Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Microsoft Sentinel comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
7.2
Users report positive ROI from Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, citing cost savings, improved security, and effective system integration.
Sentiment score
7.2
Users find Microsoft Sentinel offers positive ROI through improved visibility, automation, and efficiency, despite initial costs and quantification challenges.
The return on investment is primarily in time savings and better observability of what's happening.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint's support is generally reliable, with mixed reviews on response time and resolution quality.
Sentiment score
6.9
Microsoft Sentinel support is mixed; premium plans and better Microsoft relationships yield favorable experiences despite some challenges.
I rate Microsoft support 10 out of 10.
Due to our size, we don't have access to direct technical support, but the knowledge base, Microsoft Learn, and the articles available are really good.
The level-one support seems disconnected from subject matter experts.
Their solutions' integration simplifies resolving issues compared to those caused by third-party products.
Working with a Sentinel engineer helped us tune settings effectively.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint offers scalable integration and cloud-based management, but customization may need extra tools in complex settings.
Sentiment score
8.1
Microsoft Sentinel's cloud architecture ensures scalable, flexible data handling with minimal management, supporting large user bases and easy integration.
We managed to scale it out in a short amount of time, with two months of planning and three months of implementation on 10,000 computers.
Defender's scalability is phenomenal, and it's going to be one of the keys to resolving issues for the SOC.
It's pretty easy to scale with Microsoft, as they make it easy if you look into the documentation.
Office 365 and Exchange are running on it, covering about 35,000 users efficiently.
As our organization uses Microsoft Azure and Defender, everything grows together, and we can integrate various features seamlessly.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is stable, integrates well with Windows, but occasionally has configuration and memory issues.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Sentinel is highly stable and reliable, with users praising its performance and noting rare, minor configuration issues.
Defender for Endpoint is extremely stable.
I rate Defender 10 out of 10 for stability.
I haven't seen any outages with Microsoft.
So far, we have not experienced any issues, and it has been stable from the beginning.
Sentinel's stability is great.
 

Room For Improvement

Users criticize Microsoft Defender for Endpoint's complex interface, limited integration, and request enhancements in analytics, protection, and support.
Microsoft Sentinel users seek improved third-party integration, user-friendly features, enhanced threat intelligence, and streamlined data management to reduce costs.
Repeated interactions are necessary due to Level One's lack of tools and knowledge, hindering efficient problem-solving and negatively impacting our experience with Microsoft support.
We have multiple endpoints, and we want to look for signals across tenants.
You have to go through tons of documentation to find what you want.
We have some tools, such as our off-site Meraki firewalls, that have not fully integrated with Sentinel.
Currently, we are happy to have a way in the middle with not so much cost, but it would be nice to have the ability to enhance the automation of workflows based on learned incidents.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint offers flexible, cost-effective pricing, especially in E5 bundles, adapting to various enterprise licensing needs.
Microsoft Sentinel offers cost-effective, consumption-based pricing, benefiting from Azure integration with careful data management to control expenses.
Given our extensive Microsoft licensing, transitioning to Defender for Endpoint did not affect licensing costs.
The pricing, setup, and licensing were very easy and simple.
We already had the necessary licensing for Sentinel, so we didn't need to spend extra money.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint provides comprehensive cybersecurity with seamless integration, robust threat analytics, and efficient management across platforms without performance impact.
Microsoft Sentinel offers seamless integration, AI-driven threat detection, and automation, providing comprehensive security and ease of setup for organizations.
Defender for Endpoint's coverage across different platforms in our environment is pretty good. We have devices running Linux, Mac OS, Windows, iOS, and Android. It covers all of them.
The notification and reporting features are most valuable because we are part of a compliance project, and maintaining SOC 2 compliance is critical.
Web filtering is the most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint because it effectively maintains security for website access.
Custom workbooks are valuable. It is one of the crucial points in dealing with potential security threats in an automated way without requiring too much manpower.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
190
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (2nd), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (2nd)
Microsoft Sentinel
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 9.0%, up from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 5.4%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

