information. Therefore, we require customized reports from the Xray tool."

"JFrog Xray does not have a dashboard."

"I think that the user interface should be expanded to provide customers with a better dashboard for reviewing their feedback regarding their images and the vulnerabilities that are associated with the images."

"JFrog Xray's documentation and error logging could be improved."

"The UI of JFrog Xray could be improved. There is a dialogue box in the Xray section that doesn't always work properly."

"The out-of-the-box PostgreSQL provided is not stable, which is why we are considering enterprise support."

"X-ray needs improvement in supporting more than one database, as it currently only supports PostgreSQL."

More JFrog Xray cons

"With the new Copilot functionality available everywhere, it is challenging to pinpoint areas for improvement. If I put in a lot of thought, I might identify things, but right now, nothing significant pops into my mind, but there is always room for more transparency, especially in pricing."

"I rate Microsoft support five out of 10. It gets better once you're escalated past the first and second levels. It's difficult to get the necessary support when tickets are first opened."

"The customer service at Microsoft has room for improvement. The first line of support is not technically adept and often requires engaging higher-level technicians to resolve issues."

"Microsoft Graph needs improvement."

"The solution's portal is very easy to use, but there's one key component that is missing when it comes to managing policies. For example, if I've onboarded my server and I need to specify antivirus policies, there's no option to do that on the portal. I will have to go to Intune to deploy them. That is one main aspect that is missing and it's worrisome."

"For Kubernetes, I was using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). To see that whatever is getting deployed into AKS goes through the correct checks and balances in terms of affinities and other similar aspects and follows all the policies, we had to use a product called Stackrox. At a granular level, the built-in policies were good for Kubernetes, but to protect our containers from a coding point of view, we had to use a few other products. For example, from a programming point of view, we were using Checkmarx for static code analysis. For CIS compliance, there are no CIS benchmarks for AKS. So, we had to use other plugins to see that the CIS benchmarks are compliant. There are CIS benchmarks for Kubernetes on AWS and GCP, but there are no CIS benchmarks for AKS. So, Azure Security Center fell short from the regulatory compliance point of view, and we had to use one more product. We ended up with two different dashboards. We had Azure Security Center, and we had Stackrox that had its own dashboard. The operations team and the security team had to look at two dashboards, and they couldn't get an integrated piece. That's a drawback of Azure Security Center. Azure Security Center should provide APIs so that we can integrate its dashboard within other enterprise dashboards, such as the PowerBI dashboard. We couldn't get through these aspects, and we ended up giving Reader security permission to too many people, which was okay to some extent, but when we had to administer the users for the Stackrox portal and Azure Security Center, it became painful."

"There is no perfect product in the world and there are always features that can be added."

"Support needs to be highly responsive, especially in large enterprise environments."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The cost of the license is based on the subscriptions that you have."

"Pricing is a consideration, but we strive to keep costs low by enabling only necessary services."

"The price of the solution is good for the features we receive and there is an additional cost for Microsoft premier support. However, some of my potential customers have found it to be expensive and have gone on to choose another solution."

"Its pricing is a little bit high in terms of Azure Security Center, but the good thing is that we don't need to maintain and deploy it. So, while the pricing is high, it is native to Azure which is why we prefer using this tool."

"The tool is pretty expensive."

"The pricing is very difficult because every type of Defender for Cloud has its own metrics and pricing. If you have Cloud for Key Vault, the pricing is different than it is for storage. Every type has its own pricing list and rules."

"The cost is fair. There aren't any costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."

"The pricing model for most plans is generally good, but the cost of the new Defender for Storage plan is high and should be revisited, as it could lead to disabling desirable security features due to cost."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Outsourcing Company

Financial Services Firm

25%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	1
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	27
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	49

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zafran Security?

Since we stood Zafran Security up in our private cloud, we handle the maintenance on our side. As we opted not to use...

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What needs improvement with Zafran Security?

In terms of areas for improvement, Zafran Security is doing a really great job as a new and emerging company. Oftenti...

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What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?

My use cases for Zafran Security revolve around two primary areas. One is around vulnerability management and priorit...

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What do you like most about JFrog Xray?

