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Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence vs Microsoft Defender XDR 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
8.0
Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence offers major ROI by saving 62% on budgets and providing comprehensive threat protection and business value.
Sentiment score
7.0
Microsoft Defender XDR boosts security efficiency, saves time, reduces breaches, despite high licensing costs, enhancing overall organizational security posture.
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
7.4
Microsoft Defender support experiences vary; community platforms help, technical support is inconsistent, with level two proving effective.
Sentiment score
6.4
Microsoft Defender XDR support excels in premium tiers but has mixed reviews for basic service response times and expertise.
Level two support is knowledgeable and knows how the product works, which is very good.
It's critical to escalate SEV B issues immediately to a domestic engineer.
You get stuck in low-level support for way longer than you should, instead of them escalating the issue up the chain.
The customer service is good, and they supported us well.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence is highly scalable, serving diverse businesses effectively, though costs may rise with increased users.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR is scalable and cloud-based, with positive user feedback, but may face network and licensing challenges.
If there were some customizations available, I would rate its scalability as nine out of ten.
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
8.3
Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence offers high reliability and performance, with occasional regional outages, comparable to Office 365 stability.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR is highly stable and reliable, with users rating it 8 or 9 out of 10.
It provides a high level of security and avoids phishing and scam emails.
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

Improving pricing, integration, stability, and support could enhance Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence's market accessibility and effectiveness.
Microsoft Defender XDR needs faster scans, improved integration, intuitive dashboards, cost-effective licensing, better automation, and broader environment support.
Providing code customization would help keep pace with new vulnerabilities and threats.
Improvements are needed in automated response capabilities.
The licensing process needs improvement and clarification.
It would be better if much of that information were immediately visible, especially when looking at endpoints or users.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence offers cost-effective bundling with E5 licenses, beneficial for enterprises but challenging for SMEs preferring E3.
Microsoft Defender XDR pricing opinions vary, with some appreciating bundled savings and others finding standalone costs high.
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.
There are no issues with pricing, but sometimes, the clarity in licensing is a concern.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence offers advanced detection, seamless integration, robust security, proactive monitoring, and effective zero-day vulnerability management.
Microsoft Defender XDR offers integrated tools, enhancing threat detection, management, and automation, simplifying security tasks for enterprise environments.
One of the best features is that it provides a certain level of customization, allowing us to set our spam confidence levels.
This allows us to secure our systems in advance and proactively improve security, rather than waiting for incidents to occur.
With Microsoft threat intelligence information, it detects various types of threats, including insider attacks, malicious content, and data exfiltration.
Vulnerability assessment and just-in-time access are some valuable features of Defender for server plans.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender Threat I...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
18th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (11th), Threat Intelligence Platforms (4th)
Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence is 0.4%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 5.6%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

Nim Nadarajah - PeerSpot reviewer
A native Microsoft solution the provides great ROI and continuously improves its offering
We have Microsoft bias. We generally don't have any significant negative feedback or improvement points around Defender, EDR and CMDR platforms. It does a good job across the board. The price point is something they can improve slightly for those who don't have an M 365 E5. I believe it's a $2.80 cents add-on. In Canadian, that's expensive. If they can drop it to a dollar, for those who don't have M 365 E5, they're going to open up market share and increase affordability for an entire market segment in the medium business category. Other than that, we have no major negative feedback.
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
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Educational Organization
11%
Government
11%
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

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence?
It just runs in the background. I don't have to worry about, making sure it's Intelligence. So, you know, this kind of makes it very easy, have to worry about installing. It is easy to use.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence?
Some of the customization features could be improved by providing a portion of it as open source. This would allow integration with other solutions, enhancing Threat Intelligence. Providing code cu...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence?
We are using Microsoft Defender ATP specifically as an email security solution, as well as for our critical servers as a web security solution. We have almost eleven hundred users utilizing it for ...
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

Information Not Available
Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence vs. Microsoft Defender XDR and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
847,625 professionals have used our research since 2012.