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Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs Rapid7 InsightIDR 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...
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
5th
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
121
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Rapid7 InsightIDR
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
32nd
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
20th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (22nd), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (11th), Threat Deception Platforms (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.8%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rapid7 InsightIDR is 1.3%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.8%
Rapid7 InsightIDR1.3%
Other94.9%
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
 

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.
Prajwal Chougale - PeerSpot reviewer
SOC L2 Analyst at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Centralized threat hunting has improved alert accuracy and simplifies incident investigations
I would say there are two areas for improvement: the reporting dashboard that provides insights or reports weekly or monthly lacks detailed information about how logs are being ingested. While the details are there, they could be more concise and easier to understand for any level of authority. The second area is alert tuning; compared to Microsoft Sentinel, Rapid7 InsightIDR provides fewer alerts with more static alert functionality and lacks dynamic alerting exposures. There could be improvements to learn from past alert activities for more dynamic alert configurations. These two areas are the main areas for improvement; everything else is good.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It detected stuff that other things wouldn't detect."
"I generally believe that Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is probably the best in the market right now."
"The stability is pretty good except for one or two cases, and based on the performance, it's been okay with pretty high performance, no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze."
"From a single pane of glass, you can easily manage all of your endpoints."
"The integrations are out-of-the-box, as are the playbooks."
"Traps is quite a stable product. Once it was properly deployed and configured, you have nothing to be worried about."
"Based on my experience, I would recommend Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks to other people."
"I've found the solution to be highly scalable for enterprises."
"Dashboards, including the main screen, provide much-needed information at a glance, without hours of coding and sifting through logs to find it. In case of an actual security incident, I have faith that insightIDR has retained all logs in a secure manner that prevents log tampering as well."
"Rapid7 is easy to use and deploy. It is a simple solution and has easy data pulling."
"The solution's initial setup is easy."
"The product works well. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Previously, when something happened, such as when a hacker was attacking one of our customers, we were always behind, or we did not know that we were hacked until the ransomware started, but with the Rapid7 solution, at every step, we could online see what a person was doing, and we could prevent ransomware."
"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."
"Features for user behavior analytics and the rules for attack review are good."
"Log search allows us to dive deep into aggregated logs and query all event types at once.​"
 

Cons

"It would be good if they could make an exception for applications. Sometimes, it can be a bit of a challenge to make exceptions for certain applications that have been used as rogue."
"This is a very costly product."
"The downside to the solution is that there are a large number of false positives."
"Currently, if you use Palo Alto endpoint protection as the only solution it's very complicated to remove pre-existing threats."
"Previously, the endpoint would leave the environment, not being on our VPN, essentially unable to interact with the server to upload files. It was unable to retrieve new file verdicts. It was using a thing called "local analysis" to determine if something was a malicious file or not. There was no dynamic analysis."
"The solution can never really be an on-premises solution based simply on the way it is set up. It needs metadata to run and improve. Having an on-premises solution would cut it off from making improvements."
"Cortex XDR could improve its sales support team, including better commission structures and referral programs."
"We have found that there are times Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks does not detect some of the viruses, we have to use another protection solution called Kaspersky."
"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."
"Personally, I feel it would greatly benefit from more supported log sources."
"The reporting is the weakest aspect. There needs to be multi-level grouping for events (for example, group by user and destination). Right now, we can do a group by user and a separate table or group by destination. But I'd be more interested in where a person was logging into instead of who was logging in or where he was logging in."
"The ability to tune the collector for custom logs would greatly help."
"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."
"Lacks a mobile application."
"The integration capabilities of the solution have certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's way too expensive, but security is expensive. You pay for your licensing, and then you pay for someone to monitor the stuff."
"Our customers have expressed that the price is high."
"I don't recall what the cost was, but it wasn't really that expensive."
"Its pricing is kind of in line with its competitors and everybody else out there."
"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."
"If one wishes to work with another team or large number of users at a future point, he must purchase a license for them."
"The cost of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is $55 to $90 USD per endpoint per month."
"We didn't have to pay any additional fee for the cloud instance. It just came with the renewal, which was nice."
"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."
"It is a reasonably priced solution."
"I rate Rapid7 InsightIDR's price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"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."
"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."
"It is on a yearly basis. For our own company, for about 250 users, it was 16,000 euros a year."
"​Accurately predict your licensing counts as this is a subscription based product.​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business49
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise57
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise6
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rapid7 InsightIDR?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been very positive; it is cost-effective and offers great value for the money. We bought the licensing through an agent, and the setup was...
What needs improvement with Rapid7 InsightIDR?
I would say there are two areas for improvement: the reporting dashboard that provides insights or reports weekly or monthly lacks detailed information about how logs are being ingested. While the ...
 

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: September 2026.
920,043 professionals have used our research since 2012.