Microsoft Sentinel vs Rapid7 InsightIDR comparison

Microsoft and Rapid7 are both solutions in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category. Microsoft is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.3, while Rapid7 is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.2. Microsoft holds a 7.5% mindshare in SIEM, compared to Rapid7’s 2.6% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Rapid7 users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Sentinel

Read 90 Microsoft Sentinel reviews

14,032 Views
8,568 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Rapid7 InsightIDR

Read 32 Rapid7 InsightIDR reviews

4,355 Views
2,654 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Microsoft Sentinel

Rapid7 InsightIDR

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Rapid7 InsightIDR and Microsoft Sentinel are security information and event management (SIEM) solutions. Users generally favor Microsoft Sentinel for its comprehensive features, while Rapid7 InsightIDR is praised for supportive customer service and ease of deployment, making it a close competitor.

Features: Rapid7 InsightIDR offers user-friendly threat detection, response capabilities, and ease of use. Microsoft Sentinel provides extensive integration with other Microsoft services, advanced analytics, and a feature-rich platform.

Room for Improvement: Rapid7 InsightIDR requires better reporting granularity, more advanced customization options, and enhanced documentation. Microsoft Sentinel needs improved documentation, easier setup processes, and more responsive customer support.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Rapid7 InsightIDR has a straightforward deployment process and exceptional customer support. Microsoft Sentinel, while powerful, can be complex to deploy and may take time to master. Rapid7 InsightIDR provides a smoother setup experience, while Sentinel's customer service can be less responsive.

Pricing and ROI: Rapid7 InsightIDR is cost-effective with a good return on investment. Microsoft Sentinel, although more expensive, is worth the cost due to its comprehensive features and integration capabilities. Users find that InsightIDR offers better initial cost savings, whereas Sentinel justifies a higher price with advanced functionality.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Sentinel vs. Rapid7 InsightIDR Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Sentinel vs. Rapid7 InsightIDR

February 2025

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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

Microsoft Sentinel

Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (5th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (6th)

Rapid7 InsightIDR

Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

9th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (2nd), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (20th), Threat Deception Platforms (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (15th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 7.5%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rapid7 InsightIDR is 2.6%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Featured Reviews

KrishnanKartik

Cyber Security Consultant at Inspira Enterprise

Every rule enriched at triggering stage, easing the job of SOC analyst

It's a Big Data security analytics platform. Among the unique features is the fact that it has built-in UEBA and analytical capabilities. It allows you to use the out-of-the-box machine learning and AI capabilities, but it also allows you to bring your own AI/ML, by bringing in your own IPs and allowing the platform to accept them and run that on top of it. In addition, the SOAR component is a pay-per-use model. Compared to any other product, where customization is not available, you can fine-tune the SOAR and you'll be charged only when your playbooks are triggered. That is the beauty of the solution because the SOAR is the costliest component in the market today. Other vendors charge heavily for the SOAR, but with Sentinel it is upside-down: the SOAR is the lowest-hanging fruit. It's the least costly and it delivers more value to the customer. The SOAR engine also uniquely helps us to automate most of the incidents with automated enrichment and that cuts out the L1 analyst work. And combining M365 with Sentinel, if you want to call it integration, takes just a few clicks: "next, next finish." If it is all M365-native, it is a maximum of three or four steps and you'll be able to ingest all the logs into Sentinel. That is true even with AWS or GCP because most of the connectors are already available out-of-the-box. You just click, put in your subscription details, include your IAM, and you are finished. Within five to six steps, you can integrate AWS workloads and the logs can be ingested into Sentinel. When it comes to a third party specifically, such as log sources in a data center or on-premises, we need a log collector so that the logs can be forwarded to the Sentinel platform. And when it comes to servers or something where there is an agent for Windows or Linux, the agent can collect the logs and ship them to the Sentinel platform. I don't see any difficulties in integrating any of the log sources, even to the extent of collecting IoT log sources. Microsoft Defender for Cloud has multiple components such as Defender for Servers, Defender for PaaS, and Defender for databases. For customers in Azure, there are a lot of use cases specific to protecting workloads and PaaS and SaaS in Azure and beyond Azure, if a customer also has on-premises locations. There is EDR for Windows and Linux servers, and it even protects different kinds of containers. With Defender for Cloud, all these sources can be seamlessly integrated and you can then track the security incidents in Microsoft's XDR platform. That means you have one more workspace, under Azure, not Defender for Cloud, where you can see the security incidents. In addition, it can be integrated with Sentinel for EDR deep-dive analytics. It can also protect workloads in AWS. We have customers for whom we are protecting their AWS workloads. Even EKS, Elastic Kubernetes Service, on AWS can be integrated, as can the GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine). And with Defender for Cloud, security alert ingestion is free