JFrog Xray shows us a list of vulnerabilities that can impact our code.

See all answers

What needs improvement with JFrog Xray?

I would assess the integration of JFrog Xray with CI/CD tools as the weak point. You have two means to do that: one i...

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What is your primary use case for JFrog Xray?

For JFrog Xray product, you can use it for two main goals: compliance and security. You can use it to check if your l...

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How is Prisma Cloud vs Azure Security Center for security?

Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening acros...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Microsoft Defender for Cloud was pretty straightforward. We...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

Microsoft Defender for Cloud can be improved. An additional feature that should be included in the next release is Ze...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 8% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs Zafran Security

Compared 6% of the time

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Trivy vs JFrog Xray

Compared 11% of the time

Black Duck SCA vs JFrog Xray

Compared 9% of the time

Wiz vs JFrog Xray

Compared 6% of the time

Mend.io vs JFrog Xray

Compared 5% of the time

Chainguard vs JFrog Xray

Compared 2% of the time

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AWS GuardDuty vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 36% of the time

Wiz vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 8% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 3% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Zafran Security

January 2026

Download Zafran Security product report

Buyer's Guide

JFrog Xray

January 2026

Download JFrog Xray product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

January 2026

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

Also Known As

No data available

JFrog Security Essentials

Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Zafran Security

Demo not available

JFrog

Microsoft

Overview

Zafran Security integrates with existing security tools to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities effectively, proving that most critical vulnerabilities are not exploitable, optimizing threat management.

Zafran Security introduces an innovative operating model for managing security threats and vulnerabilities. By leveraging the threat exposure management platform, it pinpoints and prioritizes exploitable vulnerabilities, reducing risk through immediate remediation. This platform enhances your hybrid cloud security by normalizing vulnerability signals and integrating specific IT context data, such as CVE runtime presence and internet asset reachability, into its analysis. No longer reliant on patch windows, Zafran Security allows you to manage risks actively.

What are the key features of Zafran Security?

Threat Exposure Management: Utilizes existing tools to prioritize vulnerabilities and manage threats.
Integrative Analysis: Combines security data with IT context for precise vulnerability management.
Real-time Risk Reduction: Enables immediate risk management without waiting for patches.
Hybrid Cloud Compatibility: Functions across diverse cloud environments for comprehensive security.

What benefits can users expect from Zafran Security?

Improved Security: Enhances protection by efficiently identifying and mitigating risks.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces unnecessary patching expenses by confirming non-exploitable vulnerabilities.
Time Savings: Frees developers to focus on root causes by handling immediate threats.
Comprehensive Insight: Offers a holistic view of security threats and vulnerabilities.

In industries where security is paramount, such as finance and healthcare, Zafran Security provides invaluable protection by ensuring that only exploitable vulnerabilities are addressed. It allows entities to maintain robust security measures while allocating resources efficiently, fitting seamlessly into existing security strategies.

Zafran Security

JFrog is on a mission to enable continuous updates through Liquid Software, empowering developers to code high-quality applications that securely flow to end-users with zero downtime. The world’s top brands such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Uber, VMware, and Spotify are among the 4500 companies that already depend on JFrog to manage binaries for their mission-critical applications. JFrog is a privately-held, global company, and is a proud sponsor of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation [CNCF].

If you are a team player and you care and you play to WIN, we have just the job you're looking for.

As we say at JFrog: "Once You Leap Forward You Won't Go Back!"

JFrog

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a comprehensive security solution that provides advanced threat protection for cloud workloads. It offers real-time visibility into the security posture of cloud environments, enabling organizations to quickly identify and respond to potential threats. With its advanced machine learning capabilities, Microsoft Defender for Cloud can detect and block sophisticated attacks, including zero-day exploits and fileless malware.

The solution also provides automated remediation capabilities, allowing security teams to quickly and easily respond to security incidents. With Microsoft Defender for Cloud, organizations can ensure the security and compliance of their cloud workloads, while reducing the burden on their security teams.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

google, amazon, cisco, netflix, oracle, vmware, facebook

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.

Buyer's Guide

JFrog Xray vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

January 2026

Free Report: JFrog Xray vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Find out what your peers are saying about JFrog Xray vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.

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