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 8.4, while Rapid7 is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.1. Microsoft holds a 7.7% 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 89 Microsoft Sentinel reviews

14,981 Views
8,977 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Rapid7 InsightIDR

Read 32 Rapid7 InsightIDR reviews

4,623 Views
2,719 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) (3rd), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (21st), Threat Deception Platforms (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (15th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 7.7%, down from 9.7% 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

"The features that stand out are the detection engine and its integration with multiple data sources."

"I like the KQL query. It simplifies getting data from the table and seeing the logs. All you need to know are the table names. It's quite easy to build use cases by using KQL."

"While Microsoft Sentinel provides a log of security events, its true power lies in its integration with Microsoft Defender."

"Native integration with Microsoft security products or other Microsoft software is also crucial. For example, we can integrate Sentinel with Office 365 with one click. Other integrations aren't as easy. Sometimes, we have to do it manually."

"It has a lot of great features."

"Azure Application Gateway makes things a lot easier. You can create dashboards, alert rules, hunting and custom queries, and functions with it."

"Sentinel's most important feature is the ability to centralize all the logs in one place. There's no need to search multiple systems for information."

"Previously, it was a little bit difficult to find where an incident came from, including which IP address and which country. So in Sentinel, it's very easy to find where the incident came from since we can easily get the information from the dashboard, after which we take action quickly."

More Microsoft Sentinel pros

"The platform offers unlimited storage and agent-based solutions."

"The ability to ingest Office 365 log files, then process them into events and display them on a map."

"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."

"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 application belongs to a known ransomware group. The system rates the threat, offering a clear detection ratio, such as 97 out of 100. It not only identifies threats but also illustrates the associated behaviors, helping us understand the potential risk to a particular endpoint."

"Very intuitive and easy to set up."

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

"Enables the use of honey pots, honey users, and honey files to monitor for suspicious patterns."

"User behavioral analytics allows us to pinpoint abnormal or suspicious behavior among millions of events every day."

More Rapid7 InsightIDR pros

Cons

"At the network level, there is a limitation in integrating some of the switches or routers with Microsoft Sentinel. Currently, SPAN traffic monitoring is not available in Microsoft Sentinel. I have heard that it is available in Defender for Identity, which is a different product. It would be good if LAN traffic monitoring or SPAN traffic monitoring is available in Microsoft Sentinel. It would add a lot of value. It is available in some of the competitor products in the market."

"Sentinel still has some anomalies. For example, sometimes when we write a query for log analysis with KQL, it doesn't give us the data in a proper way... Also, the fields or columns could be improved. Sometimes, it is not giving the desired results and there is a blank field."

"Sentinel can be used in two ways. With other tools like QRadar, I don't need to run queries. Using Sentinel requires users to learn KQL to run technical queries and check things. If they don't know KQL, they can't fully utilize the solution."

"Its documentation is not so simple. It is easy for somebody who is Microsoft certified or more closely attached to Microsoft solutions. It is not easy for those who are working on open-source platforms. There isn't a central point where everything is documented, and there is no specific training or certification."

"We're satisfied with the comprehensiveness of the security protection. That said, we do have issues sometimes where there have been global outages and we need to raise a ticket with Microsoft."

"The solution should allow for a streamlined CI/CD procedure."

"We have been working with multiple customers, and every time we onboard a customer, we are missing an essential feature that surprisingly doesn't exist in Sentinel. We searched the forums and knowledge bases but couldn't find a solution. When you onboard new customers, you need to enable the data connectors. That part is easy, but you must create rules from scratch for every associated connector. You click "next," "next," "next," and it requires five clicks for each analytical rule. Imagine we have a customer with 150 rules."

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

More Microsoft Sentinel cons

"I feel it would greatly benefit from more supported log sources."

"Customised alert recipients need to be added to allow better first-line action and quicker response. Configurable honeypots would be a welcome addition."

"The searching feature in Rapid7 InsightIDR needs to evolve"

"Cloud risk assessment is one area where I think they need a lot of improvement."

"They should add more configuration and security features to it."

"One of the things that could be better is digital forensics. It is there, but it can be better. They could provide more on the endpoint detection level."

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

More Rapid7 InsightIDR cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Sentinel can be expensive. When you ingest data from sources that are outside of the cloud, you're paying a fair amount for that data ingestion. When you're ingesting data sources from within the cloud, depending on what your retention periods are, it's not that expensive."

"We must have saved some money with this product. It is a cloud-native product, and the ingestion is per GB. Every GB costs a certain amount of money. That is how the license of Microsoft Sentinel works."

"Microsoft Sentinel can be costly, particularly for data management."

"The pricing is reasonable, and we think Sentinel is worth what we pay for it."

"Pricing is pay-as-you-go with Sentinel, which is good because it all depends on the number of users and the number of devices to which you connect."

"It comes with a Microsoft subscription which the customer has, so they don't have to invest somewhere else."

"Sentinel's price is comparable to pretty much everything out there. None of it is cheap, but we didn't think we could save money by going a different route. Sentinel was part of our Azure expenditures, so it was easier to add the expense instead of having a completely separate vendor."

"Currently, given our use case, the cost of Sentinel is justified, but it is expensive."

More Microsoft Sentinel pricing and cost advice

"It is on a yearly basis. For our own company, for about 250 users, it was 16,000 euros a year."

"The pricing and licensing are competitive."

"The pricing is good, and it is not very expensive."

"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."

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

"Rapid7 InsightIDR is priced very well and is cost-effective."

"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."

More Rapid7 InsightIDR pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

10%

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...

See all answers

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

Microsoft Purview Data Governance vs Microsoft Sentinel

Compared 3% of the time

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Darktrace vs Rapid7 InsightIDR

Compared 12% 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

Google Chronicle Suite vs Rapid7 InsightIDR

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Sentinel

February 2025

Download Microsoft Sentinel product report

Buyer's Guide

Rapid7 InsightIDR

February 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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