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Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR vs Splunk SOAR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

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
7.4
Cortex XSOAR enhances ROI by automating SOC tasks, optimizing operations, and requiring mature processes for effective integration.
Sentiment score
6.6
Adoption of Splunk SOAR varied, with customization enhancing benefits; successful integration linked to experience, despite initial challenges.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
Cortex XSOAR customer service is praised for knowledge and responsiveness, though some report delays and unhelpfulness in support interactions.
Sentiment score
7.2
Splunk SOAR support is generally responsive, yet telecom and IoT cases may face delays; community offers quicker resolutions.
Their support has been better than Anomali's and they are more responsive.
Splunk's technical support is very good and generally not needed often due to the stable environment.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR excels in scalability, integrating well with APIs and scaling across diverse organizational environments.
Sentiment score
7.1
Splunk SOAR is highly scalable and flexible, though some users encounter minor challenges, mainly linked to internal management.
The scalability of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR supports our growth and security needs because we can integrate various tools and continuously add more capability.
It can be extended and adapted as necessary.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is stable and reliable, with minor bugs mostly related to updates and proper configuration.
Sentiment score
7.5
Splunk SOAR is stable, reliable, with minimal downtime and effective version control, despite occasional external vendor issues.
Splunk SOAR provides a stable environment and technology.
 

Room For Improvement

Cortex XSOAR requires improvement in pricing, user interface, integrations, customization, stability, automation, support, and licensing costs.
Splunk SOAR users desire better integration, user interface, documentation, and features like automation, debugging, and reporting for improved operations.
The deployment requires integration and the development of integration modules.
One of the significant issues we encounter is system slowdown when we receive an influx of alerts, which inhibits how quickly we can access the information needed for investigation.
Although it enhances alert handling, it still has a journey to compete with Palo Alto SOAR and FortiSOAR.
To make Splunk SOAR a better solution, there could be better built-in debugging tools, smarter playbook suggestions, and enhanced lifecycle management.
 

Setup Cost

Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is costly but valued for features and support, though potentially unsuitable for small businesses.
Splunk SOAR's pricing is consumption-based, often deemed expensive, with costs varying by data volume and region, impacting smaller organizations.
Splunk SOAR is moderately priced, neither cheap nor overly expensive.
Splunk SOAR is affordable cost-wise only.
 

Valuable Features

Cortex XSOAR excels in automation, integration, and customization, enhancing security management with AI-driven threat intelligence and incident response.
Splunk SOAR enhances threat response with automation, integration, customization, and user-friendly features, streamlining workflows and reducing manual tasks.
If I already have an established process, I do not have to change my process to fit into the tool. I can modify the tool to fit into my process, which makes things considerably easier.
Execution of automatic tasks for collecting, enriching, and correlating security events from hundreds of different technologies.
Creating playbooks using the Playbook Editor in Splunk SOAR is easy. The editor is designed to be user-friendly with visual drag and drop features, allowing for easy workflows without writing any code.
The stable environment and the community provide strong support, reducing the need for technical support.
 

Categories and Ranking

Palo Alto Networks Cortex X...
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
SOC as a Service (2nd)
Splunk SOAR
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is 10.9%, down from 12.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk SOAR is 7.3%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user870255 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 15, 2018
 

