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Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs Rapid7 InsightIDR comparison

 

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...
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (4th)
Rapid7 InsightIDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (9th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (2nd), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (18th), Threat Deception Platforms (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 5.6%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rapid7 InsightIDR is 2.7%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammad Qaw - PeerSpot reviewer
Perfect correlation and XDR capabilities for network traffic plus endpoint security
The solution should force customers to integrate with network traffic to see the full benefits of XDR. If you are not integrating it or feeding in your network traffic, then you are just buying a normal antivirus which doesn't make any sense. You are paying double the price to use the antivirus feature or to say you have XDR, but in reality you are not using it. The solution should include an on-premises option because some customers want only on-premises. It would be hard, but good to do if possible. Open XDR would be beneficial in the future. Right now, the solution is Closed XDR so cannot communicate with the few new vendors in the Open XDR market.
Asim Naeem - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We can visualize and control the activities in the environment from anywhere."
"The product's most valuable features are massive user and feature intelligence exploit detection."
"The stability of the solution is very good. We have about 100 users on it right now, and we use it twice a week."
"It is an easy-to-use tool."
"It has pretty much everything we need and works well within the Palo Alto ecosystem."
"Its interface and pricing are most valuable. It is better than other vendors in terms of security."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"The most valuable feature is that you can select remote access of any machine for sandboxing."
"The biggest reason why we chose Rapid7 was to gain value in a really quick time. Its deployment doesn't take months. It just takes a few days."
"I like that it's a cloud-based solution."
"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 ability to ingest Office 365 log files, then process them into events and display them on a map."
"The alerting to drive investigations and remediation has been its most valuable feature.​"
"​​User behavioral analytics allows us to pinpoint abnormal or suspicious behavior among millions of events every day."
"The platform offers unlimited storage and agent-based solutions."
"InsightIDR helps us investigate an environment to discover information about incidents."
 

Cons

"The server sometimes stops continuously to check things so it would be helpful to receive access updates or technical reasons."
"It should support more mobile operating systems. That is one of the cons of their infrastructure right now."
"When it comes to core analysis, and security analysis, Cortex needs to provide more information."
"We would also like to have advanced tech protection and email scanning."
"They've been having some issues with updating their endpoint agents, and it has been quite frustrating."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks can improve mobile integration to allow access to the console."
"The solution lags to the real-time scenarios here and there."
"The solution could improve by providing better integration with their own products and others."
"There is a future in AI with Rapid7, however, it is not fully operated. There are certain limitations with Rapid7 that I am working on."
"The ability to tune the collector for custom logs would greatly help."
"Rapid7 InsightIDR is not intuitive to search for logs. It should be more user-friendly and improve the dashboards. We should be able to use ready-made templates instead of having to build one."
"The solution's XDR agents cannot compete with the XDR solutions out there yet."
"Customised alert recipients need to be added to allow better first-line action and quicker response. Configurable honeypots would be a welcome addition."
"Currently, it lacks the functionalities provided by Rapid7's User Behavior Analytics (UBA)."
"The integration capabilities of the solution have certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"They should add more configuration and security features to it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is okay, although direct support can be expensive."
"I am using the Community edition."
"The price of the solution could be reduced. I have customers that have voiced that the solution is good for the value but if I want to sell more of the solution the price reduction would help."
"I did PoCs on products called Cylance and CrowdStrike. Although, I consider these products and they were also good, when it come to cost and budgetary factors, Traps has been proven to be better than the other two products. It is quite cost-effective and delivers all the entire solution which we require."
"Compared to CrowdStrike, Cortex XDR is an expensive solution."
"This is an expensive solution."
"Traps pays for itself within the first 16 months of a three-year subscription. This is attributed to OPEX savings, as security teams spent less time trying to identify and isolate malware for analysis as a result of a reduction in malware incidents, false positives, and breach avoidance."
"The price of the product is not very economical."
"Rapid7 InsightIDR is priced very well and is cost-effective."
"It is more reasonably priced than other vendors."
"It is a reasonably priced solution."
"The pricing is good, and it is not very expensive."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing and licensing are competitive."
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Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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. The ability to reverse damage caused by ransomware with minimal interruptions to...
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 that are very scalable, secure, and user-friendly. Cortex XDR by Palo Alto offers ...
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, applies behavioral-based endpoint protection and response, and includes risk-ba...
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 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...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
InsightIDR
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Liberty Wines, Pioneer Telephone, Visier
Find out what your peers are saying about Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. Rapid7 InsightIDR and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.