Wazuh vs Microsoft Sentinel: Which SIEM Fits Your Organization?

Wazuh and Microsoft Sentinel are two of the most common choices for teams building a Security Operations Center. Both collect logs, correlate events and raise alerts, but they are built on very different ideas. This guide explains those differences so you can choose based on your environment, budget and team, not on marketing.

The short answer

• Choose Wazuh when you want an open-source platform you host yourself, with endpoint agents, file integrity monitoring and compliance checks included, and no per gigabyte ingestion bill.
• Choose Microsoft Sentinel when your estate already lives in Azure and Microsoft 365, you want a fully managed cloud SIEM, and you are comfortable with consumption based pricing.
• Run both when you need deep endpoint and on premises visibility from Wazuh plus Sentinel as the central analytics and SOAR layer.

Architecture and hosting

Wazuh is free and open source. It runs as three components: the Wazuh indexer, the Wazuh server (manager) and the Wazuh dashboard, plus lightweight agents installed on endpoints. You deploy it on your own servers, virtual machines, Docker or any cloud, so your telemetry stays inside your infrastructure.

Microsoft Sentinel is a cloud-native SIEM and SOAR service that runs on top of an Azure Log Analytics workspace. There is nothing to install or patch on the platform side. Data arrives through data connectors, and Microsoft operates the scaling, storage and availability.

Cost model

Wazuh has no license fee. Your cost is the infrastructure it runs on, storage for retained data, and the engineering time to deploy, tune and operate it. Cost grows with hardware, not with every extra gigabyte of logs.

Microsoft Sentinel is billed on the volume of data ingested and retained, either pay as you go or through commitment tiers. Some Microsoft data sources can be ingested at no extra charge. Verbose sources such as firewall or DNS logs can raise the bill quickly, so log filtering and tiering become part of the design. Always check current figures on the official Microsoft pricing page.

Detection engineering

Wazuh detection is driven by decoders and rules written in XML. Decoders parse raw logs, rules match conditions and assign severity levels. The ruleset ships with mappings to MITRE ATT&CK and is fully editable.

Sentinel detection uses analytics rules written in Kusto Query Language (KQL). KQL is very powerful for hunting across large datasets, and Sentinel adds built-in machine learning detections, a content hub of solutions and playbooks built on Azure Logic Apps for automated response.

Endpoint and host visibility

Wazuh agents provide file integrity monitoring, security configuration assessment, vulnerability detection, log collection and active response directly on Linux, Windows and macOS hosts. This makes Wazuh strong for servers, on premises estates and mixed environments.

Sentinel relies on other sources for host telemetry, typically Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, the Azure Monitor Agent or third party connectors. It shines when those Microsoft security products are already deployed.

Compliance reporting

Wazuh includes out of the box mappings and dashboards for PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, NIST 800-53 and TSC, plus CIS benchmark checks through security configuration assessment. Sentinel offers compliance workbooks and integrates with Microsoft Defender for Cloud regulatory compliance views.

Running Wazuh and Sentinel together

Many organizations do not have to choose. A common pattern is Wazuh on endpoints and on premises systems for rich host telemetry and compliance, with high value alerts forwarded to Sentinel for central correlation, hunting and automated playbooks. This keeps ingestion costs controlled while giving analysts one place to investigate.

How to decide

1. Map where your assets live: mostly Azure and Microsoft 365, or a mix of on premises, other clouds and Linux servers.
2. Estimate daily log volume, because it drives Sentinel cost and Wazuh hardware sizing.
3. Check your team skills: XML rules and Linux operations for Wazuh, KQL and Azure for Sentinel.
4. List your compliance obligations and the reports auditors expect.
5. Validate on your own data with a time boxed proof of concept before committing.