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SentinelOne Singularity vs Microsoft Defender

A side-by-side comparison across pricing, deployment, integrations, compliance, and edr / xdr-specific features. Descriptive comparison only — no recommendations.

4 min read Data verified: May 2026 Endpoint Security (EDR/XDR)
SentinelOne Singularity
EDR / XDR
Singularity Core (~$6/endpoint/mo), Control, Complete, and Commercial tiers volume and term-based negotiation common
Paid
Visit official site →
Microsoft Defender
EDR / XDR
Defender Antivirus is free with Windows Defender for Endpoint P1 and P2 sold standalone (~$3-$5.20/user/mo) or included in M365 E5
Freemium
Visit official site →
$ Pricing & plans
5 dimensions
Pricing model
Singularity Core (~$6/endpoint/mo), Control, Complete, and Commercial tiers
volume and term-based negotiation common
Defender Antivirus is free with Windows
Defender for Endpoint P1 and P2 sold standalone (~$3-$5.20/user/mo) or included in M365 E5
Pricing tier
Paid
Freemium
Free tier / trial
Trial only
30-day evaluation available; no free tier
Free tier
Built-in Windows AV is free; 90-day trial available for Defender for Endpoint and full M365 E5
Volume discounts
Breaks at 500, 1000, 2500 endpoints
multi-year contracts reduce per-endpoint cost
Microsoft Enterprise Agreement and CSP volume tiers
typical 10-30% discount at enterprise scale
Hidden costs
Extended data retention, threat intelligence feeds (Singularity Threat…
Intelligence), and Vigilance MDR are priced separately
Full EDR/XDR/Sentinel integration value depends on M365 E5 licensing
cross-platform support and some Sentinel ingestion may incur additional cost
↗ Deployment & integrations
3 dimensions
Deployment
SaaS is standard; on-premises deployment available
uncommon among major EDR vendors
Cloud-managed via Microsoft 365 Defender portal
agent deployment via Intune, Group Policy, or System Center
Typical deployment time
Same-day for small deployments
multi-week phased rollouts for thousands of endpoints
Hours for Windows-centric M365-licensed organizations
longer when consolidating multiple endpoint vendors
Key integrations
Splunk, IBM QRadar, ServiceNow, Cortex XSOAR, Okta, Microsoft Sentinel, AWS, Azure, Slack
Microsoft Sentinel, Entra ID, Intune, Purview, Defender for Cloud, Office 365
third-party connectors via Microsoft Graph Security API
🛡 EDR / XDR-specific evaluation
7 dimensions
Detection technology
Static and behavioral AI models running on the agent (works offline)
Storyline correlation engine reconstructs attack chains
Cloud-delivered ML, behavioral analytics, integrated Microsoft threat…
intelligence (signals from 78+ trillion daily events)
MITRE ATT&CK eval (2024)
Strong detection coverage and analytic visibility in MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK Evaluations
Leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection 2025
Strong participation in MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK Evaluations with high detection coverage
Leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection 2025
Threat hunting
Singularity Hunt with PowerQuery
deep visibility module for forensic queries
Advanced Hunting with Kusto Query Language (KQL) across all Microsoft 365 Defender signals
pre-built hunting queries and Jupyter notebook integration
Managed detection (MDR)
Vigilance MDR available as add-on (24/7 SOC analysts on the Singularity platform)
Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR is a paid managed service
widely supported by Microsoft partner MSSP ecosystem
Automated response
Native rollback to pre-infection state on Windows (a differentiator among EDRs)
auto-quarantine and host isolation
Automated investigation and response (AIR) for self-healing, quarantine, file…
removal, account containment
Platforms supported
Windows, macOS, Linux, Kubernetes, containers, virtual machines
Windows (deepest integration), macOS, Linux, iOS, Android
broad Microsoft 365 and Azure coverage
Offline operation
On-agent AI continues making detection and prevention decisions when…
disconnected from cloud
Windows-native AV provides offline protection
cloud-delivered features (EDR sensor analytics) require connectivity
✓ Compliance & certifications
1 dimension
Compliance certifications
SOC 2 Type II, FedRAMP Moderate, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS
FedRAMP High, SOC 1/2/3, ISO 27001/27018, HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR, IRAP, C5, HITRUST
◧ Positioning
3 dimensions
Target deployment
SMB to Enterprise wanting autonomous response
Organizations standardized on Microsoft 365 / Windows
Strengths cited
On-agent AI for real-time detection without cloud roundtrip, native rollback to…
pre-infection state on Windows, optional on-premises deployment, strong autonomous response automation
Native Windows integration with no separate agent, bundled into Microsoft 365…
E5, broad XDR coverage across endpoint/identity/email/cloud, no additional vendor relationship for M365 customers
Where it fits less well
Higher tiers add data ingestion and feature depth
some advanced XDR features behind premium SKUs
Full EDR/XDR value tied to Microsoft 365 E5 licensing
cross-platform parity (macOS/Linux) is closer to Windows feature set than in previous years but still maturing on some advanced telemetry
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Methodology Comparison data synthesized from publicly available vendor documentation, MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK Evaluations, AV-TEST results, Gartner Peer Insights, G2/Capterra/TrustRadius reviews, anonymized transaction data (Vendr, CostBench, CheckThat.ai), and publicly reported pricing as of May 2026. defend.network is independent and has no commercial relationship with the vendors compared.