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Malwarebytes Teams vs Microsoft Defender for Business comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 15, 2026

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 Protection Platform (EPP)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Malwarebytes Teams
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
24th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender for Busi...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
14th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.8%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Malwarebytes Teams is 1.6%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Business is 1.4%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.8%
Microsoft Defender for Business1.4%
Malwarebytes Teams1.6%
Other93.2%
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

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.
reviewer2594097 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Executive Officer at a wholesaler/distributor with 11-50 employees
Exceptional malware protection with regular updates and behavior-based detection
There are no built-in backups or integrated backup options, which could be an opportunity. The free version is effective, however, the paid version is pricey compared to it. Other customers have mentioned issues with false positives. It lacks enterprise-level management and more enterprise functionality. CrowdStrike and SentinelOne are much more enterprise-grade solutions. Malwarebytes has limited integration with cybersecurity tools and lacks enterprise integrations because it is not an enterprise product.
Paritosh Jani - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate VP (Managed Information Technology Services) at Dev Information Tech Pvt Ltd
Has delivered automated threat response and streamlined integration with advanced tools
The best features of Microsoft Defender for Business include it coming as an XDR solution which provides automated investigations, remediations, and endpoint detection and response. Moreover, it can be tightly integrated with vulnerability management or detecting vulnerabilities and pushing them to the SIEM solution. I utilize the advanced threat hunting feature of Microsoft Defender for Business and find it helpful; it's good and improving with every update. Microsoft Defender for Business integrates effectively with the Microsoft ecosystem as with Azure Sentinel, and it has a two-way natural integration. Apart from that, it also integrates with industry SIEM solutions such as Splunk.

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 specifically designed to prevent zero-day attacks and is part of an ecosystem of Palo Alto, providing customers with a long-term vision to modify and redesign how security is applied in their company."
"The main benefit of using Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks while employing Palo Alto Firewall at the internet edge is that it improves security on our endpoint devices, integrating seamlessly with Palo Alto Firewalls to deliver comprehensive network, analyst, and security details all in a single dashboard, which allows us to manage everything from our network devices."
"One of the things that I enjoy the most is using policy extensions. It's like having host firewalls to control USB connections. I think it's a wonderful tool to restrict use when connecting to our computers. Another important tool is Home Insights. That is an add-on to the Cortex solution. I like that because we can see all the vulnerabilities in the environment and control what assets are connected to our network."
"The live terminal is probably the best thing ever. It gives you the access to get straight onto any machine."
"But overall, when we speak about security and protection, they are one of the top providers."
"It's very stable. I've never experienced downtime for the ASM console or ASM core."
"Cortex XDR alerts us on the dashboard when there's a threat, which allows us to restrict that user and helps secure our infrastructure."
"The integrations are out-of-the-box, as are the playbooks."
"It sits in the background, works very well and does what you expect it to do."
"The solution was successfully deployed and so far has been able to stop all ransomware attacks, which has been extremely beneficial to the organization."
"The solution has a good management interface."
"The most valuable features of the solution are malware scanning and malware removal."
"It is intuitive and easy to use, and for the most part, it does a good job of catching things and is good at stopping stuff."
"Malwarebytes is a comprehensive solution for keeping endpoints safe and secure from intruders, viruses, malware and so on."
"The behavior-based detection is very nice, and it combats zero-day threats by looking for anomalous behaviors."
"It enhanced our performance in our company."
"Defender's main strength is its integration with Microsoft Sentinel, offering valuable insights."
"I rate Microsoft Defender for Business a 10 out of 10."
"I haven't had any problems with the tool's stability."
"It is scalable."
"Microsoft Defender for Business works well with the Microsoft Azure Security ecosystem, including Defender for Endpoint and Office 365 Cloud."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its central console."
"If you're an Intune user, you can bring in certain capabilities like system-hardening policies, which further enhances the security."
"The solution is effective, continuously improving, and highly regarded, especially with Microsoft's leadership in the industry."
 

