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Rapid7 InsightIDR vs Wazuh
InsightIDR is a managed, asset-priced cloud SIEM/XDR with vulnerability-management context built in; Wazuh is a free, self-hosted SIEM/XDR you operate yourself.
Side by side
| Rapid7 InsightIDR | Wazuh | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | Rapid7, Inc. | Wazuh, Inc. |
| Pricing model | Quote only | Open source + paid options |
| Free tier | No | Yes |
| Deployment | Cloud | Cloud, Self-hosted |
| Open source | No | Yes (GPL-2.0) |
| Best for | Lean security teams wanting predictable, asset-based SIEM pricing tied into vulnerability management context. | Security teams and MSSPs wanting a fully open-source SIEM/XDR without per-GB licensing costs. |
| Pricing | Asset-based pricing (not per-GB), sold in Essential/Advanced/Ultimate tiers; exact rates require a quote, with volume discounts from ~500 assets. Checked on the vendor's own page on September 21, 2026: no prices are published. Expect to be quoted. | The core platform is free and open source; the vendor sells an optional managed cloud tier and paid support contracts. Pricing has not been verified yet — see the vendor's site. |
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Verdict
Rapid7 InsightIDR and Wazuh both combine log search, behavior analytics and endpoint detection into a single security platform, but they sit at opposite ends of the buy-versus-build spectrum. InsightIDR is a cloud-delivered SIEM/XDR built on Rapid7's broader Insight platform, which lets a security team correlate detections with asset and exposure context from Rapid7's vulnerability management product — and it is priced per protected asset rather than per gigabyte, which Rapid7 markets as more predictable than volume-based SIEM billing. Wazuh is free, open-source, and entirely self-hosted (with an optional paid managed-cloud tier from the vendor); it combines host-based intrusion detection, log analysis, file integrity monitoring and compliance reporting in one agent-plus-manager architecture built on an Elasticsearch/OpenSearch-compatible backend.
The decision is really about who operates the platform. InsightIDR is built for lean security teams that want faster time-to-value than configuring correlation rules themselves, at the cost of a recurring asset-based subscription. Wazuh has no license cost at all, but someone on your team has to deploy, tune and maintain it — the software is free, the operational labor is not.
Choose Rapid7 InsightIDR if
- You want a managed, cloud-delivered SIEM/XDR without operating the backend yourself.
- Shared context with vulnerability management (Rapid7 InsightVM) is valuable to how your team prioritizes alerts.
- Predictable, asset-based pricing is easier to budget than per-GB ingestion costs.
Choose Wazuh if
- You want a fully open-source SIEM/XDR with no per-GB or per-asset license fee, and are willing to run it yourself.
- Compliance reporting for standards like PCI-DSS, HIPAA or GDPR built into the same free platform is a requirement.
- You're a security team or MSSP that wants full control over the detection stack rather than a vendor-managed service.
The honest caveat
"Free" for Wazuh means free of license cost, not free of effort — deploying agents across Linux, Windows and macOS, tuning detection rules and maintaining the OpenSearch/Elasticsearch backend is real, ongoing work that InsightIDR's subscription is partly paying Rapid7 to absorb. Weigh your team's available operational capacity as heavily as the price difference. See anomaly detection and data governance.
Last reviewed September 22, 2026