Crowdstrike vs Sentinelone: 3 Key Differences, Pros and Cons

What Is Crowdstrike Falcon Platform? 

CrowdStrike Falcon is a cloud-based cybersecurity platform that offers endpoint protection, threat intelligence, and other defense features. It includes lightweight agents on endpoints and a backend with AI , machine learning, and behavioral analytics attempting to detect and respond to attacks.

The platform aims to prevent breaches by identifying suspicious activity patterns early. It offers endpoint detection and response (EDR), threat hunting, malware prevention, and vulnerability management, which are managed through a unified console. CrowdStrike Falcon is intended to integrate into various environments, including cloud, on-premises, and hybrid infrastructure.

What Is Sentinelone Singularity? 

SentinelOne Singularity is an autonomous cybersecurity platform that aims to provide endpoint protection, detection, response, and remediation through AI-powered automation. It intends to handle threats across multiple attack surfaces, including endpoints, servers, cloud workloads, and IoT devices.

The platform uses AI-driven static and behavioral analysis to potentially detect malicious activities, and is designed to function when systems are offline. It attempts to automatically mitigate and roll back the impact of ransomware and other threats. 

Crowdstrike Falcon vs. Sentinelone Singularity: Key Differences 

Here’s an overview of the main differences between these two cybersecurity platforms.

1. Core Offering and Features

CrowdStrike Falcon offers a range of tools, although core modules include:

• Falcon Prevent: A next-generation antivirus (NGAV) solution that uses machine learning and exploit blocking to detect known and unknown threats, such as malware and ransomware. 
• Falcon Insight: An endpoint detection and response (EDR) module providing continuous monitoring and visibility into endpoint activity. It helps automate threat detection, offering threat hunting capabilities and investigation tools for incident response.
• Falcon Intelligence: This module delivers threat intelligence, including intelligence feeds, reports, and API access, in an attempt to help security teams stay ahead of emerging threats. 
• Falcon Overwatch: A managed threat hunting service staffed by CrowdStrike’s analysts. It monitors an organization’s environment for malicious activity, detecting and hopefully responding to attacks that may bypass automated defenses.
• Falcon Discover: This IT hygiene module identifies and manages assets, including unmanaged devices, unauthorized applications, and user activity, aiming to minimize security risks. 
• Falcon Device Control: Enables control over peripheral devices, such as USB drives, to help prevent data loss and potential malware intrusion. Organizations can enforce custom policies and maintain audit logs for compliance purposes.

SentinelOne Singularity is another unified platform focused on automating endpoint protection, detection, response, and remediation. Its main features include:

• AI-powered agent: Designed with a lightweight agent to operate autonomously on endpoints. It uses static and behavioral AI for threat detection and mitigation. This architecture aims to allow the platform to detect malicious activity locally, including in offline scenarios.
• Autonomous remediation and rollback: Intended to automatically mitigate threats and reverse the effects of ransomware and other attacks. This includes restoring compromised files and systems to their pre-attack state.
• Threat hunting and forensics: Provides tools for threat hunting and incident response. The platform collects and analyzes endpoint data, offering alerts and insights to help security teams understand and address threats.
• Cross-platform support: Supports multiple operating systems, including Windows, macOS, Linux, and IoT devices.
• Singularity Marketplace: Allows for customization through third-party integrations available in the Singularity Marketplace. Organizations can expand the platform’s capabilities to meet unique requirements.

2. Architecture

CrowdStrike Falcon relies on a cloud-native architecture, where processing and analysis are performed in the cloud. This design prioritzes scalability and centralized management, making it suitable for large enterprises with cloud-based or hybrid infrastructures. CrowdStrike’s use of cloud-based analytics focuses on insights and threat intelligence, though reliance on the cloud may impact offline performance.

SentinelOne’s architecture is agent-driven and endpoint-centric. The AI-powered agent operates independently of the cloud, helping provide protection when devices are offline. This local processing enables faster response times on individual endpoints but may limit large-scale cross-environment visibility compared to CrowdStrike’s cloud-focused model. SentinelOne’s architecture supports hybrid environments, including those with legacy systems.

3. Pricing Models

SentinelOne offers a tiered subscription model, with pricing based on the features and scale required by the organization. Its tiers include increasing levels of capabilities, such as more advanced threat hunting or extended endpoint protection.

CrowdStrike uses a modular pricing model, where organizations pay for the modules they use. While this approach provides flexibility, it may become costly as additional modules are added to address security requirements. Pricing often requires direct engagement with CrowdStrike for tailored quotes, catering primarily to medium and large enterprises.

