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IBM Security QRadar vs Rapid7 InsightIDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

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

IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
4th
Ranking in User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA)
1st
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
17th
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
207
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (6th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (9th)
Rapid7 InsightIDR
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
9th
Ranking in User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA)
2nd
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
18th
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Threat Deception Platforms (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 8.7%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rapid7 InsightIDR is 2.5%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Q&A Highlights

Navin Rehnius - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 10, 2021
 

Featured Reviews

Md. Shahriar Hussain - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time incident detection and user-friendly dashboard benefit daily operations
There are many types of AI, and this AI is very limited in SQL and features. There may be potential for improvement. So far, it seems very limited. It shows some good features in the correlation part, but I think there is room for improvement. For instance, when creating rules, it can suggest more rules, reducing the effort needed. If AI-related support can suggest rules and integrate with existing security devices like MD, IPS, this SIM can create more relevant rules. Sometimes logs I receive don't mean anything, and I need technical stakeholders to share or forward logs, but these are sometimes inadequate. Keywords can help identify insufficient logs. I often lack time to verify logs. Sharing false positive results could be reduced to help my team.
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

"Technical support is good overall."
"QRadar shows very effective correlations. If you combine all the logins plus user behavior and the current intelligence, it gives a very good correlation for business. I think it reduces the false positives in user activity monitoring because there is a lot of social information to correlate with other data."
"The support is very good. We get support whenever we need it. Sometimes they respond immediately and sometimes it will be within 24 hours. We can ask them to please do it right away and they can get a request done within an hour or two."
"Flexible and valuable product that is modular, so you can easily set up a roadmap for your clients."
"It also has a graph that shows the traffic history. I can see what happened yesterday or today. If there's an incident, I can check the traffic behavior on QRadar."
"It helps us discover any threats with their alerts and tracking."
"It is a pretty solid product for the type that it is representing. It is a CM solution as compared to Splunk or ArcSight from HP. It is also user friendly. It comes with some internal AI as well, in which it automatically maps multiple lots from unrelated devices and makes a smart decision to link them back and create an offense based on that. It is a smart tool."
"Most of our clients are interested in automation. The automation part is good because they are able to detect threats and vulnerabilities in real time. It's very fast."
"Log search allows us to dive deep into aggregated logs and query all event types at once.​"
"The alerting to drive investigations and remediation has been its most valuable feature.​"
"It improves because several sensors are deployed within the on-premise environment. It can be very efficient if the customer implements and operates it effectively."
"It improved my organization by building a security alerting program."
"​​User behavioral analytics allows us to pinpoint abnormal or suspicious behavior among millions of events every day."
"The solution's initial setup is easy."
"The technical support is a solid 10 out of 10 as they take the time to answer any questions or problems which may arise in a reasonable time frame."
"The log aggregation and storage provided by InsightIDR has shown no issues with scalability; aggregating over one hundred millions events daily."
 

Cons

"The solution lacks vendor support."
"Before we didn't have any security issues but recently a few of the user emails were hacked. We had to actually recreate their emails for them."
"The product needs to improve its GUI."
"The implementation of the solution's technology needs to be simplified."
"When it comes to what could be better, it is always what others are trying to do and what is the roadmap. It can have more integration. It should have more flexible RESTful APIs for integration with applications. These are the things that are always in demand for any of the SIEM solutions, not only for QRadar. Integration is ever-evolving. Nowadays, different versions of mobile handsets are there and data is getting scattered. Users are using their personal handsets to keep the data of the organization. So, it should have a more flexible integration, irrespective of the flavor of the firmware and iOS or Android version. It should have an API that can seamlessly get integrated. It should also provide more flexible control and a more advanced or analytical view to see what exactly is happening across the globe or network. From wherever a user is connecting and accessing the enterprise data, it should give real-time visibility and predictive visibility about what exactly is happening. These things are already there, but there should be more advanced control in terms of managing the security."
"They have to build more quantitative monitoring, profiling, and make it more predictive."
"The solution should enhance its capabilities of UEBA and AI/ML tech modeling."
"I'm not sure about the stability just yet. We've observed a few issues and we raised a supporting ticket for it."
"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."
"It would be useful to import threat intelligence in YARA format along with known incorrect email addresses.​"
"The dashboard is an area that could be simplified."
"Rapid7 doesn't integrate well with all our security tools from various vendors, so we plan to switch. Many of our solutions work with Rapid7, but some do not. We are already searching for a replacement already."
"Cloud risk assessment is one area where I think they need a lot of improvement."
"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."
"Inability to get access to compliance reports within the solution."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is costly and the price differs depending on the vendor you use."
"Pricing (based on EPS) will be more accurate."
"Licensing is very expensive, IBM QRadar is a very expensive solution. If you want to minimize costs then IBM QRadar is not for you."
"There is an annual license required for this solution."
"When compared with other SIM solutions, QRadar is considerably less expensive."
"You have a one-time payment, and you also can purchase it for one year as a subscription. We have it on-premise, and we have a permanent license for it. We have to pay for the support on a yearly basis. If you compare its cost with Sentinel for one year, QRadar would seem more expensive, but if you compare its cost over five or ten years, Azure Sentinel will be more expensive than QRadar. If you compare its cost with Sentinel for one year, QRadar would seem more expensive, but if you compare its cost over five or 10 years, Azure Sentinel can be more expensive than QRadar."
"IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics is an application framework and you can install many applications without any additional costs."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate IBM Security QRadar's pricing a five out of ten."
"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 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."
"​Accurately predict your licensing counts as this is a subscription based product.​"
"It is on a yearly basis. For our own company, for about 250 users, it was 16,000 euros a year."
"​I am sure that there are cheaper products out there, but none that meet so many of our needs whilst maintaining stability and usability.​"
"It is more reasonably priced than other vendors."
"The team is very willing to work with companies. My suggestion is to call the Rapid7 sales department and see how they can help.​"
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Comparison Review

VS
Jun 28, 2015
Qradar vs. ArcSight
Continuing with the SIEM posts we have done at Infosecnirvana, this post is a Head to head comparison of the two Industry leading SIEM products in the market – HP ArcSight and IBM QRadar Both the products have consistently been in the Gartner Leaders Quadrant. Both HP and IBM took over niche SIEM…
 

Answers from the Community

Navin Rehnius - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 10, 2021
Aug 10, 2021
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, remember that any EDR/XDR should integrate to the SIEM/SOAR and a strong threat intel source. If you consider SOC outsourcing take your time and find one you can integrate like a virtual team member. They a...
2 out of 12 answers
KM
Jul 26, 2021
I haven't used these big-name ones like Splunk etc. but I feel they're overpriced. I think they charge an arm and a leg for each module. The ROI justification is not there. Why not try a cheaper and robust alternative like Elasticsearch?
KA
Jul 26, 2021
We are using LogRthythm SIEM complete case management and offer SIEM/SOC as service.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
23%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What are the biggest differences between Securonix UEBA, Exabeam, and IBM QRadar?
It mostly depends on your use-cases and environment. Exabeam and Securonix have a stronger UEBA feature set, friendlier GUI and are not licensed based on capacity (amount of logs and information in...
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 IBM Security QRadar?
The cost depends. The price I negotiated varies by region and relationship with the OEM. Cost is not shared due to another procurement team handling negotiations, but it was reasonable as far as I ...
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...
What needs improvement with Rapid7 InsightIDR?
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. I have already opened a list of features with Rapid7, and the...
 

Also Known As

IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
InsightIDR
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Liberty Wines, Pioneer Telephone, Visier
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security QRadar vs. Rapid7 InsightIDR and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.