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Lookout vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

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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...
Sponsored
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Lookout
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
52nd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) (26th), Mobile Threat Defense (3rd)
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
212
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (2nd), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (5th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.5%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lookout is 0.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 5.9%, down from 10.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint5.9%
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.5%
Lookout0.8%
Other89.8%
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
 

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.
DB
IT Manager at NHS Trust
Enhanced mobile security with visibility into app and website usage, but installation challenges remain
We use Lookout for mobile devices, such as phones It has reduced our risk around mobile devices. I like the security features and being able to see what apps and websites people are using. There is nothing we have come across that we've desired. We have been using Lookout for one year. The…
Robert Arbuckle - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Analyst III at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Automatically isolates threats and integrates with logging to reduce response time
Overall, I would evaluate the Microsoft support level that I receive at probably about a seven, but that depends on the day. It has been spotty. We have had issues where the urgency level of the Microsoft support is not as high as ours, especially during a data breach or potential data breach situation. We have had issues with some of the offshore support being lackluster. One specific thing that comes to mind is we were on a support call with our CISO on the call, and the Microsoft agent, who did not actually work for Microsoft, is one of the vendors that Microsoft uses for support, said, "Just to set expectations, my lunch break is in an hour and I am going to go away then." For us, it was already ten o'clock at night and we had been working on this for a couple of hours, trying to get a security engineer on with us. For him to tell us that he was going to go away and have lunch, it was, "Okay, but go find somebody else if you need to." It was just the lackluster approach, and it seemed like he did not really care. We seem to get a lot of this when we get non-Microsoft support. I can identify areas for improvement with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, as it is kind of a convoluted mess to try to take care of false positives. Especially when they have been identified as false positives but they keep going off over and over again. It is great for my pocketbook because it generates a lot of on-call action, but I would really prefer more sleep at two o'clock in the morning than dealing with false positives. I would say that the unified portal for managing Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is suitable for both teams as they are all in there. It would be great if they would stop moving things around and renaming things, which makes sense. The new XDR portal is pretty nice. Being able to have it central again inside of the regular Security Center without having to open up two windows is helpful. Overall, I think it is pretty good. There is always going to be something that could be improved, such as alerting and the ability to modify alerts would be a little bit helpful to have. Being able to add more data into the alerts and turn off alerts that are not as useful would be beneficial. It is hard to say what the quantitative impact the security exposure management feature has had on our company's security, because a lot of it is kind of subjective. I think we are sitting at around a fifty percent score still, and a lot of it is just kind of unusual circumstances that we cannot really implement without breaking the organization.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."
"My advice for anybody who is considering Cortex XDR is that it is a complete solution, and has very good features."
"I recognize that Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is one of the best products in its category regarding capabilities."
"The most valuable for us is the correlation feature."
"The protection offered by this product is good, as is the endpoint reporting."
"WildFire AI is the best option for this product."
"The live terminal is probably the best thing ever. It gives you the access to get straight onto any machine."
"It has absolutely improved the way our organization functions, we are more secure, it is giving us more peace of mind, and it has found malicious activity happening on our endpoints that probably would not have been detected if we didn't have it."
"The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade."
"We have not had any issues with bugs or breakdowns."
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"The performance of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has been good."
"The best part is that it is built into Windows, whether it is a server base or a desktop base, which gives more control over the operating system. Because Defender, the operating system, and the Office solution are by Microsoft, everything is working like hand-in-glove. Its administrative overhead is less because a desktop user has already got some experience of how to handle a Microsoft Defender notification or administer it."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint are the ease of use and it was available within the operating system."
"It is stable and very easy to use."
"The pros of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint are that it's simple to deploy and has all the required functionality."
"Defender is integrated into the operating system. It's integrated with everything. You don't have to spend time analyzing what you have to do to be sure that the integration is okay between the security tool and all the other apps. This, from my point of view, is the main advantage."
"The stability is great, it just keeps getting more and more stable and as it matures it's going to be very good."
"It's free. There is no additional cost. It's part of Windows."
 

