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Rapid7 InsightIDR vs Vectra AI comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 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

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Sponsored
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
105
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (5th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (8th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (2nd)
Rapid7 InsightIDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
18th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (14th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (8th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (23rd), Threat Deception Platforms (4th)
Vectra AI
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
15th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (4th), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (2nd), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (11th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 4.8%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rapid7 InsightIDR is 2.2%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Vectra AI is 2.8%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks4.8%
Vectra AI2.8%
Rapid7 InsightIDR2.2%
Other90.2%
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
 

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Process Expert at A.P. Moller - Maersk
Gained full visibility and streamlined threat detection through behavior-based insights and AI integration
Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth. We have fine-tuned our security policies and allowed different levels of policies to get rid of those false positives. Currently, we are getting a fairly good amount of incidents that are not false positives or benign, but actionable items. The process is streamlined. In the initial days, the operations used to get involved in a lot of benign and other activities, but now the process is streamlined. We are leveraging the auto-detection and remediation plans. The operations teams are now more involved in other business roles as well, not just looking into the logs and fetching out what's happening there. They have fixed a lot of things. Initially, they didn't have IAC code drift detection, cloud posture management, or security posture management, but they have those now. They purchased different vendors and did a merger with that. They have now Prisma Cloud that gets integrated and now they are working with Cortex Cloud. Everything that was negative has now been addressed, and the product altogether looks to be in a very better and mature shape now. Currently, it's more or less detecting the workloads with AI-based best practices. Since most organizations are consuming AI agents and other things, we are looking forward to seeing what other feature enhancements Palo Alto can support in that.
SohailHyder - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Cyber Security at Super Secure
Has supported compliance needs for mid-sized organizations but lacks customization and advanced integration
If we pitch Rapid7 InsightIDR against solutions such as SIEMs from Splunk or LogRhythm, it is not as customizable as a SIEM solution is. This is where it can improve if we keep in front the feature sets of a complete SIEM solution. Most common in the market is QRadar, but it is depleting now. It has been taken over by some other products such as Splunk and LogRhythm. If we compare these things with Rapid7 InsightIDR, then there are definitely some gaps that need to be filled. Data retention is also one concern because Rapid7 InsightIDR is cloud-based and operates on a subscription model. Whatever data you want to retain, it has to be paid for separately or it has a cost. Other solutions that are on-premises can have their own infrastructure or they provide some data retention for a month or in some capacity-wise, they provide that solution to them which makes them more attractive.
RR
Consultant at a retailer with 5,001-10,000 employees
Threat detection has improved and malicious emails are now identified quickly
Vectra AI offers artificial intelligence capabilities with visibility that can be integrated into our day-to-day operations and other tools, including malware detection tools and cyber threat tools. Vectra AI has positively impacted my organization. Last year while using it, we received many malicious email threats and virus incidents, including a trojan virus that had reportedly been deployed by someone. Our company used Vectra AI to detect the malicious threats and viruses before they could cause more damage, and we successfully stopped the threats. Using Vectra AI, I notice that server downtime has decreased significantly. We now experience only two to three hours of downtime, whereas without Vectra AI and other tools, our downtime would exceed 48 to 72 hours.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its interface and pricing are most valuable. It is better than other vendors in terms of security."
"We've had a significant increase in blocking with a decrease in false positives, because it's looking at how the files work, not just a list of files that it's been told to look for."
"Cortex is the best tool for endpoint detection, and I have used it to verify hashes or domains to identify malicious activity, trigger playbooks that automate and gather endpoint logs, block malicious processes, and update incident tickets, showcasing end-to-end processes with automation in investigation and reducing the analysis workflow."
"Cortex XDR can integrate the firewalls and determine the tendencies of the attacks. It's a new generation antivirus, with protection endpoints and detection response. It is very easy to use and everybody can operate the solution."
"It's a nice product that's stable and scalable."
"The solution's stability is generally good."
"Has great threat detection capabilities."
"The most valuable features are the fact that it was running in the background and it would intercept any weird stuff, and the fact that it would send things directly to the cloud for sandboxing. It's quite practical."
"Great coverage of all systems within our network from endpoint to firewall."
"​​User behavioral analytics allows us to pinpoint abnormal or suspicious behavior among millions of events every day."
