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 7.4% mindshare in SIEM, compared to Rapid7’s 2.5% 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 91 Microsoft Sentinel reviews

13,318 Views
8,289 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Rapid7 InsightIDR

Read 32 Rapid7 InsightIDR reviews

4,184 Views
2,604 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: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Sentinel vs. Rapid7 InsightIDR

April 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 (6th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th)

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) (18th), Threat Deception Platforms (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (14th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 7.4%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rapid7 InsightIDR is 2.5%, 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

"It is easy to implement (turn on) - does need a skilled analyst to develop queries and playbooks."

"We didn't have anything similar. So, it really provides value from the incidents and automation point of view. The overview of the security fabric is most valuable."

"Another area where it is helping us is in creating a single dashboard for our environment. We can collect all the logs into a log analytics workset and run queries on top of it. We get all the results in the dashboard. Even a layman can understand this stuff. The way Microsoft presents it is really incredible."

"The part that was very unexpected was Sentinel's ability to integrate with Azure Lighthouse, which, as a managed services solution provider, gives us the ability to also manage our customers' Sentinel environments or Sentinel workspaces. It is a big plus for us. With its integration with Lighthouse, we get the ability to monitor multiple workspaces from one portal. A lot of the Microsoft Sentinel workbooks already integrate with that capability, and we save countless amounts of money by simply being able to almost immediately realize multitenant capabilities. That alone is a big plus for us."

"Sentinel has an intuitive, user-friendly way to visualize the data properly. It gives me a solid overview of all the logs. We get a more detailed view that I can't get from the other SIEM tools. It has some IP and URL-specific allow listing"

"Sentinel is a Microsoft product, so they provide very robust use cases and analytic groups, which are very beneficial for the security team. I also like the ability to integrate data sources into the software for on-premise and cloud-based solutions."

"The best functionality that you can get from Azure Sentinel is the SOAR capability. So, you can estimate any type of activity, such as when an alert was triggered or an incident was found."

"The UI-based analytics are excellent."

More Microsoft Sentinel pros

"It is a very stable solution."

"If you were on other solutions, you would notice that they use agents from third-party, from open-source, from a native OS, or from other tools. Here, however, it is an agent from Rapid7 itself. This adds to the solution's overall capabilities."

"The UI is very good."

"The web interface is great — very useful and user-friendly."

"The solution provides satisfying native integration features"

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

"Dashboards, including the main screen, provide much-needed information at a glance, without hours of coding and sifting through logs to find it. In case of an actual security incident, I have faith that insightIDR has retained all logs in a secure manner that prevents log tampering as well."

"It improved my organization by building a security alerting program."

More Rapid7 InsightIDR pros

Cons

"There is room for improvement in terms of integrations."

"We've seen delays in getting the logs from third-party solutions and sometimes Microsoft products as well. It would be helpful if Microsoft created a list of the delays. That would make things more transparent for customers."

"The only thing is sometimes you can have a false positive."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"The on-prem log sources still require a lot of development."

More Microsoft Sentinel cons

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

"Tenable Nessus is easier to deal with. It's more efficient and accurate. InsightIDR is heavier than Tenable in terms of performance and scanning. Rapid7 would be much easier to use if it had a network connector like Tenable. Tenable's connector allows continuous monitoring over the B caps."

"The product allows us to make only 30 custom rules."

"Needs a better ability to customize the check within the console."

"The integration capabilities of the solution have certain shortcomings where improvements are required."

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

"Inability to get access to compliance reports within the solution."

"InsightIDR is only available in a cloud version. Some of our customers prefer an on-prem solution because they want to manage the security within their environment."

More Rapid7 InsightIDR cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We only pay for the amount of data we bring in, which is fair."

"The current licensing is based on the logs that are being ingested on the platform. Most of the SIEM solutions utilize that pricing model, but Microsoft should give us a customization option for controlling the kind of logs that we feed into Microsoft Sentinel. That will be much better. Otherwise, the pricing is a bit higher."

"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."

"No license is required to make use of Sentinel, but you need to buy products to get the data. In general, the price of those products is comparable to similar products."

"Microsoft is costlier. Some organizations may not be able to afford the cost of Sentinel orchestration and the Log Analytics workspace. The transaction hosting cost is also a little bit on the high side, compared to AWS and GCP."

"The product is costly compared to Splunk."

"Sentinel is costly compared to other solutions, but it's fair. SIEM solutions like CrowdStrike charge based on daily log volume. They generally process a set number of logs for free before they start charging. Microsoft's pricing is clearer. It's free under five gigabytes. Some of these logs we ingest have a cost, so they don't hide it. I believe the tenant pays the price, and Microsoft helps create awareness of the cost."

"I have worked with a lot of SIEMs. We are using Sentinel three to four times more than other SIEMs that we have used. Azure Sentinel's only limitation is its price point. Sentinel costs a lot if your ingestion goes up to a certain point."

More Microsoft Sentinel pricing and cost advice

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

"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."

"Rapid7 InsightIDR's pricing is reasonable but we have challenges with the Minimum Order Quantity. It is not reasonable for customers who have less than one hundred devices. If they can reduce Minimum Order Quantity, it is good. You have to pay around 5000-6000 dollars per year for the product. The pricing includes maintenance and support costs."

"Rapid7 InsightIDR's pricing is reasonable."

"Rapid7 InsightIDR charges us based on the endpoints we connect to."

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

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

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...

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

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Microsoft Sentinel

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Sentinel Competitors

Darktrace vs Rapid7 InsightIDR

Compared 10% 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 4% 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

April 2025

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