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Darktrace vs Stellar Cyber Open XDR comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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...
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Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (6th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Darktrace
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (9th), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (2nd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (1st), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (10th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (9th), Attack Surface Management (ASM) (4th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th), AI Observability (6th)
Stellar Cyber Open XDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
38th
Average Rating
0.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (47th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (27th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (56th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (16th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (24th), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (20th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (17th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 4.7%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Darktrace is 4.7%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Stellar Cyber Open XDR is 2.1%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks4.7%
Darktrace4.7%
Stellar Cyber Open XDR2.1%
Other88.5%
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.
AM
Technical Consultant - Unix Platform Services at BITS AND BYTE IT CONSULTING PVT LTD
Consistent threat hunting and anomaly detection deliver valuable insights for network security management
In terms of improvement for Darktrace, pricing is the main concern. Pricing bothers me and this is one of the major factors when choosing a solution. When we get feedback from customers, that's the only felt need. When we factor in Darktrace, we do it only limited. We put it on where the perimeters and connections are, but still, some gray areas are left out, especially if we have multiple branches. We need Darktrace on each branch to get the data out, and I suggest having some kind of a centralized product that gets data from multiple sources to aggregate and provide the data.
Hrishiraj Bhattacharjee - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder & CEO at Team Karimganj
Correlates incidents, allows for quicker identification and helps prioritize investigations
The only challenge is, and that’s where we come into play, it’s a pretty high-tech platform. So, it’s difficult for small and medium-sized organizations to manage it on their own. It’s a very complex system. It requires a lot of expertise. All my guys who work on it have gone through certification from Stellar itself. There are three different certifications that you need to complete. Only then are you certified by Stellar to work on it. It’s a very complex platform. Not everyone can use it. A simple IT engineer or system admin won’t be able to handle it because it’s quite complex. You need to have an understanding of the industry, the subject, and the tool. So, just purchasing this tool or license and then using it on your own would be very difficult to configure and manage on a day-to-day basis. The pricing model is not suitable for small and medium companies, particularly small companies. The minimum pricing model they have is suitable for companies with more than one thousand users. So, if someone has 50 to 100 users, like typical small companies, it’s difficult for them because the cost involved is high. Stellar would charge you for those thousand users, but you do not need all those users. So what are they going to do? I guess Stellar does not want to target small companies directly and maybe relies on resellers and MSPs like us to sell it. So, that is something I would recommend changing. Otherwise, it’s a great tool, but because of the pricing model, small companies are unable to leverage the advantage of this beautiful tool. So, the pricing model should be suitable for small and medium businesses. The product currently has vulnerability monitoring and everything. But if they could also do something about vulnerability management and maybe patch management, that would be nice.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is an easy-to-use tool."
"It has a higher cost than other solutions, like CrowdStrike or Microsoft’s EDR tools, but it reduces the cost of our operations because it’s a new generation antivirus tool."
"It detected stuff that other things wouldn't detect."
"I have found the solution to be very easy in respect of the integration and configurable."
"The solution allows us to make investigations. Other XDR solutions also provide similar capabilities but for investigation, Cortex XDR is better."
"Once you become familiar with it, Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is a more powerful tool and I would say that I prefer it over MDE because it is a stronger tool for me."
"If the user leaves our premises or network, Palo Alto Traps will still be on that endpoint and will still apply our policies."
"It collects and caches and the knowledge of machine learning from different customers to take to the cloud, it makes it better to use for everybody, it allows for quick learning and updates and can, therefore, offer zero-day malware security, and this sharing of metadata helps make the solution very safe."
"I find the complete portfolio to be excellent."
"Darktrace is extremely stable."
"The most valuable features of Darktrace are its full capabilities. You have visibility of everything."
"The product offers us a very good user interface and we've found the network visibility to be very good so far."
"The most valuable feature is the alerts. The alerts are meaningful. The event rolls up into meaningful and actionable alerts rather than just being noise."
"Regarding the autonomous response feature, I appreciate how it functions within the platform."
"I have used multiple solutions, but its graphical user interface is quite interesting and quite descriptive, with a lot of video animations where we can easily see how the data is transferred between various points, and it is also quite easy to understand for a new user."
"The most valuable feature is the solution's ability to trim out the false positives and point your attention to the real important stuff."
"It can integrate with almost any cybersecurity tool available in the market."
"Stellar Cyber Open XDR offers these functionalities at a more affordable price, making it easier for me to position it with price-sensitive customers."
 