Featured Reviews

NikhilSharma2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Ability to multiple playbooks to fetch data from multiple firewalls and utomated several tasks, including vulnerability scans and SOCL (Security Orchestration, Automation
Recently, they started implementing microservices in XSOAR, which has improved quality and addressed previous issues. However, they should focus more on licensing costs. The user licensing fees are quite high. For example, I received a quote for XSOAR, and it was $12,000 per user per year. If you have a SOC team of 30 members/analysts, you're looking at a substantial expense. They should consider reducing these costs since this high pricing seems to be more about profit. So, there is room for improvement in the pricing. Moreover, the reporting and dashboard features are decent but could be improved. The user interface (UI) is quite heavy and takes time to load, which is a major drawback.
Shubham Sinha. - PeerSpot reviewer
Helped eliminate repetitive and redundant tasks, but custom functions and reporting need a lot of work
The visibility of the solution’s playbook viewer depends on the right you assign to the analyst. SOAR has the flexibility to distinguish between the roles of analyst and owner. If the analyst's role is to just work on a ticket, they cannot view the playbook design platform. That is limited to the owner. That can be both a good and bad thing. A major problem I have faced in SOAR's rights distribution is roles and responsibilities. Suppose I am initially granted user rights or analyst rights, but later on, I also get admin rights. SOAR is unable to amend the limitations of my role. I raised a support ticket with Splunk about this. They said it's a bug in their 5.3.5 version. To fix this, I had to reinstall the entire platform from scratch, just to amend the rights and responsibilities of one role. This bug was not fixed. Also, the latest GUI is terrible. The previous one was better. Another point is that while using Splunk SOAR in an investigation is not difficult, there are some complex parameters. We have SOAR case management, but the licensing is going to put a big hole in your pocket. Also, there is an issue with investigation node addition. When you are doing node additions you cannot grant the entire environment to have SOAR visibility into the incident. So when you integrate it with an ITSM tool, like ServiceNow or Jira for ticketing purposes, there is a challenge. When you do nodes for investigation on a regular basis, sometimes it does not update our ServiceNow platform, which is terrible. It is a redundant activity for an analyst to update that in the case management as well as in the ITSM tool. Although SOAR provides integration, the functionality of investigation and nodes is terrible when it comes to integration. An additional area for improvement is custom function creation. It's terrible. A newbie cannot create custom functions right away. They would require a solid understanding first. Also, the reporting is really awful. If I want to do a report for a customized time period, such as the last three days or the last four days, or from the 10th to the 12th of June, that is not available in SOAR at all. That kind of feature is available in Cortex XSOAR. Reporting is a real challenge.
report
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Answers from the Community

it_user870255 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 15, 2018
Jun 15, 2018
I would not recommend Phantom or Demisto, but rather JASK! JASK is modernizing security operations to reduce organizational risk and improve human efficiency through technology consolidation, enhanced AI and machine learning. We are empowering the SOC analyst to focus on investigative and response work, rather than the onerous data ingestion, normalization, parsing, and alert discrimination th...
See 2 answers
CL
May 23, 2018
I would not recommend Phantom or Demisto, but rather JASK! JASK is modernizing security operations to reduce organizational risk and improve human efficiency through technology consolidation, enhanced AI and machine learning. We are empowering the SOC analyst to focus on investigative and response work, rather than the onerous data ingestion, normalization, parsing, and alert discrimination that is required to simply determine what is important. Purpose-built by the JASK team, proven in solving real-world SOC issues, the JASK Autonomous Security Operations Center (ASOC) Platform enhances threat detection and orchestration to improve contextual visibility, expose blind spots and initiate faster response times with advanced insights.
it_user889167 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 15, 2018
I would recommend CyberSponse. There is a reason why CyberSponse have been awarded Government and Military contracts over all the competition! Commerical customers need the same power and capability, why settle for anything less!
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR?
Even though customers often comment on the price, the potential savings come from managing a large number of security events with a limited number of analysts. This leads to economic advantages des...
What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR?
The complexity of Cortex XSOAR has a trade-off with its versatility. The product can be tailored for each deployment to respond to specific customer needs, and this complexity may be seen as a down...
What do you like most about Splunk Phantom?
Splunk SOAR's quick response to incidents is the most valuable part.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Splunk Phantom?
Splunk SOAR is moderately priced, neither cheap nor overly expensive.
What needs improvement with Splunk Phantom?
There are areas in Splunk SOAR that have room for improvement. To make Splunk SOAR a better solution, there could be better built-in debugging tools, smarter playbook suggestions, and enhanced life...
 

Also Known As

Demisto Enterprise, Cortex XSOAR, Demisto
Phantom
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cellcom Israel, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, esri, Cylance, Flatiron Health, Veeva, ADT Cybersecurity
Recorded Future, Blackstone
Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR vs. Splunk SOAR and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.