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Malwarebytes Teams vs Symantec Endpoint Security 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
Symantec Endpoint Security
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
146
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Symantec Endpoint Security is 3.7%, up from 3.7% 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%
Symantec Endpoint Security3.7%
Malwarebytes Teams1.6%
Other90.9%
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.
Abhimanyu Das - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Cybersecurity Engineer at Kyndryl
Behavioral protection has blocked ransomware and now saves extensive recovery and audit time
The best feature of Symantec Endpoint Security is its effectiveness in malware protection. Its malware protection capabilities stand out due to their ease of management. Although multiple tools assist in this process, managing them all can sometimes be challenging. In terms of malware protection, Symantec Endpoint Security performs well, and its mechanisms, tactics, and techniques are effective. Symantec Endpoint Security offers robust features such as advanced reporting capabilities with a customizable dashboard that integrates EDR timelines, threat maps, and compliance metrics into a single view. Additionally, reports can be exported to PDF or CSV formats, making reporting one of its strong points. It also provides comprehensive device control features, which block unauthorized USB devices and support whitelisting. This helps prevent data exfiltration and phishing scenarios without disrupting user workflows.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One thing that I like about Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, it is detecting all the suspicious or malicious binaries, and it has integration with Palo Alto Firewall."
"The best feature of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is that it collects logs from different sections such as the endpoint, the network, and the cloud, making it easy to investigate alerts, collect some of the investigation packages related to the infected machines, and provide live response."
"They did what they said, and this solution could apply to any scenario."
"The tool is designed to scale for large enterprises and handle large volumes of data."
"I've found the solution to be highly scalable for enterprises."
"I like that the product has behavior-based detection which offers many benefits over signature-based detection."
"The most valuable feature of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is its machine-learning capabilities. Additionally, there is full integration with other solutions."
"It can automatically correlate events and logs, which is very helpful for an IT administrator. It can correlate different kinds of malware activities over a network, agent, or host system. You do not need to do it manually. It is a good feature. It is also a user-friendly solution. We have deployed it on the cloud because our space does not provide any flexibility for on-premises deployment, but Palo Alto has added some flexibility to install it on-premises. It must be like the same Cortex XDR agent for all the VPN services, web filtering services, and everything else."
"The most valuable features of the solution are malware scanning and malware removal."
"Provides successful ransomware shut down operations."
"For a company with about 100 or more PC units, the solution is quite effective, makes monitoring easy, offers a lot of reporting, and provides protection for many applications including Windows and Zoom."
"The platform is straightforward to install."
"Malwarebytes is a comprehensive solution for keeping endpoints safe and secure from intruders, viruses, malware and so on."
"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."
"It enhanced our performance in our company."
"I commonly recommend Malwarebytes to people due to the fact that I find it quite reliable."
"The application and device control are valuable features, and the live update is another one. We have a schedule to check every four hours for the live update."
"What I appreciate most about Symantec Endpoint Security is that it's easy to manage compared to other tools I have worked with, such as minimal endpoint security, McAfee, and CrowdStrike."
"It is a stable solution...It is a very scalable solution."
"The most useful features are the antivirus, anti-spyware, and the firewall feature. It also provides application control and Host Integrity, which is a very unique feature."
"The feature I find most useful is the console for reporting."
"I would recommend this product because it is lightweight and consumes fewer resources."
"The performance of Symantec End-User Endpoint Security is very good, and it does not slow down the computer like other solutions."
"Symantec End-User Endpoint Security is scalable."
 

