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Microsoft Sentinel vs Rapid7 InsightIDR comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

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 Sentinel
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (5th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th)
Rapid7 InsightIDR
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
22nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (11th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (32nd), Threat Deception Platforms (6th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (20th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 3.5%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rapid7 InsightIDR is 2.3%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Sentinel3.5%
Rapid7 InsightIDR2.3%
Other94.2%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Kallamuddin Ansari - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Consultant at HR Software Solution
Centralized monitoring has improved threat response but cost control still needs refinement
Based on real operations used in our corporate IT environment, the key features include log correlation and incident view. Microsoft Sentinel's biggest strength is how it correlates multiple related alerts into a single incident. This significantly reduces alert noise and helps the SOC focus on real threats instead of isolated events. Another valuable feature is KQL-based threat hunting with Kusto Query Language. The flexibility of this language allows us to build custom hunting queries based on our environment's behavior. This is extremely useful for detecting low and slow threats or hidden threats that default rules may miss. Cloud-native scalability and stability is another important feature. Being cloud-native, Microsoft Sentinel scales well for medium to large corporate environments without infrastructure management. Stability has been solid in day-to-day production. SOAR automation using playbooks is a feature we highly recommend. Microsoft Sentinel's SOAR functionality helps automate repetitive SOC tasks like alert enrichment and notification. This saves analyst time and improves response consistency.
Prajwal Chougale - PeerSpot reviewer
SOC L2 Analyst at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Centralized threat hunting has improved alert accuracy and simplifies incident investigations
I would say there are two areas for improvement: the reporting dashboard that provides insights or reports weekly or monthly lacks detailed information about how logs are being ingested. While the details are there, they could be more concise and easier to understand for any level of authority. The second area is alert tuning; compared to Microsoft Sentinel, Rapid7 InsightIDR provides fewer alerts with more static alert functionality and lacks dynamic alerting exposures. There could be improvements to learn from past alert activities for more dynamic alert configurations. These two areas are the main areas for improvement; everything else is good.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The main benefit is the ease of integration."
"The automation feature is valuable."
"There are some very powerful features to Sentinel, such as the integration of various connectors. We have a lot of departments that use both IaaS and SaaS services, including M365 as well as Azure services. The ability to leverage connectors into these environments allows for large-scale data injection."
"Sentinel pricing is good"
"The best feature of Microsoft Sentinel is its ability to unify all dashboards or functions into one modern SecOps dashboard."
"Overall, per week, Sentinel saves us 40 to 45 hours, per person."
"The features of Microsoft Sentinel that I appreciate the most include the app integration."
"When M365 Security is combined with Sentinel it gives the customer more power to remediate attacks faster, and detection and response are more powerful when M365 Defender and Sentinel are combined, compared to a customer going with a third-party solution and Sentinel."
"The solution provides satisfying native integration features"
"Integration with threat modeling from the Metasploit and InsightIDR repositories."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten. As a cloud tool, the product is highly scalable."
"InsightIDR helps us investigate an environment to discover information about incidents."
"​​User behavioral analytics allows us to pinpoint abnormal or suspicious behavior among millions of events every day."
"Rapid7 InsightIDR is budget-friendly and has a good market position because not everybody can afford to go for LogRhythm or Splunk or QRadar."
"The technical support is a solid 10 out of 10 as they take the time to answer any questions or problems which may arise in a reasonable time frame."
"The web interface is great — very useful and user-friendly."
 