"Another very important part of insightIDR is the ability to collect data from endpoint devices via agent software. With a large remote workforce, this allows visibility into the endpoints that are connected to the internet, but not to the corporate network."
"Simple configuration and automatically syncs to the cloud platform."
"I am able to run automated actions based on the output of reports, leaving me extra time to focus on more pressing matters."
"Very intuitive and easy to set up."
"Rapid7 is easy to use and deploy. It is a simple solution and has easy data pulling."
"InsightIDR helps us investigate an environment to discover information about incidents."
"Scalability wise, we have many sensors, and Vectra AI seems to handle them all very well."
"It's easy to manage, and I love the UX. It's very well designed. When we are looking for something, it's quite easy to find it."
"I like the way that Vectra AI focuses on the internal network. Nowadays, most of the attackers are already inside, and they can be inside for many years before they start attacking. With normal monitoring, it's quite difficult to find them."
"Cognito Streams gives you a detailed view of what happens in the network in the form of rich metadata. It is just a super easy way to capture network traffic for important protocols, giving us an advantage. This is very helpful on a day-to-day basis."
"One of the key advantages for us is we define a 24/7 service around it. We use far more of Vectra alerts than we do with our SIEM product because we understand that when we get an alert from Vectra we actually need to do something about it."
"We discovered a lot of things in our network and are correcting several misconfigurations. We are learning how some apps work together and how some things shouldn't happen. It's also easier for us to identify the source of a brute force, whereas before, we didn't even know we had a brute force."
"Vectra AI offers artificial intelligence capabilities with visibility that can be integrated into our day-to-day operations and other tools, including malware detection tools and cyber threat tools."
"The solution's ability to reduce alerts, by rolling up numerous alerts to create a single incident or campaign, helps in that it collapses all the events to a particular host, or a particular detection to a set of hosts. So it doesn't generate too many alerts. By and large, whatever alerts it generates are actionable, and actionable within the day."
 

Cons

"However, if you do not have Palo Alto in your environment, you are paying these additional services just for Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, so it is not a cost-effective solution."
"They've been having some issues with updating their endpoint agents, and it has been quite frustrating."
"If you compare it to SentinelOne, which has more functionalities and detection capabilities on an open platform, the pricing on SentinelOne is far more reasonable and cheaper than Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks."
"The GUI could be improved."
"A little bit more automation would be nice."
"It automatically detects security issues. It should be able to protect our network devices while operating autonomously."
"The complexity and confusion regarding product variants, such as XDR, Forexiant, and Forexon, must be addressed."
"Additionally, I think the price is very high, and if it can be adjusted, I believe it will be a very good solution."
"The main problem lies in the processes within the client's operating systems."
"The APIs can be further improved in Rapid7."
"There are certain limitations with Rapid7 that I am working on."
"It takes time for the product's support team to resolve issues, making it an area of concern where improvements are required."
"InsightIDR's integration with other solutions could be improved. Also, I'd like more control from the portal over what's happening on the endpoint side. For example, when I see an attack on an endpoint, I want to be able to stop it from the portal."
"The product allows us to make only 30 custom rules."
"The searching feature in Rapid7 InsightIDR needs to evolve"
"One thing that springs to mind is easier API integration with ITSMs. We are evaluating a new ITSM and I would like to have InsightIDR create a ticket when an attack is identified, and the ticket would be closed in InsightIDR when the ITSM resolution is completed. This would take out the "single point of failure" we currently have, if the email recipient is somehow absent, in recording the risk appetite for the incident and the actions taken to mitigate or not."
"Neither Vectra nor Darktrace have a function like a status health check on my log sources and traffic sources."
"It does a little bit of packet capture on alert so you can look at the packet capture activity going on, but it doesn't collect a whole lot of data. Sometimes it's only one or two frames, sometimes it does collect more. That's why they have the addition of their Recall platform, because that really does help expand the capability."
"Multiple appliances are required for Vectra AI, making it less convenient compared to competitors."
"The rules for threats are not always precise and Vectra AI should improve this."
"The reporting from Cognito Detect is very limited and doesn't give you too many options. If I want to prepare a customized report on a particular host, even though I see the data, I have to manually prepare the report. The reporting features that are built into the tool are not very helpful."
"One thing which I have found where there could be improvement is with regard to the architecture, a little bit: how the brains and sensors function. It needs more flexibility with regard to the brain. If there were some flexibility in that regard, that would be helpful, because changing the mode of the brain is complex. In some cases, the change is permanent. You cannot revert it."
