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 #13 with an average rating of 8.2. Microsoft holds a 7.2% 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 97 Microsoft Sentinel reviews

12,896 Views
8,057 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Rapid7 InsightIDR

Read 32 Rapid7 InsightIDR reviews

4,038 Views
2,556 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: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Sentinel vs. Rapid7 InsightIDR

April 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)

13th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (3rd), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (24th), Threat Deception Platforms (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (15th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 7.2%, down from 9.0% 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

"We can use Sentinel's playbook to block threats. It covers all of the environment, giving us great visibility."

"It is able to connect to an ever-growing number of platforms and systems within the Microsoft ecosystem, such as Azure Active Directory and Microsoft 365 or Office 365, as well as to external services and systems that can be brought in and managed. We can manage on-premises infrastructure. We can manage not just the things that are running in Azure in the public cloud, but through Azure Arc and the hybrid capabilities, we can monitor on-premises servers and endpoints. We can monitor VMware infrastructure, for instance, running as part of a hybrid environment."

"We have no complaints about the features or functionality."

"It is quite efficient. It helps our clients in identifying their security issues and respond quickly. Our clients want to automate incident response and all those things."

"Microsoft Sentinel provides the capability to integrate different log sources. On top of having several data connectors in place, you can also do integration with a threat intelligence platform to enhance and enrich the data that's available. You can collect as many logs and build all the use cases."

"A lot of the automation inside Sentinel comes with inside actually rolling out brand new Sentinel environments. We utilize that a lot and it might go beyond just Sentinel, for example, utilizing templates in Azure and templates elsewhere to actually deploy out."

"The log query feature has been the most valuable because it's very good. You can put your data on the cloud and run queues from Sentinel. It will do it all very fast. I love that I don't have to upload it to an Excel file and then manually look for a piece of information. Sentinel is much faster and is good for big databases."

"One of the most valuable features is that it creates a kind of a single pane of glass for organizations that already use Microsoft software. So, when they have things like Microsoft 365, it is very easy for them to kind of plug in or enroll those endpoints into the Azure Sentinel service."

More Microsoft Sentinel pros

"The product works well. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"The platform offers unlimited storage and agent-based solutions."

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

"I like that it's a cloud-based solution."

"InsightIDR has allowed us to find potential security issues that we did not know existed, and get remediation quickly."

"The ability to ingest Office 365 log files, then process them into events and display them on a map."

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

"The solution is easy to use, and the interface is intuitive."

More Rapid7 InsightIDR pros

Cons

"The troubleshooting has room for improvement."

"The built-in SOAR is not really good out-of-the-box. The SOAR relies on logic apps and you almost need to have some kind of developer background to be able to make these logic apps. Most security people cannot develop anything..."

"The solution could improve the playbooks."

"There are certain delays. For example, if an alert has been rated on Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, it might take up to an hour for that alert to reach Sentinel. This should ideally take no more than one or two seconds."

"We are invoiced according to the amount of data generated within each log."

"Their support can be challenging at times, particularly around unique experiences or circumstances with Microsoft Sentinel."

"The playbook is a bit difficult and could be improved."

"Sentinel provides decent visibility, but it's sometimes a little cumbersome to get to the information I want because there is so much information. I would also like to see more seamless integration between Sentinel and third-party security products."

More Microsoft Sentinel cons

"There are certain limitations with Rapid7 that I am working on."

"I would like the ability to adjust the threshold of certain existing alerts. Currently the only option is to change the notifications or create my own alert."

"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."

"I feel it would greatly benefit from more supported log sources."

"The solution's XDR agents cannot compete with the XDR solutions out there yet."

"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."

"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."

More Rapid7 InsightIDR cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is fair... With a traditional SIEM, you pay a lump sum for licenses. But with Sentinel, it's pay-as-you-go according to the amount of data you inject."

"Sentinel is a bit expensive. If you can figure a way of configuring it to meet your needs, then you can find a way around the cost."

"From a cost point of view, it is not a cheap product. It's, like, an enterprise-level application. So if you compare it with a low-level application, it's expensive, but if you compare it with the same-level application, it's pretty much cost-effective, I think."

"It's costly to maintain and renew."

"Pricing for Microsoft Sentinel could always be lower, but it's workable. The ingestion costs for the data analytics is usually the highest cost, but the licensing per Microsoft Sentinel is fairly straightforward and transparent."

"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."

"Sentinel is costly compared to other solutions, but it's fair. SIEM solutions like CrowdStrike charge based on daily log volume. They generally process a set number of logs for free before they start charging. Microsoft's pricing is clearer. It's free under five gigabytes. Some of these logs we ingest have a cost, so they don't hide it. I believe the tenant pays the price, and Microsoft helps create awareness of the cost."

"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."

More Microsoft Sentinel pricing and cost advice

"It is more reasonably priced than other vendors."

"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."

"I am sure that there are cheaper products out there, but none that meet so many of our needs whilst maintaining stability and usability."

"I rate Rapid7 InsightIDR's price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."

"The pricing is good, and it is not very expensive."

"The pricing and licensing are competitive."

"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."

More Rapid7 InsightIDR pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

11%

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...

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

The product pricing is very cheap.

See all answers

Comparisons

AWS Security Hub vs Microsoft Sentinel

Compared 21% of the time

IBM Security QRadar vs Microsoft Sentinel

Compared 8% of the time

Cortex XSIAM vs Microsoft Sentinel

Compared 8% of the time

Wazuh vs Microsoft Sentinel

Compared 6% of the time

Elastic Security vs Microsoft Sentinel

Compared 3% of the time

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Darktrace vs Rapid7 InsightIDR

Compared 10% of the time

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 3% of the time

More Rapid7 InsightIDR Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Sentinel

May 2025

Download Microsoft Sentinel product report

Buyer's Guide

Rapid7 InsightIDR

May 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

April 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Sentinel vs. Rapid7 InsightIDR

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