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Microsoft Purview Audit vs Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention comparison

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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Purview Audit
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
30th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.1
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (27th)
Microsoft Purview Data Loss...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Purview Audit is 1.5%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention is 2.9%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention2.9%
Microsoft Purview Audit1.5%
Other95.6%
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

OK
Cloud Solution Engineer at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Integrated auditing has strengthened data retention and improved incident investigations
I have seen areas for improvement, specifically in Microsoft Purview Audit or in general about Microsoft. I have had a situation with documentation. I had a customer who wanted to create alerts and they had Microsoft 365 Business Premium. In the documentation, it was noted that this license is enough for creating alerts. When we tried to make them, we noticed they cannot do it with Microsoft 365 E3 because the customer had limited features to manage alerts. The customer had to buy E3. We created Microsoft support requests, and they confirmed that the documentation displayed not the real situation and they have been going to update documentation. The same situation occurred now with implementing Microsoft Purview Audit in the last autumn. eDiscovery was combined with search and content search, and the documentation was not clear at the beginning. It was a little difficult to describe to customers that now it is a part of eDiscovery. Content search is a very simple functionality, while eDiscovery is a little difficult. I am not entirely sure why Microsoft is going in the way of combining these services because they are the same. However, for a customer who has never seen these services, it is difficult to understand quickly. The same situation occurs with litigation holds and some other holds. For any mail, I am trying to keep data. For example, emails are held for a year or two years, ten years, it does not matter. It is difficult to understand where to find this data and where these emails are being held. I need to use eDiscovery to find out all deleted data that was kept somewhere in some hidden folders of the mailbox. Regular customers and regular administrators know that on-premises Exchange, for example, allows them to find the data in some repository and review the list of kept data. However, with this hold, we do not have any functionality to review the list of kept data. It is difficult to understand for customers how to work with this. I had a case where I spent three or four hours working deeply with a customer to explain how to work with eDiscovery, why Content Search is not there when it was before, what is an eDiscovery case, and why we are talking about all of this just to review a list of kept emails. This is difficult.
Rohit Jaiswar - PeerSpot reviewer
Soc Anaylst at Softcell Technologies Limited
Integrated controls have reduced insider risk and now protect sensitive data across our workforce
One standout feature about Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention is the tight integration with Insider Risk Management and Defender XDR, as it gives much better context during investigations instead of treating DLP as an isolated alerting tool. We also use endpoint DLP heavily to control USB, copy, print, clipboard, and browser upload activity, which has been very effective for remote workforce security. The best features Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention offers include real-time policy enforcement, endpoint DLP, and deep integration with Microsoft 365 plus Defender XDR. We also heavily rely on sensitive information type detection, adaptive policy tips, and insider risk integration to investigate suspicious user behavior with proper context. Another standout feature is the ability to control USB copy, browser uploads, print clipboards, and cloud sharing actions directly from endpoint policies. The integration with Microsoft Defender 365 and Defender XDR helps our team in day-to-day operations because DLP alerts are automatically correlated with endpoint identity, email, and user activity telemetry, which helps the SOC investigate incidents much faster from a single workflow. The sensitive information type detection makes a difference compared to other tools we have used because it is more effective than many legacy DLP tools. It understands context, exact data patterns, document labeling, and Microsoft 365 native content, reducing false positives while improving detection accuracy. Another strong feature of Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention is auto-labeling and policy inheritance with Microsoft's Information Protection, which helps maintain protection even after files are shared or moved across workloads. We also value the user coaching or policy tip capability because it educates users in real time instead of only blocking actions, which reduces repeated DLP violations significantly.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The platform has significantly enhanced our operational insight into the overall Microsoft 365 environment."
"The main Microsoft feature is that it offers common integration of services, of data, of identity, meaning user accounts, user access, and privileged access."
"We're easily saving at least one hour per day using this solution."
"The overall user experience with Microsoft Purview Audit is of higher quality than when it was branded as Compliance Center, and Microsoft consistently updates and evolves functionalities and the overall experience."
"There's a good amount of documentation in case you run into any problems."
"Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention prevents users from sharing sensitive information outside the organization based on the configurations that we've implemented."
"I like the sensitivity labels and data security posture management for AI."
"Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention protects the organization from user data getting out that should not be out and works very well when assessing the ability to prevent unauthorized sharing of sensitive information."
"The product can block the uploads to cloud services."
"It's secure and can be integrated with an existing Forcepoint DLP setup."
"Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention's ability to prevent unauthorized sharing of sensitive information is valuable."
"Earlier, our customers had no control at all over compliance, and confidential documents that were going out were not at all looked into, and Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention has been a huge benefit to our clients in this regard."
 

