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Microsoft Sentinel

Security information and event management (SIEM) software
Security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) software
System security software
Features
Ease of use
Ease of management
Quality of support
Affordability
Market presence
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Pricing from
Pay-as-you-go
Free Trial
Free version unavailable
User corporate size
Small
Medium
Large
User industry
  1. Media and communications
  2. Professional services (engineering, legal, consulting, etc.)
  3. Real estate and property management

What is Microsoft Sentinel

Microsoft Sentinel is a cloud-native security information and event management (SIEM) and security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) platform built on Microsoft Azure. It centralizes security telemetry collection, correlation, alerting, and incident investigation for security operations teams, with integrations across Microsoft and third-party data sources. Sentinel uses analytics rules, hunting queries, and automation playbooks to support detection and response workflows. It is typically used by mid-sized to large organizations operating Azure or hybrid environments and managing multiple security tools.

pros

Broad data source integrations

Sentinel ingests logs and events from Azure services, Microsoft security products, and many third-party sources via connectors and APIs. This supports centralized monitoring across cloud, on-premises, and SaaS environments. It also aligns well with organizations standardizing on Microsoft identity and endpoint tooling. The connector model reduces custom ingestion work compared with fully bespoke pipelines.

Built-in SOAR automation

Sentinel includes incident management and automation through playbooks based on Azure Logic Apps. Teams can automate enrichment, ticketing, notifications, and response actions using templates and workflow steps. This helps standardize repetitive SOC processes and reduce manual triage time. Automation is integrated into the same console used for detection and investigation.

Scalable cloud-native architecture

As an Azure-native service, Sentinel scales without customers managing SIEM infrastructure capacity planning and upgrades. It supports large-volume ingestion and retention options through Azure Log Analytics and related storage choices. This model can simplify operations for distributed teams and multi-tenant scenarios. It also enables rapid onboarding of new data sources and workspaces as environments grow.

cons

Cost can be unpredictable

Pricing is largely consumption-based (data ingestion, retention, and certain add-ons), which can make budgeting difficult as telemetry volumes change. High-volume sources such as endpoint, network, and verbose application logs can increase monthly costs quickly. Controlling spend often requires careful filtering, tiering, and retention design. Organizations may need ongoing cost governance to avoid surprises.

Azure-centric operational dependency

Sentinel depends on Azure components (for example, Log Analytics workspaces and Logic Apps), which can increase platform coupling for non-Azure-first organizations. Teams may need Azure administration skills to manage workspaces, permissions, and automation reliably. Some integrations and workflows are most straightforward when other Microsoft security services are in place. This can add complexity in heterogeneous environments with multiple cloud providers.

Tuning and content management effort

Effective detection requires ongoing rule tuning, watchlist management, and query optimization to reduce false positives and maintain coverage. KQL proficiency is often needed for advanced hunting and custom analytics. Content updates and changes to data schemas/connectors can require periodic review. SOC teams should plan for continuous engineering effort rather than a one-time deployment.

Plan & Pricing

Pricing model: Pay-as-you-go with optional Commitment Tiers and a separate Data Lake tier Pay-as-you-go: Billed per GB for data ingested into Microsoft Sentinel (Analytics Logs billed per GB for security analysis). (See Microsoft Sentinel pricing page.) Commitment Tiers: Reserve daily ingestion capacity (starts at 100 GB/day and ranges up to 50,000 GB/day). Commitment tiers are billed as a fixed daily fee for the tier and provide a lower effective per-GB price than Pay-As-You-Go. Commitment tiers have a minimum 31-day commitment period; you may upgrade at any time and downgrade only after the 31-day minimum. (See Microsoft Sentinel pricing page.) Data Lake tier: Low-cost long-term storage and separate compute and storage meters (data lake preview includes 30 days of free storage/processing during preview). (See Microsoft Sentinel pricing page.) Pre-purchase Commit Units (1-year P3): Microsoft offers 1-year pre-purchase Commit Units (tiered discounts) that can be used within 12 months of purchase. (See Microsoft Sentinel pricing page.) Free allowances / free data sources:

  • Microsoft 365 E5/A5/F5/G5 customers: up to 5 MB per user/day data grant for certain Microsoft 365 data sources.
  • Defender for Server P2 customers: 500 MB per VM per day for specific Defender-for-Cloud data types.
  • Microsoft Sentinel "free data sources" (examples): Azure Activity Logs; Office 365 Audit Logs (SharePoint activity and Exchange admin activity); alerts from Microsoft Defender products. These are listed as always-free Sentinel data sources. Free trial: New workspaces can ingest up to 10 GB/day of log data for the first 31 days at no cost (Log Analytics ingestion and Sentinel charges are waived for the 31-day trial; limited to 20 workspaces per tenant). Notes / variability: Exact per-GB prices and daily fixed fees for Commitment Tiers vary by region, currency, and customer agreement; prices are shown on the official pricing page and in the Azure pricing calculator. The public pricing page does not present static universal USD per-GB numbers (region and agreement dependent). Also, some Azure Monitor meters (e.g., the first 5 GB/month per billing account in Analytics tier) can be free — refer to Azure Monitor pricing details for Log Analytics for those specific allowances.

Important: I did not find a permanently free Sentinel plan/tier for general Sentinel usage (only the trial and the always-free data-source allowances above). I did not extract any per-GB numeric prices because the official Microsoft pricing pages present region- and agreement-dependent values and the live pricing table is rendered dynamically on the vendor site.

Seller details

Microsoft Corporation
Redmond, Washington, United States
1975
Public
https://www.microsoft.com/
https://x.com/Microsoft
https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoft/

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