Microsoft Sentinel vs Rapid7 InsightIDR comparison

Microsoft and Rapid7 are both solutions in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category. Microsoft is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.3, while Rapid7 is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.2. Microsoft holds a 7.4% mindshare in SIEM, compared to Rapid7’s 2.5% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Rapid7 users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Sentinel

Read 90 Microsoft Sentinel reviews

13,318 Views
8,289 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Rapid7 InsightIDR

Read 32 Rapid7 InsightIDR reviews

4,184 Views
2,604 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Microsoft Sentinel

Rapid7 InsightIDR

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Rapid7 InsightIDR and Microsoft Sentinel are security information and event management (SIEM) solutions. Users generally favor Microsoft Sentinel for its comprehensive features, while Rapid7 InsightIDR is praised for supportive customer service and ease of deployment, making it a close competitor.

Features: Rapid7 InsightIDR offers user-friendly threat detection, response capabilities, and ease of use. Microsoft Sentinel provides extensive integration with other Microsoft services, advanced analytics, and a feature-rich platform.

Room for Improvement: Rapid7 InsightIDR requires better reporting granularity, more advanced customization options, and enhanced documentation. Microsoft Sentinel needs improved documentation, easier setup processes, and more responsive customer support.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Rapid7 InsightIDR has a straightforward deployment process and exceptional customer support. Microsoft Sentinel, while powerful, can be complex to deploy and may take time to master. Rapid7 InsightIDR provides a smoother setup experience, while Sentinel's customer service can be less responsive.

Pricing and ROI: Rapid7 InsightIDR is cost-effective with a good return on investment. Microsoft Sentinel, although more expensive, is worth the cost due to its comprehensive features and integration capabilities. Users find that InsightIDR offers better initial cost savings, whereas Sentinel justifies a higher price with advanced functionality.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Sentinel vs. Rapid7 InsightIDR Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Sentinel vs. Rapid7 InsightIDR

February 2025

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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

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (6th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th)

Rapid7 InsightIDR

Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

9th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (2nd), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (18th), Threat Deception Platforms (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (14th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 7.4%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rapid7 InsightIDR is 2.5%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Featured Reviews

KrishnanKartik

Cyber Security Consultant at Inspira Enterprise

Every rule enriched at triggering stage, easing the job of SOC analyst

It's a Big Data security analytics platform. Among the unique features is the fact that it has built-in UEBA and analytical capabilities. It allows you to use the out-of-the-box machine learning and AI capabilities, but it also allows you to bring your own AI/ML, by bringing in your own IPs and allowing the platform to accept them and run that on top of it. In addition, the SOAR component is a pay-per-use model. Compared to any other product, where customization is not available, you can fine-tune the SOAR and you'll be charged only when your playbooks are triggered. That is the beauty of the solution because the SOAR is the costliest component in the market today. Other vendors charge heavily for the SOAR, but with Sentinel it is upside-down: the SOAR is the lowest-hanging fruit. It's the least costly and it delivers more value to the customer. The SOAR engine also uniquely helps us to automate most of the incidents with automated enrichment and that cuts out the L1 analyst work. And combining M365 with Sentinel, if you want to call it integration, takes just a few clicks: "next, next finish." If it is all M365-native, it is a maximum of three or four steps and you'll be able to ingest all the logs into Sentinel. That is true even with AWS or GCP because most of the connectors are already available out-of-the-box. You just click, put in your subscription details, include your IAM, and you are finished. Within five to six steps, you can integrate AWS workloads and the logs can be ingested into Sentinel. When it comes to a third party specifically, such as log sources in a data center or on-premises, we need a log collector so that the logs can be forwarded to the Sentinel platform. And when it comes to servers or something where there is an agent for Windows or Linux, the agent can collect the logs and ship them to the Sentinel platform. I don't see any difficulties in integrating any of the log sources, even to the extent of collecting IoT log sources. Microsoft Defender for Cloud has multiple components such as Defender for Servers, Defender for PaaS, and Defender for databases. For customers in Azure, there are a lot of use cases specific to protecting workloads and PaaS and SaaS in Azure and beyond Azure, if a customer also has on-premises locations. There is EDR for Windows and Linux servers, and it even protects different kinds of containers. With Defender for Cloud, all these sources can be seamlessly integrated and you can then track the security incidents in Microsoft's XDR platform. That means you have one more workspace, under Azure, not Defender for Cloud, where you can see the security incidents. In addition, it can be integrated with Sentinel for EDR deep-dive analytics. It can also protect workloads in AWS. We have customers for whom we are protecting their AWS workloads. Even EKS, Elastic Kubernetes Service, on AWS can be integrated, as can the GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine). And with Defender for Cloud, security alert ingestion is free

