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IBM Security QRadar vs Rapid7 InsightIDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

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

IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
4th
Ranking in User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA)
1st
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
17th
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
208
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (6th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (9th)
Rapid7 InsightIDR
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
13th
Ranking in User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA)
3rd
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
24th
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
15th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Threat Deception Platforms (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 8.4%, down from 9.6% 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)
 

Q&A Highlights

Navin Rehnius - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 10, 2021
 

Featured Reviews

Md. Shahriar Hussain - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time incident detection and user-friendly dashboard benefit daily operations
There are many types of AI, and this AI is very limited in SQL and features. There may be potential for improvement. So far, it seems very limited. It shows some good features in the correlation part, but I think there is room for improvement. For instance, when creating rules, it can suggest more rules, reducing the effort needed. If AI-related support can suggest rules and integrate with existing security devices like MD, IPS, this SIM can create more relevant rules. Sometimes logs I receive don't mean anything, and I need technical stakeholders to share or forward logs, but these are sometimes inadequate. Keywords can help identify insufficient logs. I often lack time to verify logs. Sharing false positive results could be reduced to help my team.
Asim Naeem - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We've found the solution to be scalable."
"IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics's most important feature is its ease of use."
"This console gives you the entire view, which makes life easier and allows you to take precautionary measures."
"My overall rating for this solution is nine out of ten."
"It has a powerful GUI where you can put together your use cases, and don't have to write your own scripts."
"The scalability is good."
"It has very rich functionality."
"There are more than 120 extensions in QRadar, which are easy to install and configure. These can improve your analysis of events."
"Integration with threat modeling from the Metasploit and InsightIDR repositories."
"The alerting to drive investigations and remediation has been its most valuable feature.​"
"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."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten. As a cloud tool, the product is highly scalable."
"The solution's initial setup is easy."
"Enables the use of honey pots, honey users, and honey files to monitor for suspicious patterns."
"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."
"Log search allows us to dive deep into aggregated logs and query all event types at once.​"
 

Cons

"The architecture could be improved. I got stuck for a long time trying to understand the architecture, as it is quite challenging."
"The playbook guide which specifies the rules for security use cases needs to be provided to support in case the organization needs help."
"If you have too many events that occur, then the storage capacity becomes a problem. You need to have more storage."
"I think QRadar is very complex. It's a distributed system and IBM QRadar has an all-in-one solution which is not like that distributed solution but it's a good product. IBM needs to consider the user interface because if we compare it with AlienVault, the AlienVault user interface is fantastic but the IBM QRadar user interface is very complex. They should focus on how to make it easier for the client."
"Whenever we are upgrading or installing any type of patch, at that time we have some delays."
"The solution lacks some maturity."
"Do your research before implementing it, because it is tough to implement."
"The user interface needs improvement."
"The product allows us to make only 30 custom rules."
"The main problem lies in the processes within the client's operating systems."
"One thing that springs to mind is easier API integration with ITSMs. We are evaluating a new ITSM and I would like to have InsightIDR create a ticket when an attack is identified, and the ticket would be closed in InsightIDR when the ITSM resolution is completed. This would take out the "single point of failure" we currently have, if the email recipient is somehow absent, in recording the risk appetite for the incident and the actions taken to mitigate or not."
"Sometimes, it is hard to get the right queries to use. Currently, the tool lacks a pre-made set of queries."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's price is high."
"It is a perpetual license that we have for the event collector. The licensing is done based on the number of events and flows that you receive on this particular device. These are perpetual licenses, which means once you purchase them, they don't expire, which means that the support to IBM is definitely renewed after every one year. We have an enterprise agreement with IBM, which puts the cost in a totally different category as compared to someone who is not an IBM partner and is approaching IBM for this solution. We were able to get massive discounts. To give you an idea, we recently purchased 30,000 event licenses, and it costs around $480,000. It is definitely not a cheap product. We have licenses for about 270,000 events per second and 3 million flows per second. All the appliances and their events and flows are basically clubbed together and charged or rather calculated through a single source. The console receives all the details from all the event processes that we have globally. So, the license that we have is a single license for 270,000 events per second and 3 million flows per second, but that can be managed centrally. I was only part of the secondary purchase, which was 30,000 events per second for about $480,000. You can calculate how much we paid for 270,000 events. Reducing its price would be a compromise. We have already used a lower-priced product in the form of NNT, but we had to get rid of it because it was not doing the job that we actually wanted to do. You get what you pay for."
"It's too expensive. The licensing is also a little bit difficult to understand because you have to license it per event and per number of flows."
"The solution comes with a high price tag, while some of the competitors provide identical functionality in their offerings at no extra cost."
"This price is a little high, so it's an expensive product."
"It's free of charge."
"The price of this product is high."
"In terms of additional costs, it depends on the subscription that you choose. There are plenty of options to choose from."
"The team is very willing to work with companies. My suggestion is to call the Rapid7 sales department and see how they can help.​"
"It is a reasonably priced solution."
"The pricing is good, and it is not very expensive."
"Rapid7 InsightIDR's pricing is reasonable."
"I rate Rapid7 InsightIDR's price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"​Accurately predict your licensing counts as this is a subscription based product.​"
"It is on a yearly basis. For our own company, for about 250 users, it was 16,000 euros a year."
"Rapid7 InsightIDR is priced very well and is cost-effective."
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Comparison Review

VS
Jun 28, 2015
Qradar vs. ArcSight
Continuing with the SIEM posts we have done at Infosecnirvana, this post is a Head to head comparison of the two Industry leading SIEM products in the market – HP ArcSight and IBM QRadar Both the products have consistently been in the Gartner Leaders Quadrant. Both HP and IBM took over niche SIEM…
 

Answers from the Community

Navin Rehnius - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 10, 2021
Aug 10, 2021
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, remember that any EDR/XDR should integrate to the SIEM/SOAR and a strong threat intel source. If you consider SOC outsourcing take your time and find one you can integrate like a virtual team member. They a...
2 out of 12 answers
KM
Jul 26, 2021
I haven't used these big-name ones like Splunk etc. but I feel they're overpriced. I think they charge an arm and a leg for each module. The ROI justification is not there. Why not try a cheaper and robust alternative like Elasticsearch?
KA
Jul 26, 2021
We are using LogRthythm SIEM complete case management and offer SIEM/SOC as service.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What are the biggest differences between Securonix UEBA, Exabeam, and IBM QRadar?
It mostly depends on your use-cases and environment. Exabeam and Securonix have a stronger UEBA feature set, friendlier GUI and are not licensed based on capacity (amount of logs and information in...
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...
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...
What needs improvement with Rapid7 InsightIDR?
There is a future in AI with Rapid7, however, it is not fully operated. There are certain limitations with Rapid7 that I am working on. I have already opened a list of features with Rapid7, and the...
 

Also Known As

IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
InsightIDR
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Liberty Wines, Pioneer Telephone, Visier
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security QRadar vs. Rapid7 InsightIDR and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
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