Cons

"The solution should force customers to integrate with network traffic to see the full benefits of XDR."
"The solution lacks real-time, on-demand antivirus."
"Basically, they don't provide customer support tools just to investigate the logs."
"Data privacy is a matter of concern. You have to be careful with data privacy, it can be sensitive and Cortex can have most of your access."
"There is also no recovery feature; if some endpoint is under attack there must be the possibility of recovering it or restoring it to a normal state."
"I would like to see some additional features related to email protection included."
"The GUI could be improved. It's a little bit cumbersome. It could be more user-friendly."
"It is not very strong in terms of endpoint management. It should have additional features like DLP, encryption, or advanced device control. Currently, Cortex is good in terms of the security of the endpoints, but it is not as good as other vendors in terms of the management of the endpoint."
"We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now."
"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products."
"The initial setup requires a little bit of experience with configuration."
"The user interface could use some improvement."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint does not offer default templates for alerts, requiring us to configure everything ourselves to avoid numerous false positives."
"The log searches for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint are pretty difficult to navigate. It needs a better UI or more intuitive search and filter mechanisms to make it easy to get through and filter through all the data logs."
"What I've heard from the customers is that the anti-malware engine is not up to date, so sometimes it may not detect such threats."
"There is no behavior analytics for devices and endpoints. There is no behavior-based protection."
"The solution has minimal customization options, especially compared to Mandiant, so we want to see more scope for customization. A single portal for customization would also be a welcome addition."
"The reporting in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint should improve. The solution has limited features."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint does not provide much flexibility in terms of threats."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't recall what the cost was, but it wasn't really that expensive."
"The pricing is okay, although direct support can be expensive."
"Very costly product."
"If one wishes to work with another team or large number of users at a future point, he must purchase a license for them."
"I did PoCs on products called Cylance and CrowdStrike. Although, I consider these products and they were also good, when it come to cost and budgetary factors, Traps has been proven to be better than the other two products. It is quite cost-effective and delivers all the entire solution which we require."
"We didn't have to pay any additional fee for the cloud instance. It just came with the renewal, which was nice."
"I feel it is fairly priced."
"I don't have any issues with the pricing. We are satisfied with the price."
"The pricing is fair; it's comparable to our previous solution, and we carried out multiple POCs and POVs (proof of value). The product is worth the money we pay for it."
"Lookout is definitely on the lower end when it comes to price point and that seems to be the only differentiator. The technology is in place in this space and it's really about who is coming in at the better price point now."
"The cost is high for E5 licenses, but if we go with the E3 license, most of the features are not covered."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint can be costly as a standalone solution."
"Because Microsoft Defender comes as an add-on, it can be a bit expensive if you're trying to buying it separately. Another option is to upgrade, but the enterprise licenses for Microsoft can also be quite a bit pricey. Overall, the cost of Microsoft Defender compared to that of other endpoint detection solutions is slightly higher."
"Currently, for us, Windows Defender is free with the purchase of Windows Server. Pricing is an important point for us when we are looking at the competitors of this solution. If we choose to go with another vendor, we will have to pay some license fees."
"It is so expensive. It isn't cheaper than McAfee or other solutions."
"There is an annual license required."
"The price is higher than others because it is doing more than what the others are doing."
"It is within the same range as other products. It is not too expensive, and it is also not cheap. Its price can be better, but, well, it is Microsoft."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

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 Business2
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise45
Large Enterprise96
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Lookout?
The pricing is a little expensive. We are currently looking at comparisons with other solutions, including Umbrella.
What needs improvement with Lookout?
There is nothing we have come across that we've desired.
What is your primary use case for Lookout?
We use Lookout for mobile devices, such as phones.
Which offers better endpoint security - Symantec or Microsoft Defender?
We use Symantec because we do not use MS Enterprise products, but in my opinion, Microsoft Defender is a superior sol...
How does Microsoft Defender for Endpoint compare with Crowdstrike Falcon?
The CrowdStrike solution delivers a lot of information about incidents. It has a very light sensor that will never pu...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint?
We have been discussing pricing, setup cost, and licensing, and we are currently on an E3. We are discussing going to...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
CipherCloud
Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Information Not Available
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Lookout vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.