Cons

"Previously, the endpoint would leave the environment, not being on our VPN, essentially unable to interact with the server to upload files. It was unable to retrieve new file verdicts. It was using a thing called "local analysis" to determine if something was a malicious file or not. There was no dynamic analysis."
"This product has not improved my organization - in fact, we are in the process of moving back to another product as a result of Cortex's horrible impact on system performance."
"It's not an ideal choice for smaller businesses, as you need a minimum of 200 endpoints to even use the solution at all."
"The product's pricing needs improvement. They could provide more discounts. Additionally, the dashboard and control panel could be enhanced."
"A little bit more automation would be nice."
"It tends to do 99.9% of things. The only thing I'd like is single sign-on authentication into their cloud platform so that my users can be properly authenticated against it."
"Cortex XDR could be improved with more GUI features."
"I would like to see improvement in the tool's user interface, particularly in the area of managing alerts and providing more reporting capabilities."
"It's not covering everything as we just started in EDR. In Malwarebytes, there's no response. The response is very limited, and integration is very limited."
"Requires increased efficiency in terms of detecting false positives."
"The product has major problems in almost every facet of setup and use including setup, configuration, lack of functionality, lack of stability, false positives, questionable reporting, inability to protect from randsomeware and poor technical support and development."
"The product is a little bit more expensive than the other brands."
"They could come up with better reporting capabilities."
"I would like to see integration with other vendors going forward."
"My clients have frequently encountered some tech support scams where when you go to a particular website, it throws up a fake warning to you and states that you need to call this number."
"This solution reports far too many false positives!"
"Sometimes the interface can be a bit cumbersome, and maybe the help features."
"They're just starting to get into this now, but I think they can do better - they're just starting out with I think is called the SEP Cloud Console. It has more limited functionality. It will be good once we can run SEP from the cloud. That would be good."
"The support from Symantec has been poor in my experience. They did not have the knowledge to help us with the issues we were facing."
"Any external device which is inserted into a computer should be subject to an auto-scan policy, to automatically scan it before accepting the device... They need to make it more user-friendly, so that when anyone puts in a USB stick it will be scanned, popping up any problems before it is used."
"The solution should have more integration with other platforms."
"We had trouble with the advanced features, such as the firewall builder and all the network protection modules. We were having a lot of issues because it would sometimes block users or the printing, or it would create issues with the network access resources."
"It would be nice to see more antivirus features for USB control."
"The monitoring capabilities could be further developed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cortex XDR’s pricing is very reasonable."
"The pricing is a little bit on the expensive side."
"The tool's price is moderate."
"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."
"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."
"The price of the product is not very economical."
"We didn't have to pay any additional fee for the cloud instance. It just came with the renewal, which was nice."
"The pricing is a little high. It is per user per year."
"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."
"The cost may be something in the ballpark of $20-25 a year per computer."
"Yearly, it is around $50 per client."
"It is really expensive. We've got between 30 and 40 licenses every year, and for the number of licenses that we have, we're finding that Malwarebytes on average costs between $900 and $1,000 more per year than comparable options. We're paying about $3,300 per year for these licenses. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee."
"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten."
"The platform pricing is competitive with other antivirus products."
"Its licensing is annual. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee."
"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."
"There is a yearly license."
"What we have paid for this product is good value for the work and the services that they are providing to us."
"Zero-day threat or advanced attacks should be part of the endpoint. The product should not require you to buy a separate license."
"The price of Symantec is on the higher end. They face some competition from a company called Quick Heal, which is much cheaper than Endpoint Security. They offer three years of protection at just 900 rupees."
"Licensing is based on a yearly subscription."
"It's not cheap."
"The price of the solution could be less expensive."
"They're on the reasonable side. They are at mid-level. They're not too expensive as compared to their competitors. They're also not too cheap. In terms of price structure, hopefully, they could do a subscription."
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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%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
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 Business69
Midsize Enterprise32
Large Enterprise63
 

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.
Which is better - Cortex XDR or Symantec End-User Endpoint Security?
Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valu...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec End-User Endpoint Security?
Symantec Endpoint Security's pricing is better than most offerings based on my research. It seems to be half the cost...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
No data available
Symantec EPP, Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Knutson Construction
Audio Visual Dynamics, Red Deer Advocate, Asia Pacific Telecom Co. Ltd., Kibbutz Ein Gedi, and AMETEK, Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about Malwarebytes Teams vs. Symantec Endpoint Security and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.