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Darktrace vs Microsoft Defender XDR 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.3
Darktrace's threat prevention boosts security, saves costs, and offers significant value, especially for online businesses, despite quantification challenges.
Sentiment score
7.0
Microsoft Defender XDR boosts security efficiency, saves time, reduces breaches, despite high licensing costs, enhancing overall organizational security posture.
Using this solution provides financial benefits by securing from server attacks, which offers indirect savings.
Ever since we turned on the M5 feature set back in June, we have seen a reduced number of potentially malicious clicks and faster alerting when incidents occur.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.6
Darktrace support is praised for its responsive and efficient service, though a few cite improvement areas for complex issues.
Sentiment score
6.4
Microsoft Defender XDR support excels in premium tiers but has mixed reviews for basic service response times and expertise.
Darktrace provides excellent technical support with a monthly meeting to review platform incidents, ensuring the system functions as expected.
The technical support from Darktrace is of high quality.
The response time and quality are satisfactory.
You get stuck in low-level support for way longer than you should, instead of them escalating the issue up the chain.
It's critical to escalate SEV B issues immediately to a domestic engineer.
The technical support from Microsoft Defender XDR has been disappointingly slow.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Darktrace is praised for its scalability, efficiently managing large networks with flexible deployment despite cost concerns, excelling in diverse environments.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR is scalable and cloud-based, with positive user feedback, but may face network and licensing challenges.
Darktrace has high scalability, and I would rate it a nine out of ten.
Since it's cloud-based, it expands easily.
Microsoft Defender XDR shows tremendous scalability, much more so than on-premises solutions.
It is suitable for enterprise-level deployment but has room for improvement.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Darktrace is highly stable, with users rating it 8-10, citing reliability despite rare minor issues like human error.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR is highly stable and reliable, with users rating it 8 or 9 out of 10.
The stability of Darktrace is excellent, rated ten out of ten.
The services within our ecosystem have been reliable, meeting their SLAs.
The service has remained consistently online, with any issues isolated to specific components, suggesting a well-designed and modular architecture.
 

Room For Improvement

Darktrace needs better integration, a simpler interface, automation enhancements, flexible pricing, improved documentation, and expanded notifications.
Microsoft Defender XDR needs faster scans, improved integration, intuitive dashboards, cost-effective licensing, better automation, and broader environment support.
There is no dedicated salesperson in Egypt, and having one would help to improve focus on this market.
The management dashboards and the meter dashboards should be more user-friendly and simple to use for easy management.
There are still some issues with the network capturing or blocking traffic even after implementing exceptions.
Improvements are needed in automated response capabilities.
The licensing process needs improvement and clarification.
Some inconsistencies exist between blades, which could be improved for a more seamless user and UI experience.
 

Setup Cost

Darktrace is costly for small businesses but offers flexible plans and pricing varies with devices and modules chosen.
Microsoft Defender XDR pricing opinions vary, with some appreciating bundled savings and others finding standalone costs high.
The product is considered expensive compared to others.
I would rate the pricing as eight out of ten, indicating it is a reasonable cost for the product.
Microsoft purposefully obfuscates this through marketing ploys to hide costs.
The pricing is a little high, however, it is on par with other competitive tools in the market.
 

Valuable Features

Darktrace excels in AI threat detection, real-time monitoring, and autonomous response, offering seamless integration and an intuitive interface.
Microsoft Defender XDR offers integrated tools, enhancing threat detection, management, and automation, simplifying security tasks for enterprise environments.
The most valuable features are the AI and advanced learning tools that distinguish it from other products.
The features that are most valuable to me include detection, response with analytics, and network detection.
Darktrace is valuable since it offers full packet capture and detailed metadata.
With Microsoft threat intelligence information, it detects various types of threats, including insider attacks, malicious content, and data exfiltration.
This allows us to secure our systems in advance and proactively improve security, rather than waiting for incidents to occur.
It's because endpoint management is my primary focus, and this feature integrates well with my other skills.
 