Cons

"When it comes to malware files, it should be a little quick because, at times, it would give a wrong result in the sense of what it might be on malware, even if it still might be a normal one."
"While using Cortex, I noticed some aspects that could be improved, such as increasing the synchronization speed between XDR and Xnor."
"The setup is quite easy. We had appropriate support from the manager. One thing that was missing was the integration part."
"Product might have some bugs."
"The playbooks could be improved to include more functionalities or actions."
"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."
"The configuration could be simplified. I would like to see better protection, specifically to protect email applications."
"The solution should add unwanted malicious hash values to a block list so that whenever the action is triggered, it will automatically prevent the malicious content."
"There's no indication on the system as to when the software is doing a scan."
"Malwarebytes is not there in the reports from Gartner or IDC...If we look at the market trends and the industry, most customers look at Gartner's reports to identify whether a product is a leader, challenger, or a big product, depending on which they choose."
"Malwarebytes can improve its network database. Malwarebytes can scan the files and registry. It can scan the system with a light agent. It will not impact the performance of your PC. You can do the full scan and database scan using the EDR, and the RAM and CPU consumption will not increase."
"Overall, I haven't found any ways the solution lacks in features or usability."
"I really hate the automatic rebuilding without even asking. It's just an annoyance that they should at least ask me, like a month before they bill me."
"The technical support could be improved; we find we have to make several requests before an issue is looked into."
"Every once in a while, the product gets clobbered. It's not just one thing. So, it could be a Microsoft update or a Kaspersky update."
"There is room for improvement in the way it is deployed, in terms of being able to distribute it. Right now we have to get our hands on a machine to deploy it. It would be nice if there was an easier system."
"Technical support could be faster to respond."
"If I need logs and don't have local storage bundled with Defender, I need to add workspace and log analytics, which is costly for storing logs of 2 GB, 5 GB, 10 GB."
"The technical support from Microsoft is very poor. I would rate it a one, as their technical staff are very junior and take a long time to respond to simple questions."
"The security could always be improved."
"The user interface has a lot of features which can make it complex and hard to adapt to for some users."
"The threat detection capabilities require significant customization for multistage threat detection."
"Defender's threat protection should be fine-tuned to reduce false positives. It could be more targeted, reflecting a continuous evolution in detecting. Also, it could be easier to integrate into other environments."
"I am not satisfied with Microsoft's technical support. There are challenges with the knowledge and experience of the support staff, frequent redirection between departments, and slow response times."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing seems fair, and I do like the licensing model. You use wherever they are, and it is elastic."
"The price is on the higher side, but it's okay."
"Traps pays for itself within the first 16 months of a three-year subscription. This is attributed to OPEX savings, as security teams spent less time trying to identify and isolate malware for analysis as a result of a reduction in malware incidents, false positives, and breach avoidance."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is quite an expensive solution."
"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."
"It's the most expensive solution, but features-wise, it's quite strong. It's very good for protection, so the results are very good in the case of protection. I would rate it a two out of ten in terms of pricing."
"I don't have any issues with the pricing. We are satisfied with the price."
"Yearly, it is around $50 per client."
"Its cost is around $60 a machine. The cost of the total solution for 250 people is about $8,500 a year. If we add EDR to it, it will bring that cost up to about $15,000. The cost for Carbon Black is about $25,000, which is $10,000 more, but you get all AI functions with it."
"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."
"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."
"The price of Malwarebytes is in the middle range compared to other vendors."
"The cost may be something in the ballpark of $20-25 a year per computer."
"I believe the retail price is between $40 and $50 per copy."
"It is expensive."
"Since we're a nonprofit, we get pretty good discounts on the tool."
"It has to get more competitive because we are starting to see some of the competitors providing better pricing, and some of it, of course, is to gain market share. The Defender product pricing is probably a little higher than the competitors."
"The tool is cheap, while some other solutions are more expensive. I remember the tool cost about five euros for a workstation or for a user on a monthly basis."
"Defender for Business is included by default with an Office 365 premium subscription."
"The tool's cost has been a little high, but I do not think it was terrible."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise55
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
 

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 Malwarebytes?
I really hate the automatic rebilling without officially confirming it with me. It's an annoyance and they should at ...
What needs improvement with Malwarebytes?
It takes up too much space when it's trying to run in the background.
What is your primary use case for Malwarebytes?
My primary use case is that it's protecting me against malware.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Business?
Our thoughts on the pricing for Microsoft Defender for Business are that we wish it could be better. If the pricing w...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Business?
I see room for improvement in Microsoft Defender for Business, particularly regarding the consolidation of all securi...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Knutson Construction
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Malwarebytes Teams vs. Microsoft Defender for Business and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.