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Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Entra ID Protection comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.7
Microsoft Defender XDR provides high ROI by consolidating security tools, streamlining operations, and enhancing security, despite licensing costs.
Sentiment score
5.4
Microsoft Entra ID Protection offers full ROI in three years, with immediate efficiency, satisfaction, and time-saving benefits.
We can quarantine and isolate a device within minutes.
Microsoft Defender XDR has saved me at least 50% of my time.
Ever since we turned on the M5 feature set back in June, we have seen a reduced number of potentially malicious clicks and faster alerting when incidents occur.
There is a return on investment in terms of time-saving, control, and ease of manageability of the environment.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.2
Microsoft Defender XDR's support is timely and responsive, yet smaller organizations experience slower, less effective assistance than larger ones.
Sentiment score
6.3
Microsoft Entra ID Protection support receives mixed reviews, with varied satisfaction based on response times, support quality, and subscription level.
You get stuck in low-level support for way longer than you should, instead of them escalating the issue up the chain.
It's critical to escalate SEV B issues immediately to a domestic engineer.
Once issues are escalated to the second or third layer, the support is much better.
They often refer to internal blogs, which doesn't offer much new information and can limit our capabilities in troubleshooting.
Tickets often bounce from person to person, requiring the sharing of information multiple times.
The response time can be affected based on the type of Azure subscription tier.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Defender XDR scales well for various organizations, efficiently supporting growth and flexibility despite some network deployment challenges.
Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Entra ID Protection effortlessly scales with customer needs, supported by licenses and cloud-native features, ensuring minimal scaling issues.
Microsoft Defender XDR shows tremendous scalability, much more so than on-premises solutions.
Microsoft Defender XDR scales pretty well.
It is suitable for enterprise-level deployment but has room for improvement.
Since it is a cloud computing product, it can accommodate a range of company sizes, from a few users to large businesses.
There are no issues with scalability up to your license limitations.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Defender XDR is praised for high stability, reliable performance, minimal issues, frequent updates, and prompt issue resolution.
Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Entra ID Protection is reliable, with occasional minor issues, but overall supports large-scale implementations smoothly.
The service has remained consistently online, with any issues isolated to specific components, suggesting a well-designed and modular architecture.
The services within our ecosystem have been reliable, meeting their SLAs.
It provides high-fidelity signals.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender XDR requires enhancements in speed, integration, automation, AI, ease-of-use, and industry-specific threat intelligence.
Microsoft Entra ID Protection requires enhancements in identity management, scalability, documentation, pricing clarity, and third-party integration.
The licensing process needs improvement and clarification.
Improvements are needed in automated response capabilities.
Some inconsistencies exist between blades, which could be improved for a more seamless user and UI experience.
If there was some level of backup mechanism available with quick restore functionality, that would be beneficial.
Microsoft has not offered control over how they calculate high or low-risk scenarios.
There is no write-back feature from the cloud to local, which would allow me to use my own credentials from the cloud tenant securely.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender XDR pricing is seen as complex but fair, with high costs alleviated in bundled Microsoft 365 packages.
Microsoft Entra ID Protection's pricing is competitive but confusing, with added value for enterprises using Azure subscriptions.
There are certainly savings when using Microsoft Defender XDR, which can range from 30%, 40%, and even up to 50%.
I would rate the pricing as eight out of ten, indicating it is a reasonable cost for the product.
Microsoft purposefully obfuscates this through marketing ploys to hide costs.
Entra ID Protection is not badly priced, but some clients, especially in medium to smaller scale companies in third-world countries, find it quite expensive.
Microsoft Entra ID requires additional licensing components.
The pricing for Microsoft Entra ID protection is not expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender XDR integrates tools for comprehensive security, offering threat detection, automation, identity protection, and enhanced efficiency.
Microsoft Entra ID Protection enhances security with multifactor authentication, seamless Azure integration, and advanced threat detection for businesses.
With Microsoft threat intelligence information, it detects various types of threats, including insider attacks, malicious content, and data exfiltration.
This allows us to secure our systems in advance and proactively improve security, rather than waiting for incidents to occur.
Once we have it on the security dashboard, we can see a real-time storyline.
Having a single sign-on feature with Entra ID ensures seamless access to various applications, even those with significant security constraints.
These features ease the job of security analysts, providing a better vision of user activities and potential risks.
We use automated remediation for logon purposes and error purposes. It remediates issues and provides just-in-time access when applicable.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
102
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (2nd)
Microsoft Entra ID Protection
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Identity Management (IM) (6th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 6.6%, up from 5.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID Protection is 3.5%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Defender XDR6.6%
Microsoft Entra ID Protection3.5%
Other89.9%
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

MohtesanShaikh - PeerSpot reviewer
Experience improves security management and simplifies threat protection
I have created automated investigations, and while they work, they operate rather slowly in the Microsoft portal. If I automate something, it takes considerable time; if I do it manually, I can complete it in a quarter of the time. The automation response being slow is the main concern; when an incident occurs or if I run a remediation, it takes significant time to complete the remediation. There are some limitations regarding the scalability of Microsoft Defender XDR with specific licensing. For SMB customers, there is only Microsoft Defender for Business, and if they want more features such as XDR features and automation investigation or incident response, they need to purchase Defender for Endpoint. We are currently using the EDR.
Ankit Gupta. - PeerSpot reviewer
Comprehensive identity management enhances security and access controls with advanced integration
The monitoring from Microsoft Entra ID Protection provides great visibility at a granular level. It provides all the details, including IP address, username, and permission or error logs. This information is available in both the audit log and regular log. The alert functionality supports general day-to-day monitoring and any violation or trigger for errors. Microsoft Entra ID Protection's features are suitable for all sizes of companies. It's a must-have product because traditionally Active Directory was used for identity and authentication on computers. Now, with hybrid capabilities, every company of any size needs these features and tools. I rate Microsoft Entra ID Protection ten out of ten.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise37
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft 365 Defender?
Microsoft Defender XDR provides strong identity protection with comprehensive insights into risky user behavior and potential indicators of compromise.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft 365 Defender?
The pricing for Microsoft Sentinel operates on a pay-as-you-go model based on data ingestion. I recall that Defender XDR pricing is based on the number of endpoints.
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?
I have created automated investigations, and while they work, they operate rather slowly in the Microsoft portal. If I automate something, it takes considerable time; if I do it manually, I can com...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory Identity Protection?
The pricing for Microsoft Entra ID protection is not expensive. It varies based on the company's size and quality.
What needs improvement with Azure Active Directory Identity Protection?
A potential area of improvement in Microsoft Entra ID Protection could include backup-level capability or snapshot capability. Currently, we are required to use third-party backups for the overall ...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
Azure Active Directory Identity Protection, Azure AD Identity Protection
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender XDR vs. Microsoft Entra ID Protection and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.