Cons

"There are some third-party solutions that are difficult to integrate with, which is something that can be improved."
"As an improvement, I would like to see enhanced connection speeds."
"The installation should be easier and the Palo Alto pre-sales and sales teams should have more information on the product because they don't know what they are selling."
"The solution should offer more dashboards and they should be better customized."
"The setup is quite easy. We had appropriate support from the manager. One thing that was missing was the integration part."
"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."
"Technology evolves every day, so it would be nice if it gets more secure. It can also have more integration with other platforms."
"The solution lags to the real-time scenarios here and there."
"This is quite an expensive product so the pricing is something that can be improved."
"The cost is a bit on the higher side."
"It would be helpful if they could recognize incidents and simplify the customer's challenge to identify what is happening."
"There are numerous false positives."
"One thing that I would like to look at going forward is to have a fully automated network infrastructure that is monitored automatically real-time, and that gives me this kind of capability where I would be able to look at my network at any given time and see the state of my network. With Darktrace, at the moment, I have to almost put in a date and tell them that want you to give me data from this date to this date. I don't want that. I want a fast solution in which it doesn't matter when I log into the application. Whenever I log in, I must be able to see my network and run a report. In other words, if I go in now and I say, "Give me a full report of what happened today, it must be able to give me that. It mustn't just be limited to a seven-day period, for argument's sake. It must be able to give me real-time and day-to-day tracking of what has happened within my network."
"The product is considered expensive compared to others."
"My only criticism of the product is that its licensing model isn't flexible."
"The initial setup is a bit complex."
"Support is an issue because they have a limited number of resources."
"I would rate the stability at about five to six. The platform requires some fine-tuning, especially when integrating data sources and creating connectors."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cortex XDR's pricing is ok."
"I don't have any issues with the pricing. We are satisfied with the price."
"Cortex XDR’s pricing is very reasonable."
"The pricing is a little bit on the expensive side."
"The solution is expensive. It's pricing is on a yearly-basis."
"The cost of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is $55 to $90 USD per endpoint per month."
"Cortex XDR is a costly solution."
"I don't recall what the cost was, but it wasn't really that expensive."
"The pricing is subscription-based and it is high."
"The solution is about $6,000 per quarter."
"The cost of the solution can be reduced to make it more appealing to customers."
"If you consider the features and the cost of market leaders, we are satisfied with the pricing."
"When it comes to large installations, it can be expensive, but for small accounts it's fine."
"I'm unfamiliar with the exact cost, but we have a yearly license and had to pay for Darktrace's services before the deployment. The product is very expensive, so some organizations can't afford to pay the total amount directly, meaning they often seek a partner or pay in installments, which increases the price more."
"Prior to negotiating, Darktrace offered their appliance and service for $80,000 per year."
"It was $3,600 a month or $2,000 plus or so. I am not sure. Its licensing is pretty simple."
"It’s a single license platform."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise48
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise29
No data available
 

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,...
How does Crowdstrike Falcon compare with Darktrace?
Both of these products perform similarly and have many outstanding attributes. CrowdStrike Falcon offers an amazing u...
Which is better - SentinelOne or Darktrace?
Which solution is better depends on which is more suitable specifically for your company. Darktrace, for example, is ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Darktrace?
Concerning pricing for the product, I would say it is somewhat expensive.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Stellar Cyber Open XDR?
Pricing is a major benefit of Stellar Cyber Open XDR. I rate it between three and four on the cost scale. It offers f...
What needs improvement with Stellar Cyber Open XDR?
I am currently evaluating Stellar Cyber Open XDR in terms of their support. I do not see any major areas for improvem...
What is your primary use case for Stellar Cyber Open XDR?
I use Stellar Cyber Open XDR ( /products/stellar-cyber-open-xdr-reviews ) as a 24/7 security monitoring tool, especia...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
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.
Sumitomo Chemical USA, PlastiPak Packaging, University of Denver, Large California State Agency, Large Midwestern American City
Find out what your peers are saying about Darktrace vs. Stellar Cyber Open XDR and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
892,868 professionals have used our research since 2012.