Cons

"Areas for product improvement include enhancing customization options and integrating more comprehensive compliance features."
"We do have a Denial of Access happening."
"We are still in the early stages of leveraging Microsoft Purview Audit. Currently, it's primarily used for the audit function."
"I had a case where I spent three or four hours working deeply with a customer to explain how to work with eDiscovery, why Content Search is not there when it was before, what is an eDiscovery case, and why we are talking about all of this just to review a list of kept emails."
"The tool's user interface and document fingerprinting have been very poor for my customers because uploading files manually can be problematic."
"Endpoint Data Loss Prevention needs to be improved as it is not up to expectations."
"I would assess the stability and reliability of Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention as being flaky at times, where eDiscovery sometimes takes forever or doesn't bring the results we expect."
"I would like Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention to be on the source code or SQL databases. It is difficult to do classification and labeling when you have a third-party source code or a third-party Oracle database. It is seamless when it comes to Microsoft documents but is not so with third-party source codes. Microsoft needs to work on it a little bit more."
"The stability and reliability of Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention is great. Besides the weird timeframe where it takes a couple hours for a rule to sync and 24 hours to appear for someone, I don't really have an issue."
"The major challenge we had was overreach. When our initial design inception blocked more data than we expected, we had a lot of help desk related issues that we did not see in testing."
"A site can have different containers where you store data. We have always wanted to apply compliance, labels, and policies at the container level, rather than to an outer shell or at the site level. That is something we have been looking forward to and I believe Microsoft is already planning something like that."
"The platform can be challenging to navigate and has the potential for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The cost works out to about $15 per user per month."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention is part of a bundle and is not sold as a standalone product."
"You get the solution in a bundle if you get the E5 suite."
"It's a little bit pricey compared to competitors, but it's not too high."
"It is a part of our Microsoft licensing. We pay for a yearly renewal. Its price is reasonable for the size of the organization we are. It is fairly competitive, and you get what you pay for. We have an E5 license, and a part of understanding the E5 license is to see what all you get with it. If you really look at it from that standpoint, you get a lot of value. You have Defender and all its security features in there as well. Their licensing is fairly flexible. They have different programs. We've seen ones where you could pay for up to three to five years in advance. There is also a monthly pay-as-you-go type of deal, but we're doing a yearly renewal and fixing the budget."
"If one is very cheap and ten is very expensive, I rate the price as one out of ten."
"Though I am not a specialist, the tool is quite expensive."
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Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview Audit?
It is not so expensive in comparison with other products, but I can tell you about an example.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Audit?
I have seen areas for improvement, specifically in Microsoft Purview Audit or in general about Microsoft. I have had a situation with documentation. I had a customer who wanted to create alerts and...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Purview Audit?
I work with Defender for IoT by chance because I see that we have enough reviews for Defender for Office 365 today, and we need reviews for some Azure products. I work with Azure products such as L...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention?
The pricing for Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention was manageable for us because we already had Microsoft 365 and Purview-related licensing, but advanced DLP and insider risk features became ex...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention?
Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention can be improved as the endpoint DLP policy tuning can be complex in large environments, especially when balancing security with user productivity. False posit...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention?
Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention is used for monitoring and preventing sensitive data exfiltration across Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, and endpoints. From a SOC's perspective...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Endpoint Data Loss Prevention, MS Endpoint DLP, Microsoft Endpoint DLP
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Purview Audit vs. Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.