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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
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
122
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (3rd), 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 November 2026, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.8%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Malwarebytes Teams is 1.5%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Endpoint Security is 4.0%, up from 3.5% 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 Security4.0%
Malwarebytes Teams1.5%
Other90.7%
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

"The solution allows control over the user and his machine through Cortex XDR security policies."
"The solution allows us to make investigations. Other XDR solutions also provide similar capabilities but for investigation, Cortex XDR is better."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks has changed the way my security team detects, investigates, and responds to threats, as we are able to see the files, unwanted files, unsecured files, and unauthorized files, so we are quarantining them."
"The product is very good, it has caught a lot of exploits that most products would not."
"If the user leaves our premises or network, Palo Alto Traps will still be on that endpoint and will still apply our policies."
"The behavior-based detection feature is valuable."
"Being a cloud solution it is very flexible in serving internal and external connections and a broad range of devices."
"These days it's machine-learning technology and behavior-based analytics features that make us more secure."
"I like the solution's ability to detect potentially unwanted programs. For some reason, it seems superior to other solutions, or at least in comparison to McAfee."
"I commonly recommend Malwarebytes to people due to the fact that I find it quite reliable."
"This solution helps us by providing central management of anti-malware and anti-exploit functionality."
"We have seen a decrease of approximately ninety percent in the number of events."
"The protection is really good with Malwarebytes. It's also user friendly and quite easy to set up."
"It comprehensively finds and removes malicious software."
"I would recommend Malwarebytes because it's quite secure and able to prevent ransomware."
"The solution was successfully deployed and so far has been able to stop all ransomware attacks, which has been extremely beneficial to the organization."
"Device control is most valuable. Symantec is providing all such features in the basic plan, whereas when we last checked, such a feature was not available in the basic plan of Malwarebytes."
"The solution is completely scalable."
"I would recommend this product because it is lightweight and consumes fewer resources."
"The most valuable feature is the virus and malware detection capability."
"A secure stable product, and good customer service of this product from the vendor."
"Scalability."
"It has helped me in providing authentication mechanisms, restricting devices, and blocking global threats."
"Symantec Antivirus is a good anti-virus software with a very good scanning engine, an awesome-looking user interface, and very professional live support."
 

Cons

"Whenever the tool releases a new version when deploying the product across the organization, I feel like there are some disturbances in the CPU usage after upgrading the tool to the latest version."
"Being able to filter the events to see those that are related to the actual alert would save time spent by the engineer."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks could improve by offering remote management. It would be useful to look at the client's issue to fix it."
"We have found that there are times Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks does not detect some of the viruses, we have to use another protection solution called Kaspersky."
"The solution should force customers to integrate with network traffic to see the full benefits of XDR."
"The solution should enhance the ADR and reporting."
"The installation should be easier and the Palo Alto pre-sales and sales teams should have more information on the product because they don't know what they are selling."
"The playbooks could be improved to include more functionalities or actions."
"Even though we're satisfied with the product, we don't like the bait-and-switch pricing style."
"They should make it faster, less taxing on the processor."
"Its price can also be improved. It is really expensive."
"I'd like to see increased efficiency in terms of detecting false positives because we sometimes have cases where detections are repeated despite requests for them to be identified as false positives."
"The free version is effective, however, the paid version is pricey compared to it."
"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."
"Strictly in terms of cyber security, the release cycle should be quarterly, at most. It shouldn't be more frequent than that because, for one thing, keeping up with tech support is difficult."
"A solution must be installed in the main gateway to give an overview of the incoming and outgoing traffic. The technical support team's response time should be faster."
"The solution could be more secure and scalable."
"Automation of tasks should be improved on SEPM. It is currently manual, and we should be able to automate installation and deployment from the client side."
"It can maybe send notifications when there is an update and everything is successful."
"It would be interesting if Symantec Endpoint protection could also manage Windows Defender. If they were to add a feature, it would be nice if you could see the Symantec client and the Windows Defender client in case you choose to deploy both."
"Reporting without Altiris should be improved."
"They should work on the virus definition file and agent lighter."
"The technical support could be a bit better."
"When, Microsoft releases a new OS version twice a year, you never know if the current version of Symantec Endpoint Protection will support it. You can have a lag between when Microsoft releases a new client - and then the current version doesn't work correctly - and it could be some months between updates from Symantec."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price was fine."
"The pricing is okay, although direct support can be expensive."
"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."
"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."
"I don't like that they have different types of licenses."
"The solution has one subscription for endpoint protection and one subscription for detection and response. The two licenses combined give you the BRO version."
"The price of the solution is high for the license and in general."
"It is present, but when compared to other competitive products, I would say it is not less expensive; however, when all of the other added values are considered, the price is reasonable."
"It is expensive."
"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."
"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."
"Malwarebytes is a cost-effective product."
"The price of Malwarebytes is in the middle range compared to other vendors."
"I would say that it's affordable. It costs much less than Sentinel One, CrowdStrike, or anything of that nature. But, at the same time, you are getting what you pay for. So I would say it's one of the best when you're comparing traditional NextGen AVs like Webroot that aren't the best in the bunch."
"We expect to pay $1,000 USD a month, depending on the number of users."
"The cost may be something in the ballpark of $20-25 a year per computer."
"We receive a discounted price for this solution because we are a non-profit organization."
"I am not sure of the initial cost, but the yearly renewals are quite affordable, which is a good thing. The price seems to have come down in recent years, and with the alternatives that are out there, such as Microsoft Defender, it needs to maintain that affordability to make it attractive."
"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."
"It is cheap. It is especially cheaper than Malwarebytes, which is three times higher than this. It is also cheaper than Cisco. Its price is almost similar to Bitdefender, Gravity, and CloudZone."
"Its price is reasonable."
"It could be cheaper."
"The prices fluctuate, but this year I think it was maybe around $12,000."
"Regarding the licensing, it was important negotiate a long contract to get a more attractive price, including advanced support in case of crisis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise57
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.
920,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.