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Asim Naeem

Principal IT Security & Compliance at IBEX Holdings Ltd

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.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"I like the unified security console. You can close incidents using Sentinel in all other Microsoft Security portals, when it comes to incident response."

"Having your logs put all in one place with machine learning working on those logs is a good feature. I don't need to start thinking, "Where are my logs?" My logs are in a centralized repository, like Log Analytics, which is why you can't use Sentinel without Log Analytics. Having all those logs in one place is an advantage."

"The Log analytics are useful."

"The most valuable feature is the onboarding of the workloads. You can see all that has been onboarded in your account on the dashboards."

"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."

"What is most useful, is that it has a good connection to the Microsoft ecosystem, and I think that's the key part."

"The SOAR playbooks are Sentinel's most valuable feature. It gives you a unified toolset for detecting, investigating, and responding to incidents. That's what clearly differentiates Sentinels from its competitors. It's cloud-native, offering end-to-end coverage with more than 120 connectors. All types of data logs can be poured into the system so analysis can happen. That end-to-end visibility gives it the advantage."

"It is quite efficient. It helps our clients in identifying their security issues and respond quickly. Our clients want to automate incident response and all those things."

More Microsoft Sentinel pros

"Log search allows us to dive deep into aggregated logs and query all event types at once."

"The solution is very scalable in terms of the licensing model."

"The solution's initial setup is easy."

"Simple configuration and automatically syncs to the cloud platform."

"Features for user behavior analytics and the rules for attack review are good."

"The solution is easy to use, and the interface is intuitive."

"InsightIDR has allowed us to find potential security issues that we did not know existed, and get remediation quickly."

"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."

More Rapid7 InsightIDR pros

Cons

"I think the number one area of improvement for Sentinel would be the cost."

"Azure Sentinel will be directly competing with tools such as Splunk or Qradar. These are very established kinds of a product that have been around for the last seven, eight years or more."

"The built-in SOAR is not really good out-of-the-box. The SOAR relies on logic apps and you almost need to have some kind of developer background to be able to make these logic apps. Most security people cannot develop anything..."

"There is a wider thing called Jupyter Notebooks, which is around the automation side of things. It would be good if there are playbooks that you can utilize without having to have the developer experience to do it in-house. Microsoft could provide more playbooks or more Jupyter Notebooks around MITRE ATT&CK Framework."

"Sometimes, we are observing large ingestion delays. We expect logs within 5 minutes, but it takes about 10 to 15 minutes."

"Microsoft Defender has a built-in threat expert option that enables you to contact an expert. That feature isn't available in Sentinel because it's a huge product that integrates all the technologies. I would like Microsoft to add the threat expert option so we can contact them. There are a few other features, like threat assessment that the PG team is working on. I expect them to release this feature in the next quarter."

"The learning curve could be improved. I am still learning it. We were able to implement the basic features to get them up and running, but there are still so many things that I don't know about all its features. They have a lot of features that we have not been able to use or apply. If they could work on reducing the solution's learning curve, that would be good. While there is a training course held by Microsoft to learn more about this solution, there is a cost associated with it."

"Some of the data connectors are outdated, at least the ones that utilize Linux machines for log forwarding. I believe that Microsoft is already working on improving this."

More Microsoft Sentinel cons

"The interface for doing investigation needs to be enhanced with minor improvements that would make it more useful."

"I would like to see more development in InsightIDR towards building their SIEM solution and converting it to XDR."

"Lacks a mobile application."

"There are certain limitations with Rapid7 that I am working on."

"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."

"I would like the ability to adjust the threshold of certain existing alerts. Currently the only option is to change the notifications or create my own alert."

