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Malwarebytes Teams vs Microsoft Defender for Business comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 15, 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...
Sponsored
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
105
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (8th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (7th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (2nd)
Malwarebytes Teams
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
22nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender for Busi...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
16th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.4%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Malwarebytes Teams is 2.1%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Business is 2.0%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.4%
Microsoft Defender for Business2.0%
Malwarebytes Teams2.1%
Other92.5%
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

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.
Davina Becker - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Content Strategist at PeerSpot
Provides protection against malware but needs improved billing transparency
I can only speak to it on a personal level. If someone is considering it, they should test it on their own systems. I can't personally recommend it because each person has their own needs. While it may work for me as a malware antivirus solution, I can't recommend it to someone else who may have a different system or use case. I rate the overall solution 7.5 out of 10. Malwarebytes protects me against malware. If they fix the pricing model so it's not automatically charging me, the rating could improve. Until then, I can't give it an 8.
Takayuki-Umehara - PeerSpot reviewer
Public Cloud Engineer at Prudential
Product deployment protects assets but needs improvement in system support
I am doing maintenance for Microsoft Defender for Business, and I'm currently working with it. We don't need to use the latest version of Microsoft Defender for Business. We still use the latest virus definition file that Microsoft Defender for Business has automatically updated. We implement a basic update mechanism. Our compliance division manages how many servers and PCs we have and whether those servers have antivirus solutions. I am not certain about how Microsoft Defender for Business helps with AI-driven security strategies. I just use it normally and don't know if it uses AI technology. I rate Microsoft Defender for Business a six 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

"The positive impacts I see from Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks include a complete 360-degree view of our security posture altogether, being a uniform platform where we are ingesting logs from multiple resources."
"It has pretty much everything we need and works well within the Palo Alto ecosystem."
"Provides behavior-based detection which offers many benefits over signature-based detection."
"The solution allows control over the user and his machine through Cortex XDR security policies."
"Cortex XDR is a very capable solution for protecting large networks and a lot of endpoints. It's very useful because the automation is very high, and if you combine it with the features on Palo Alto firewalls, it provides very strong protection."
"Cortex XDR is a simple platform that's easy for administrators and users. You have a lot of flexibility to change or customize the features."
"Since they've done their most recent update, the ease to isolate endpoints is valuable. If we find one where there is a virus on it, we can easily isolate it. We don't even have to contact the user. We don't have to manually take them off the network. We can easily isolate them."
"Automation and playbooks have helped me significantly, as Cortex Xnor's playbooks predefine the workflow of the automation, such as response processes, alert triggering, and enriching the context, efficiently detecting and blocking malicious attacks with firewalls while eliminating workload and speeding responses for next-generation operations."
"The central management of devices from different sites is a very good feature; this has made them much easier to manage."
"The product provides notifications for suspicious events. We have several public access points. The product helps to prevent unauthorized entry. Its most valuable features are pre-installation procedures and a cloud console. The console's interface is simple and can be viewed easily to take action. It covers everything in terms of security threats."
"The pricing of the product is very good."
"When it comes to frontend protections, it has some of the best definitions. In addition, they do traditional signature and heuristic detection a lot better than Microsoft and some other players in that space."
"The protection is really good with Malwarebytes. It's also user friendly and quite easy to set up."
"The solution has a good management interface."
"The most valuable features of Malwarebytes are the EDR and the complete feature set provided."
"The behavior-based detection is very nice, and it combats zero-day threats by looking for anomalous behaviors."
"I haven't had any problems with the tool's stability."
"The most effective features of Microsoft Defender for Business include its threat detection and response capabilities in managing vulnerabilities and ransomware attacks."
"Defender's main strength is its integration with Microsoft Sentinel, offering valuable insights."
"Using Microsoft Defender for Business is beneficial for my company."
"The best features of Microsoft Defender for Business include it coming as an XDR solution which provides automated investigations, remediations, and endpoint detection and response."
"Microsoft Defender for Business offers the best pricing option in the market and is very cost-effective."
"Microsoft Defender for Business works well with the Microsoft Azure Security ecosystem, including Defender for Endpoint and Office 365 Cloud."
"Microsoft Defender for Business stands out due to its ease of use, particularly due to the fact that many of my customers already use Microsoft and Azure."
 