Related content: Read our guide to AI cyber security

Pros and Cons of Crowdstrike Falcon 

Pros:

1. Cloud-native architecture: CrowdStrike Falcon is designed for cloud-first environments, offering centralized management, scalability, and deployment across large, distributed infrastructures.
2. Modular design: The platform’s modular approach is intended so that organizations can select only the features they need, such as NGAV, EDR, threat hunting, and threat intelligence, providing flexibility and cost control.
3. Threat intelligence: CrowdStrike provides intelligence through its Falcon Intelligence module, helping organizations understand adversary tactics.
4. Ease of use: Its interface is designed to simplify setup and management, offering a near-turnkey solution for organizations.
5. Strong performance in evaluations: CrowdStrike has achieved high scores in several independent tests, such as the MITRE ATT&CK evaluations.

Cons:

1. Cost: The modular pricing model can become expensive for organizations requiring multiple capabilities or add-ons, potentially making it less accessible for smaller businesses.
2. Reliance on cloud: As a cloud-native platform, Falcon requires internet connectivity for full functionality, which may be a limitation for environments where offline protection is critical.
3. Service outages: The platform has experienced occasional reliability issues, such as cloud-based service outages, which could disrupt operations during critical times.

Pros and Cons of Sentinelone Singularity

Pros:

1. Agent-centric architecture: SentinelOne’s AI-driven agent operates locally on endpoints, enabling detection and mitigation when systems are offline.
2. Autonomous remediation: The platform’s ability to automatically mitigate and roll back threats, including ransomware, helps reduce the impact of attacks.
3. Cross-platform support: SentinelOne offers protection for Windows, macOS, Linux, and IoT devices, making it suitable for hybrid environments.
4. Customizability: The Singularity Marketplace allows organizations to improve functionality with third-party integrations.
5. Reliability: SentinelOne aims for consistent performance, avoiding significant service outages.

Cons:

1. Complexity: While customizable, the platform can be challenging to configure and maintain, particularly for organizations without dedicated security expertise.
2. Limited out-of-the-box features: SentinelOne’s core platform may lack certain capabilities compared to more comprehensive solutions, requiring additional customization or integrations.
3. Narrower threat intelligence: While SentinelOne provides threat intelligence, it is less extensive and actionable compared to CrowdStrike’s Falcon Intelligence module.

Exabeam: Ultimate Crowdstrike and SentinelOne Alternative

While XDR solutions like CrowdStrike and SentinelOne provide strong endpoint detection and response, organizations seeking broader visibility and deeper analytics benefit from a SIEM with integrated UEBA. Exabeam enhances security by correlating data across the entire IT environment, detecting sophisticated threats that point solutions might miss. 

By leveraging behavioral analytics and automated investigation workflows, Exabeam reduces alert fatigue, accelerates incident response, and integrates seamlessly with existing security stacks—including leading XDR platforms—to provide a more comprehensive and proactive defense strategy.

Exabeam is a leading provider of security information and event management (SIEM) solutions, combining UEBA, SIEM, SOAR, and TDIR to accelerate security operations. Its Security Operations platforms enable security teams to quickly detect, investigate, and respond to threats while enhancing operational efficiency.

Key Features:

• Scalable log collection and management: The open platform accelerates log onboarding by 70%, eliminating the need for advanced engineering skills while ensuring seamless log aggregation across hybrid environments.
• Behavioral analytics: Uses advanced analytics to baseline normal vs. abnormal behavior, detecting insider threats, lateral movement, and advanced attacks missed by signature-based systems. Customers report that Exabeam helps detect and respond to 90% of attacks before other vendors can catch them.
• Automated threat response: Simplifies security operations by automating incident timelines, reducing manual effort by 30%, and accelerating investigation times by 80%.
• Contextual incident investigation: Since Exabeam automates timeline creation and reduces time spent on menial tasks, it cuts the time to detect and respond to threats by over 50%. Pre-built correlation rules, anomaly detection models, and vendor integrations reduce alerts by 60%, minimizing false positives.
• SaaS and cloud-native options: Flexible deployment options provide scalability for cloud-first and hybrid environments, ensuring rapid time to value for customers. For organizations who can’t, or won’t move their SIEM to the cloud, Exabeam provides a market-leading, full featured, and self-hosted SIEM.
• Network visibility with NetMon: Delivers deep insight beyond firewalls and IDS/IPS, detecting threats like data theft and botnet activity while making investigation easier with flexible searching. Deep Packet Analytics (DPA) also builds on the NetMon Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) engine to interpret key indicators of compromise (IOCs).

Exabeam customers consistently highlight how its real-time visibility, automation, and productivity tools powered by AI, uplevel security talent, transforming overwhelmed analysts into proactive defenders while reducing costs and maintaining industry-leading support. For more information visit Exabeam.com