"The APIs can be further improved in Rapid7."

"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."

More Rapid7 InsightIDR cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is certainly the most expensive solution. The cost is very high. We need to do an assessment using the one-month trial so that we can study the cost side. Before implementing it, we must do a careful calculation."

"Microsoft Sentinel is included in our E5 license."

"There are no additional costs other than the initial costs of Sentinel."

"It is consumption-based pricing. It is an affordable solution."

"Microsoft Sentinel is expensive."

"In comparison to other security solutions, Microsoft Sentinel offers a reasonable price for the features included."

"Sentinel is a pay-as-you-go solution. To use it, you need a Log Analytics workspace. This is where the logs are stored and the cost of Log Analytics is based on gigabytes... On top of that, there is the cost of Sentinel, which is about €2 per gigabyte. If a customer has an M365 E5 license, the logs that come from Microsoft Defender are free."

"I am not involved on the financial side, but from an enterprise-wide use perspective, I think the price is good enough."

More Microsoft Sentinel pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The solution has a mid-range price point in the market"

"Licensing is straightforward. If, for some reason, you don’t meet the minimum licensing requirements, there is a third-party managed service that can help."

"Accurately predict your licensing counts as this is a subscription based product."

"Rapid7 InsightIDR's pricing is reasonable."

"Licensing is by endpoint and amount of retention time (at least ours is). Default retention was one year, but we are able to push the retention further if needed. There's also a provide-your-own-S3 option for longer retention if you don't want to pay for the additional retention years in your Rapid7 agreement."

"I rate Rapid7 InsightIDR's price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."

"The team is very willing to work with companies. My suggestion is to call the Rapid7 sales department and see how they can help."

More Rapid7 InsightIDR pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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 ...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rapid7 InsightIDR?

The product pricing is very cheap.

See all answers

Comparisons

AWS Security Hub vs Microsoft Sentinel

Compared 21% of the time

IBM Security QRadar vs Microsoft Sentinel

Compared 9% of the time

Cortex XSIAM vs Microsoft Sentinel

Compared 8% of the time

Wazuh vs Microsoft Sentinel

Compared 6% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Microsoft Sentinel

Compared 3% of the time

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Darktrace vs Rapid7 InsightIDR

Compared 11% of the time

Rapid7 InsightVM vs Rapid7 InsightIDR

Compared 8% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon vs Rapid7 InsightIDR

Compared 5% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Rapid7 InsightIDR

Compared 5% of the time

Wazuh vs Rapid7 InsightIDR

Compared 3% of the time

More Rapid7 InsightIDR Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Sentinel

March 2025

Download Microsoft Sentinel product report

Buyer's Guide

Rapid7 InsightIDR

March 2025

Download Rapid7 InsightIDR product report

Also Known As

Azure Sentinel

InsightIDR

Overview

Microsoft Sentinel is a scalable, cloud-native, security information event management (SIEM) and security orchestration automated response (SOAR) solution that lets you see and stop threats before they cause harm. Microsoft Sentinel delivers intelligent security analytics and threat intelligence across the enterprise, providing a single solution for alert detection, threat visibility, proactive hunting, and threat response. Eliminate security infrastructure setup and maintenance, and elastically scale to meet your security needs—while reducing IT costs. With Microsoft Sentinel, you can:

- Collect data at cloud scale—across all users, devices, applications, and infrastructure, both on-premises and in multiple clouds

- Detect previously uncovered threats and minimize false positives using analytics and unparalleled threat intelligence from Microsoft

- Investigate threats with AI and hunt suspicious activities at scale, tapping into decades of cybersecurity work at Microsoft

- Respond to incidents rapidly with built-in orchestration and automation of common tasks

To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

Microsoft

Parsing hundreds of trivial alerts. Managing a mountain of data. Manually forwarding info from your endpoints. Forget that. InsightIDR instantly arms you with the insight you need to make better decisions across the incident detection and response lifecycle, faster.

Rapid7

Sample Customers

Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.

Liberty Wines, Pioneer Telephone, Visier

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Sentinel vs. Rapid7 InsightIDR

February 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Sentinel vs. Rapid7 InsightIDR

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