Cons

"Sentinel can be used in two ways. With other tools like QRadar, I don't need to run queries. Using Sentinel requires users to learn KQL to run technical queries and check things. If they don't know KQL, they can't fully utilize the solution."
"Microsoft Sentinel can be improved in terms of automation or connecting with security products so that it is easier to use for general IT admins."
"Sentinel could improve its ticketing and management. A few customers I have worked with liked to take the data created in Sentinel. You can make some basic efforts around that, but the customers wanted to push it to a third-party system so they could set up a proper ticketing management system, like ServiceNow, Jira, etc."
"When we pass KPIs to the governance department, there's no option to provide rights to the data or dashboard to colleagues. We can use Power BI for this, but it isn't easy or convenient. They should just come up with a way to provide limited role-based access to auditing personnel"
"The solution has not saved any money because it is still expensive."
"We'd like also a better ticketing system, which is older."
"We'd like to see more connectors."
"It could have a better API to be able to automate many things more extensively and get more extensive data and more expensive deployment possibilities. It can gain some points on the automation part and the integration part. The API is very limited, and I would like to see it extended a bit more."
"InsightIDR is only available in a cloud version. Some of our customers prefer an on-prem solution because they want to manage the security within their environment."
"One of the things that could be better is digital forensics. It is there, but it can be better. They could provide more on the endpoint detection level."
"The interface for doing investigation needs to be enhanced with minor improvements that would make it more useful."
"It would be useful to import threat intelligence in YARA format along with known incorrect email addresses.​"
"One thing that springs to mind is easier API integration with ITSMs."
"Lacks a mobile application."
"The integration capabilities of the solution have certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"Sometimes, it is hard to get the right queries to use. Currently, the tool lacks a pre-made set of queries."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I have had mixed feedback. At one point, I heard a client say that it sometimes seems more expensive. Most of the clients are on Office 365 or M365, and they are forced to take Azure SIEM because of the integration."
"Microsoft Sentinel is included in our E5 license."
"Sentinel's pricing is on the higher side, but you can get a discount if you can predict your usage. You have to pay ingestion and storage fees. There are also fees for Logic Apps and particular features. It seems heavily focused on microtransactions, but they may be slightly optional. By contrast, Splunk requires no additional fee for their equivalent of Logic. You have a little more flexibility, but Sentinel's costs add up."
"It varies on a case-by-case basis. It is about $2,000 per month. The cost is very low in comparison to other SIEMs if you are already a Microsoft customer. If you are using the complete Microsoft stack, the cost reduces by almost 42% to 50%. Its cost depends on the number of logs and the type of subscription you have. You need to have an Azure subscription, and there are charges for log ingestion, and there are charges for the connectors."
"It's costly to maintain and renew."
"No license is required to make use of Sentinel, but you need to buy products to get the data. In general, the price of those products is comparable to similar products."
"The combination of the ease of accessibility and the free cost of the service is great. But we buy storage based on our events per second and on how many sources are integrated into the solution."
"The product is costly compared to Splunk."
"Rapid7 InsightIDR is a cheaply priced product. On a scale of one to ten, where one is very expensive, and ten is very cheap, I rate the product's price at seven or eight."
"Licensing is by endpoint and amount of retention time (at least ours is). Default retention was one year, but we are able to push the retention further if needed. There's also a provide-your-own-S3 option for longer retention if you don't want to pay for the additional retention years in your Rapid7 agreement."
"The pricing is good, and it is not very expensive."
"It is more reasonably priced than other vendors."
"Rapid7 InsightIDR is priced very well and is cost-effective."
"The pricing of the solution depends on the user. But there is a yearly licensing cost."
"It is on a yearly basis. For our own company, for about 250 users, it was 16,000 euros a year."
"It is a reasonably priced solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

Is there a common threat intelligence tool that aggregates multiple threat intelligence sources?
Yes, Azure Sentinel is a SIEM on the Cloud. Multiple data sources can be uploaded and analyzed with Azure Sentinel and its Threat Hunting functionality with AI available as templates or customized ...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
Which is better - Azure Sentinel or AWS Security Hub?
We like that Azure Sentinel does not require as much maintenance as legacy SIEMs that are on-premises. Azure Sentinel is auto-scaling - you will not have to worry about performance impact, you will...
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rapid7 InsightIDR?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been very positive; it is cost-effective and offers great value for the money. We bought the licensing through an agent, and the setup was...
What needs improvement with Rapid7 InsightIDR?
I would say there are two areas for improvement: the reporting dashboard that provides insights or reports weekly or monthly lacks detailed information about how logs are being ingested. While the ...
 

Also Known As

Azure Sentinel
InsightIDR
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
Liberty Wines, Pioneer Telephone, Visier
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Sentinel vs. Rapid7 InsightIDR and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.