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Asim Naeem

Principal IT Security & Compliance at IBEX Holdings Ltd

Providing comprehensive insight into alerts while working towards AI enhancement

I definitely recommend Rapid7 InsightIDR. It is becoming better, with improvements being continuously made to the product. Right now, I do not have any advice about Rapid7 for other users because every organization or user has different criteria or multiple use cases, so I refrain from commenting on that. I rate the overall solution seven out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features in my experience are the UEBA, LDAP, the threat scheduler, and integration with third-party straight perform like the MISP."

"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 also enables you to ingest data from your entire ecosystem and not just from the Microsoft ecosystem. It can receive data from third-party vendors' products such firewalls, network devices, and antivirus solutions. It's not only a Microsoft solution, it's for everything."

"The best functionality that you can get from Azure Sentinel is the SOAR capability. So, you can estimate any type of activity, such as when an alert was triggered or an incident was found."

"I like the KQL query. It simplifies getting data from the table and seeing the logs. All you need to know are the table names. It's quite easy to build use cases by using KQL."

"The most valuable feature is the performance because unlike legacy SIEMs that were on-premises, it does not require as much maintenance."

"Mainly, this is a cloud-native product. So, there are zero concerns about managing the whole infrastructure on-premises."

"The Identity Behavior tab furnishes us with the entire history linked to each IP or domain that has either accessed or attempted to access our system."

More Microsoft Sentinel pros

"The web interface is great — very useful and user-friendly."

"InsightIDR helps us investigate an environment to discover information about incidents."

"Integration with threat modeling from the Metasploit and InsightIDR repositories."

"Rapid7 InsightIDR integrates well with other solutions. It's also easy to configure because Rapid7 InsightIDR has a lot of instructions posted on their website that customers can follow if they need to get the source log."

"InsightIDR’s ability to process millions of transactions per day, and to notify me of the most critical ones, is priceless. InsightIDR has the alerts tuned, and has the ability to quickly drill down to determine the threat level."

"If you were on other solutions, you would notice that they use agents from third-party, from open-source, from a native OS, or from other tools. Here, however, it is an agent from Rapid7 itself. This adds to the solution's overall capabilities."

"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."

"It improves because several sensors are deployed within the on-premise environment. It can be very efficient if the customer implements and operates it effectively."

More Rapid7 InsightIDR pros

Cons

"Sentinel should be improved with more connectors. At the moment, it only covers a few vendors. If I remember correctly, only 100 products are supported natively in Sentinel, although you can connect them with syslog. But Microsoft should increase the number of native connectors to get logs into Sentinel."

"It has been a challenge with Azure Sentinel to onboard the Syslog server from FortiGate. Azure Sentinel can work better on that shift between the Syslog server and a firewall."

"We'd like also a better ticketing system, which is older."

"The pricing could be improved."

"We do have in-built or out-of-the-box metrics that are shown on the dashboard, but it doesn't give the kind of metrics that we need from our environment whereby we need to check the meantime to detect and meantime to resolve an incident. I have to do it manually. I have to pull all the logs or all the alerts that are fed into Sentinel over a certain period. We do this on a monthly basis, so I go into Microsoft Sentinel and pull all the alerts or incidents we closed over a period of thirty days."

"Microsoft Defender has a built-in threat expert option that enables you to contact an expert. That feature isn't available in Sentinel because it's a huge product that integrates all the technologies. I would like Microsoft to add the threat expert option so we can contact them. There are a few other features, like threat assessment that the PG team is working on. I expect them to release this feature in the next quarter."

"As of now, there have been only benefits. However, I am curious about potential AI integration and whether it will be affordable for us because all the compliance costs are rising with all the new features."

"There is room for improvement in terms of integrations."

More Microsoft Sentinel cons

"The main problem lies in the processes within the client's operating systems."