Categories and Ranking

Darktrace
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (9th), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (1st), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (1st), AI-Powered Chatbots (2nd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (15th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (12th), Attack Surface Management (ASM) (3rd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (2nd)
Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of Darktrace is 9.7%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 7.0%, up from 6.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
 

Featured Reviews

Peter-Murphy - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables proactive threat detection and immediate response through AI monitoring
The most valuable feature of Darktrace is its ability to detect and counter threats before they occur. The autonomous response capability is always enabled, blocking threats immediately without hesitation. Additionally, the Darktrace email platform is a significant asset since it addresses incoming threats before they reach the network, enhancing our security measures. Protecting the business is essential, and ensuring security through 24/7 AI monitoring is invaluable.
Gabor Nyerd - PeerSpot reviewer
Includes four services and four products, which can help organizations a lot
We found that sometimes integrations work, but testing them can take some time. Sometimes, configurations take much longer than expected. We have a configuration in place that needs to be synchronized with another server. However, the servers are four hours apart, so this can cause delays. In general, I believe that the time it takes to configure and test a service should be shorter. Sometimes, it can take a couple of hours to test a single configuration setting. Other times, it is only ten or fifteen minutes, which is normal. However, sometimes, even immediate actions can be triggered by configuration changes, and some settings can take up to eight hours to complete. I believe that this time can be improved. Microsoft is making a lot of improvements to its services in a short period of time. This is a good thing, as it means that the services are constantly being updated and improved. However, it can be challenging for customers to keep up with the changes. For example, a customer may read about an update, understand it, and share it with their colleagues and boss. However, it may take days or weeks to test the update and get the necessary approvals. This can be especially challenging for large customers with many users or machines. In some cases, Microsoft may change a service before the customer has had a chance to implement the previous update. This can be frustrating for customers, as it means that they have to constantly learn new things and adjust their workflows. On the one hand, it is important for Microsoft to keep updating and improving its services. This helps to ensure that the services are meeting the customers' needs and that they are staying ahead of the competition. Microsoft should also be mindful of the challenges that these changes can create for customers. One way to address this challenge is to provide customers with more time to implement changes. Microsoft could also provide more information about upcoming changes so that customers can plan ahead. Ultimately, Microsoft needs to strike a balance between keeping its services up-to-date and providing customers with a smooth transition to new features.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Crowdstrike Falcon compare with Darktrace?
Both of these products perform similarly and have many outstanding attributes. CrowdStrike Falcon offers an amazing user interface that makes setup easy and seamless. CrowdStrike Falcon offers a cl...
Which is better - SentinelOne or Darktrace?
Which solution is better depends on which is more suitable specifically for your company. Darktrace, for example, is meant for smaller to medium-sized businesses. It is also a good option for organ...
What do you like most about Darktrace?
A very useful feature in Darktrace for real-time threat analysis is the packet inspection that analyzes the packet traffic in real time.
What do you like most about Microsoft 365 Defender?
Microsoft Defender XDR provides strong identity protection with comprehensive insights into risky user behavior and potential indicators of compromise.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft 365 Defender?
Licensing is somewhat confusing, particularly when presenting our pitch decks to stakeholders and leveraging key features in premium SKUs, but we managed with some assistance from Microsoft.
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?
It would be beneficial to reduce the number of clicks required to navigate between blades, as the current navigation and breadcrumb system can be a bit confusing. Some inconsistencies exist between...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Irwin Mitchell, Open Energi, Wellcome Trust, FirstGroup plc, Virgin Trains, Drax, QUI! Group, DNK, CreaCard, Macrosynergy, Sisley, William Hill plc, Toyota Canada, Royal British Legion, Vitol, Allianz, KKR, AIRBUS, dpd, Billabong, Mclaren Group.
Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Darktrace vs. Microsoft Defender XDR and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
847,625 professionals have used our research since 2012.