Sudhen Swami - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to update with good protection and a useful cloud portal
We've mainly used it for endpoints. However, we've also used it for DLP as well. We're also in the process of implementing it for cloud and identity as well. However, it's very good for endpoints, and that's our main focus. The malware protection is good. The visibility it provides is very useful. We can combine visibility with wider security features and alerts around malware, misconfiguration, or any other kinds of threats. The cloud portal is quite good. From there, we are able to see alerts and have colleagues review issues and monitor to see if any patterns arise. It's serving us quite well overall. It allows us to look at other items, like application and browser control. It helps us prioritize threats. We have a process in place now where we can review issues and remediate them effectively. We have been able to integrate a variety of Microsoft security products together. We use Azure AD, for example, and we've begun to implement DLP, among other items. We're looking at labeling and tagging and will expand into that soon. Defender has more stringent system requirements than, for example, Check Point. So when we implemented the Check Point Endpoint agent, that solution didn't mind what version of Windows you were using. When we moved to Defender, Defender had certain system prerequisites that had to be met. So we had to make sure that we're on a minimum version of Windows when we're utilizing Office, and Office has to be a particular version as well. It has more stringent system requirements that have to be met before you can implement it. It works natively together with other Microsoft solutions. Once you get more and more of those different components across the environment, then you start to get better visibility. So, rather than having lots of different solutions, you have fewer solutions and a single vendor solution. That way, you start getting into a position where you get better visibility and integration as well. The standardization is good. It's important. It's helping me with monitoring and learning. Updates and upgrades are quite smooth and seamless. Defender helps us automate routine tasks. Quite a lot of Microsoft is straightforward for us now. Previously, we didn't have enough resources and were unable to look at the alerts. Having this in place makes things a lot more straightforward for us. We have both the technology and the people in place now, alongside the process. We do see the benefits in that, and that's why we're continuing our adoption across the estate in terms of client and server as well. It's helping us avoid looking at multiple dashboards and centralized monitoring. We're not fully there yet. We're getting there. While we haven't witnessed time saving yet, once it's fully deployed, it will. By then, we'll have standardized processes across a single solution. We have saved money, however, as we continue to reduce non-Mircosft systems. Since we won't be using various competing technologies, we can save on licensing costs. We've likely so far saved 15%. While it's hard to estimate exactly how much, the solution has helped us decrease time to detection and time to respond.
Nitin Arora - PeerSpot reviewer
Gives us one place to investigate and respond to threats, and automation eliminates manual work
They can work on the EDR side of things. It is already really superb, because of the kinds of features we get with the EDR solution. It's not a standard EDR and they have recently enhanced things. But the problem is with onboarding devices. I have different OS flavors, including a large number of Linux, Windows, macOS, and some on-prem machines as well. Every time we need to onboard these kinds of machines into the EDR, we need to do it with the help of Intune, to sync up the devices, and do the configuration. I'm looking for something on the EDR side that will reduce this kind of work. They can eliminate having to do manual configuration for the machines, and check the different types of configurations for each OS. In some cases, it does not support some OSs. If they could reduce this type of work, that would be really amazing.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Microsoft Security Suite solutions are best for your needs.
825,399 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
27%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
Which offers better endpoint security - Symantec or Microsoft Defender?
We use Symantec because we do not use MS Enterprise products, but in my opinion, Microsoft Defender is a superior solution. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security s...
How does Microsoft Defender for Endpoint compare with Crowdstrike Falcon?
The CrowdStrike solution delivers a lot of information about incidents. It has a very light sensor that will never push your machine hardware to "test", you don't have the usual "scan now" feature ...
Is there a common threat intelligence tool that aggregates multiple threat intelligence sources?
Yes, Azure Sentinel is a SIEM on the Cloud. Multiple data sources can be uploaded and analyzed with Azure Sentinel and its Threat Hunting functionality with AI available as templates or customized ...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
Which is better - Azure Sentinel or AWS Security Hub?
We like that Azure Sentinel does not require as much maintenance as legacy SIEMs that are on-premises. Azure Sentinel is auto-scaling - you will not have to worry about performance impact, you will...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
Azure Sentinel
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs. Microsoft Sentinel and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
825,399 professionals have used our research since 2012.