"Rapid7 doesn't integrate well with all our security tools from various vendors, so we plan to switch. Many of our solutions work with Rapid7, but some do not. We are already searching for a replacement already."

"The product allows us to make only 30 custom rules."

"I would like to see more development in InsightIDR towards building their SIEM solution and converting it to XDR."

"Lacks a mobile application."

"Tenable Nessus is easier to deal with. It's more efficient and accurate. InsightIDR is heavier than Tenable in terms of performance and scanning. Rapid7 would be much easier to use if it had a network connector like Tenable. Tenable's connector allows continuous monitoring over the B caps."

"The interface for doing investigation needs to be enhanced with minor improvements that would make it more useful."

"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."

More Rapid7 InsightIDR cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We only pay for the amount of data we bring in, which is fair."

"I am not involved on the financial side, but from an enterprise-wide use perspective, I think the price is good enough."

"It's costly to maintain and renew."

"Sentinel can be expensive. When you ingest data from sources that are outside of the cloud, you're paying a fair amount for that data ingestion. When you're ingesting data sources from within the cloud, depending on what your retention periods are, it's not that expensive."

"From a cost perspective, Microsoft Sentinel is quite costly."

"Some of the licensing models can be a little bit difficult to understand and confusing at times, but overall it's a reasonable licensing model compared to some other SIEMs that charge you a lot per data."

"Sentinel is costly."

"I don't know yet because they gave us a 30-day test window for free."

More Microsoft Sentinel pricing and cost advice

"The solution has a mid-range price point in the market"

"Rapid7 InsightIDR's pricing is reasonable but we have challenges with the Minimum Order Quantity. It is not reasonable for customers who have less than one hundred devices. If they can reduce Minimum Order Quantity, it is good. You have to pay around 5000-6000 dollars per year for the product. The pricing includes maintenance and support costs."

"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 team is very willing to work with companies. My suggestion is to call the Rapid7 sales department and see how they can help."

"Licensing is straightforward. If, for some reason, you don’t meet the minimum licensing requirements, there is a third-party managed service that can help."

"Rapid7 InsightIDR is priced very well and is cost-effective."

"Rapid7 InsightIDR's pricing is reasonable."

"Rapid7 InsightIDR charges us based on the endpoints we connect to."

More Rapid7 InsightIDR pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 ...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Rapid7 InsightIDR?

During simulations or demonstrations, the tool generates alerts, providing details such as the specific application, its origin, and potential threats. For instance, it can identify if an applicati...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rapid7 InsightIDR?

The product pricing is very cheap.

See all answers

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 3% of the time

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Rapid7 InsightVM vs Rapid7 InsightIDR

Compared 8% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon vs Rapid7 InsightIDR

Compared 5% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Rapid7 InsightIDR

Compared 5% of the time

Wazuh vs Rapid7 InsightIDR

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Sentinel

March 2025

Download Microsoft Sentinel product report

Buyer's Guide

Rapid7 InsightIDR

March 2025

Download Rapid7 InsightIDR product report

Also Known As

Azure Sentinel

InsightIDR

Overview

Microsoft Sentinel is a scalable, cloud-native, security information event management (SIEM) and security orchestration automated response (SOAR) solution that lets you see and stop threats before they cause harm. Microsoft Sentinel delivers intelligent security analytics and threat intelligence across the enterprise, providing a single solution for alert detection, threat visibility, proactive hunting, and threat response. Eliminate security infrastructure setup and maintenance, and elastically scale to meet your security needs—while reducing IT costs. With Microsoft Sentinel, you can:

- Collect data at cloud scale—across all users, devices, applications, and infrastructure, both on-premises and in multiple clouds

- Detect previously uncovered threats and minimize false positives using analytics and unparalleled threat intelligence from Microsoft

- Investigate threats with AI and hunt suspicious activities at scale, tapping into decades of cybersecurity work at Microsoft

- Respond to incidents rapidly with built-in orchestration and automation of common tasks

To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

Microsoft

Parsing hundreds of trivial alerts. Managing a mountain of data. Manually forwarding info from your endpoints. Forget that. InsightIDR instantly arms you with the insight you need to make better decisions across the incident detection and response lifecycle, faster.

Rapid7

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

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Sentinel vs. Rapid7 InsightIDR

February 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Sentinel vs. Rapid7 InsightIDR

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