"One of the things that we are missing a bit is the capability to add our own rules to it. At the moment, the tech engine does its thing, but we have some cool ideas to make additional rules. There should be an option in the platform to add custom rules, or there should be some kind of user group where we can suggest them for the roadmap and see if they get evaluated and get transparent communication on whether they will be implemented in the product or not."
"Vectra Recall could be utilized much more, and I'm seeing some indications of that today with the investigative components. I use the Visualize feature to visualize components and dashboards a lot. I'm interested in new ways to build automated searches or having them leveraged already from Vectra."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't like that they have different types of licenses."
"The cost of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is $55 to $90 USD per endpoint per month."
"The pricing seems fair, and I do like the licensing model. You use wherever they are, and it is elastic."
"It has reasonable pricing for the use cases it provides to the company."
"Its pricing is kind of in line with its competitors and everybody else out there."
"It's the most expensive solution, but features-wise, it's quite strong. It's very good for protection, so the results are very good in the case of protection. I would rate it a two out of ten in terms of pricing."
"Licensing for Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR can be costly, especially when it comes to a hundred users. A license is required for each user, and the subscription must be renewed on a yearly basis."
"Our customers have expressed that the price is high."
"It is more reasonably priced than other vendors."
"It is a reasonably priced solution."
"Rapid7 InsightIDR is priced very well and is cost-effective."
"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."
"I rate Rapid7 InsightIDR's price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"The team is very willing to work with companies. My suggestion is to call the Rapid7 sales department and see how they can help.​"
"Rapid7 InsightIDR charges us based on the endpoints we connect to."
"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."
"Vectra is a bit on the higher side in terms of price, but they have always been transparent. The reason that they are this good is that they invest, so they need to charge accordingly."
"The pricing and licensing are quite straightforward because they're based on the IP licenses. As a result, they are easy to count."
"From a pricing perspective, they are very commercially competitive. From a licensing perspective, just be conscious that some of their future cloud solutions come with additional subscriptions. Also, if you're outside of the US, you will get charged freight for the device back to your country."
"We have a desire to increase our use. However, it all comes down to budget. It's a very expensive tool that is very difficult to prove business support for. We would like to have two separate networks. We have our corporate network and PCI network, which is segregated due to payment processing. We don't have it for deployed in the PCI network. It would be good to have it fully deployed there to provide us with additional monitoring and control, but the cost associated with their licensing model makes it prohibitively expensive to deploy."
"Vectra AI is not a cheap solution."
"The license is based on the concurrent IP addresses that it's investigating. We have 9,800 to 10,000 IP addresses."
"There are additional features that can be purchased in addition to the standard licensing fee, such as Cognito Recall and Stream."
"At the time of purchase, we found the pricing acceptable. We had an urgency to get something in place because we had a minor breach that occurred at the tail end of 2016 to the beginning of 2017. This indicated we had a lack of ability to detect things on the network. Hence, why we moved quickly to get into the tool in place. We found things like Bitcoin mining and botnets which we closed quickly. In that regard, it was worth the money."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business42
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. Sentinel One
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. SentinelOne SentinelOne offers very detailed specifics with regard to risks or attacks. ...
Comparing CrowdStrike Falcon to Cortex XDR (Palo Alto)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Both Cortex XDR and Crowd Strike Falcon offer cloud-based solutions th...
How is Cortex XDR compared with Microsoft Defender?
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security solution. The tool reduces the attack surface,...
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 a...
What do you like most about Rapid7 InsightIDR?
During simulations or demonstrations, the tool generates alerts, providing details such as the specific application, ...
What is the biggest difference between Corelight and Vectra AI?
The two platforms take a fundamentally different approach to NDR. Corelight is limited to use cases that require the ...
What do you like most about Vectra AI?
The solution is currently used as a central threat detection and response system.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Vectra AI?
It is very acceptable when you compare it with Darktrace, for example.
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
InsightIDR
Vectra Networks, Vectra AI NDR
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Liberty Wines, Pioneer Telephone, Visier
Tribune Media Group, Barry University, Aruba Networks, Good Technology, Riverbed, Santa Clara University, Securities Exchange, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association
Find out what your peers are saying about Rapid7 InsightIDR vs. Vectra AI and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
882,961 professionals have used our research since 2012.