Cons

"The server sometimes stops continuously to check things so it would be helpful to receive access updates or technical reasons."
"Cortex XDR could be improved with more GUI features."
"In terms of areas of improvement, we have not completed our review of the product. We're also looking at other products. So, it's a little bit hard to tell what could be different because we have not completed the review of this product, but based on our experience so far, its implementation is quite complex."
"Traps doesn't work with McAfee. You need to remove McAfee to install Traps. This is very common, and its nothing that should be an issue. Some antivirus engines recognize Traps as an threat component, so maybe they need to shake hands somewhere."
"Technology evolves every day, so it would be nice if it gets more secure. It can also have more integration with other platforms."
"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."
"Although I would say this product is highly-rated, it could probably do more because nothing does everything that you want."
"In an upcoming release, the solution could improve by proving hard disk encryption. If it could support this it would be a complete solution."
"My clients have frequently encountered some tech support scams where when you go to a particular website, it throws up a fake warning to you and states that you need to call this number."
"The product is a little bit more expensive than the other brands."
"The reporting is not as flexible as you would find with other antivirus software."
"Every once in a while, it gets clobbered by updates from other places. I don't think this should happen."
"This solution reports far too many false positives!"
"I would like to see integration with other vendors going forward."
"Malwarebytes can improve its network database. Malwarebytes can scan the files and registry. It can scan the system with a light agent. It will not impact the performance of your PC. You can do the full scan and database scan using the EDR, and the RAM and CPU consumption will not increase."
"The stability and performance of the solution are areas with shortcomings that need improvement."
"Threat protection could be improved even though it is already a built-in feature."
"The user interface has a lot of features which can make it complex and hard to adapt to for some users."
"The biggest one is that Defender needs to be more proactive to the emerging threats. There can be tighter integration with email, especially how it integrates with our email system, which is the Microsoft Outlook suite. There should be the ability to react a lot quicker to emerging threats because sometimes, it takes a few days before some of these new threats are fully identified, and we need that to be a few hours."
"Microsoft should provide batch management solutions with the application, integrating pass management with roles."
"I am not satisfied with Microsoft's technical support. There are challenges with the knowledge and experience of the support staff, frequent redirection between departments, and slow response times."
"The solution's AI is notorious for false positives, and the time you have to spend training it is ridiculous."
"We faced some issues while running some applications on Mac."
"Talking with the tool's technician about any problem is very complicated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is an expensive solution."
"The pricing seems fair, and I do like the licensing model. You use wherever they are, and it is elastic."
"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 is on the higher side, but it's okay."
"In terms of the cost Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is very expensive because we are a Mexican company and when you translate dollars to pesos the cost is very high. The solution is very expensive for Mexican companies. I understand that they have international prices, but I do not think it offsets the price enough for many companies in countries, such as Mexico. The amount it is reduced is not a massive percentage."
"It has a yearly renewal."
"We didn't have to pay any additional fee for the cloud instance. It just came with the renewal, which was nice."
"The price of the solution is high for the license and in general."
"It is expensive."
"I believe the retail price is between $40 and $50 per copy."
"It is really expensive. We've got between 30 and 40 licenses every year, and for the number of licenses that we have, we're finding that Malwarebytes on average costs between $900 and $1,000 more per year than comparable options. We're paying about $3,300 per year for these licenses. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee."
"The platform pricing is competitive with other antivirus products."
"Malwarebytes is a cost-effective product."
"Its licensing is annual. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee."
"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten."
"I would say that it's affordable. It costs much less than Sentinel One, CrowdStrike, or anything of that nature. But, at the same time, you are getting what you pay for. So I would say it's one of the best when you're comparing traditional NextGen AVs like Webroot that aren't the best in the bunch."
"The tool's cost has been a little high, but I do not think it was terrible."
"Since we're a nonprofit, we get pretty good discounts on the tool."
"It has to get more competitive because we are starting to see some of the competitors providing better pricing, and some of it, of course, is to gain market share. The Defender product pricing is probably a little higher than the competitors."
"Defender for Business is included by default with an Office 365 premium subscription."
"The tool is cheap, while some other solutions are more expensive. I remember the tool cost about five euros for a workstation or for a user on a monthly basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Comms Service Provider
10%
University
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Government
6%
Retailer
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business42
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
 

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,...
What do you like most about Malwarebytes?
Ten times a day, improved signatures will be downloaded, so it is very up-to-date in terms of malware experience.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Malwarebytes?
I really hate the automatic rebilling without officially confirming it with me. It's an annoyance and they should at ...
What needs improvement with Malwarebytes?
It takes up too much space when it's trying to run in the background.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Business?
Our thoughts on the pricing for Microsoft Defender for Business are that we wish it could be better. If the pricing w...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Business?
I see room for improvement in Microsoft Defender for Business, particularly regarding the consolidation of all securi...
 

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
Knutson Construction
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Malwarebytes Teams vs. Microsoft Defender for Business and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
882,637 professionals have used our research since 2012.