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Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Entra ID Protection 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
7.0
Microsoft Defender XDR boosts security efficiency, saves time, reduces breaches, despite high licensing costs, enhancing overall organizational security posture.
Sentiment score
7.1
Microsoft Entra ID Protection achieved ROI in three years, enhancing efficiency and user satisfaction despite higher costs.
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.
There is a return on investment in terms of time-saving, control, and ease of manageability of the environment.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
Microsoft Defender XDR support excels in premium tiers but has mixed reviews for basic service response times and expertise.
Sentiment score
6.1
Entra ID Protection support receives mixed reviews; while responsive for some, others report delays, reliance on documentation, and inconsistent ticket handling.
You get stuck in low-level support for way longer than you should, instead of them escalating the issue up the chain.
It's critical to escalate SEV B issues immediately to a domestic engineer.
The technical support from Microsoft Defender XDR has been disappointingly slow.
They often refer to internal blogs, which doesn't offer much new information and can limit our capabilities in troubleshooting.
Tickets often bounce from person to person, requiring the sharing of information multiple times.
My teammates have had good communication with Microsoft.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR is scalable and cloud-based, with positive user feedback, but may face network and licensing challenges.
Sentiment score
8.6
Microsoft Entra ID Protection offers scalable, adaptable solutions with high performance, praised for flexibility and cloud-native capabilities across industries.
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.
Since it is a cloud computing product, it can accommodate a range of company sizes, from a few users to large businesses.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR is highly stable and reliable, with users rating it 8 or 9 out of 10.
Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Entra ID Protection and Azure AD are generally stable, reliable, and perform well, with minor and infrequent issues.
The service has remained consistently online, with any issues isolated to specific components, suggesting a well-designed and modular architecture.
The services within our ecosystem have been reliable, meeting their SLAs.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender XDR needs faster scans, improved integration, intuitive dashboards, cost-effective licensing, better automation, and broader environment support.
Microsoft Entra ID Protection needs better management, integration, scalability, and simplified user interface, with key improvements for Mac support.
The licensing process needs improvement and clarification.
Improvements are needed in automated response capabilities.
Some inconsistencies exist between blades, which could be improved for a more seamless user and UI experience.
Microsoft has not offered control over how they calculate high or low-risk scenarios.
There is no write-back feature from the cloud to local, which would allow me to use my own credentials from the cloud tenant securely.
There is room for improvement in the ability for Entra ID Protection to inherit roles and configurations from whatever solution I am migrating from.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender XDR pricing opinions vary, with some appreciating bundled savings and others finding standalone costs high.
Microsoft Entra ID Protection's pricing is seen as competitive, yet sometimes perceived as complex or expensive by enterprise buyers.
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.
Entra ID Protection is not badly priced, but some clients, especially in medium to smaller scale companies in third-world countries, find it quite expensive.
Microsoft Entra ID requires additional licensing components.
The pricing for Microsoft Entra ID protection is not expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender XDR offers integrated tools, enhancing threat detection, management, and automation, simplifying security tasks for enterprise environments.
Microsoft Entra ID Protection integrates seamlessly, enhancing security with multifactor authentication, conditional access, and scalable user management.
With Microsoft threat intelligence information, it detects various types of threats, including insider attacks, malicious content, and data exfiltration.
This allows us to secure our systems in advance and proactively improve security, rather than waiting for incidents to occur.
It's because endpoint management is my primary focus, and this feature integrates well with my other skills.
Having a single sign-on feature with Entra ID ensures seamless access to various applications, even those with significant security constraints.
These features ease the job of security analysts, providing a better vision of user activities and potential risks.
The valuable features of Entra ID Protection include providing me visibility of my entire estate, managing access, and having a level of control.
 

Categories and Ranking

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)
Microsoft Entra ID Protection
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Identity Management (IM) (8th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 5.6%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID Protection is 4.6%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Mahender Nirwan - PeerSpot reviewer
Access to other software is just one click away and suitable for big organizations
Currently, we have limited use of Microsoft AD. We only use it to see if user blocks are available. If they are, we unblock the account and get access accordingly. AD has paid access control features. We can add access control over AD. For example, for documentation, we use an Outline tool. It's open source, and we add our company's knowledge base to it. It's an alternative to Confluence. We don't want everyone to have access to all documentation. If I create documentation for my team, only my team should have access, not support or sales. We can add these scopes or access controls over AD. Once integrated, the person will get the appropriate access control features upon logging in. Role-based access control is a great feature of Active Directory.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory Identity Protection?
The pricing for Microsoft Entra ID protection is not expensive. It varies based on the company's size and quality.
What needs improvement with Azure Active Directory Identity Protection?
I have set up my Active Directory locally for the same domain. However, Entra ID lacks a function to synchronize from the cloud to the local directory. This is a significant issue since there is no...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
Azure Active Directory Identity Protection, Azure AD Identity Protection
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
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Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender XDR vs. Microsoft Entra ID Protection and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
847,625 professionals have used our research since 2012.