A variety of endpoint security tools have been part of the cyberdefense strategy for desktops, laptops and other end-user devices over the past 30 years.
The latest iteration of endpoint tools includes endpoint protection platforms (EPPs), which provide a broad combination of security capabilities, such as antivirus software, visibility and monitoring, and endpoint detection and response (EDR). EPPs continuously log, monitor and analyze events on endpoints to identify suspicious activity, generate alerts and, when appropriate, stop threats. EPPs are generally used as a frontline defense for desktops, laptops, smartphones, tablets, IoT devices and other user-facing devices.
Two popular EPP options today are the SentinelOne Singularity Platform and CrowdStrike Falcon. Read further to compare the two EPPs' key features, pricing models and performance.
Also, get advice on how organizations can find an EPP that best suits their needs and boosts their security posture.
Key features comparison
Singularity and Falcon provide the following capabilities:
- Automation capabilities. The platforms automatically generate alerts when they detect events needing further investigation. When possible, they act in real time to prevent attacks from succeeding.
Both products support a variety of automated responses, including remediation and rollback, when malicious activity is detected. Human analysts can also choose to manually launch these responses through the products.
- Analyst interface. The two EPPs provide centralized dashboards, reporting and other typical capabilities that human analysts use to review correlated event data.
Both products have generative AI (GenAI) threat detection interfaces -- Purple AI for SentinelOne and Charlotte AI for CrowdStrike. Admins can ask the GenAI agent questions about the collected and analyzed event data for further analysis or investigative purposes.
- Supported OSes. The EPPs support endpoints on Windows, Linux, macOS, ChromeOS, Android and iOS.
- Cybersecurity platform. The platforms include centralized storage, dashboards and analysis capabilities for the data produced by the offerings, alongside other cybersecurity and asset data.
Pricing comparison
Pricing is where the tools begin to stand apart as they offer different features, add-ons and more.
SentinelOne Singularity pricing options
SentinelOne offers three pricing tiers:
- Singularity Complete costs $179.99 per device per year. It offers endpoint and cloud workload protection.
- Singularity Commercial costs $229.99 per device per year. It offers XDR, EPP and EDR capabilities, along with identity threat detection and response (ITDR) and managed threat hunting (WatchTower).
- Singularity Enterprise includes XDR, EPP, EDR, data retention, ITDR, threat hunting, network discovery (Singularity Network Discovery), forensic data collection (Singularity RemoteOps Forensics) and support services. Contact SentinelOne for pricing.
CrowdStrike Falcon pricing options
CrowdStrike offers four pricing tiers:
- Falcon Go, at $59.99 per device per year for up to 100 devices, includes antivirus software (Falcon Prevent), USB device control (Falcon Device Control), mobile device protection (Falcon for Mobile) and support services.
- Falcon Pro, at $99.99 per device per year, includes Falcon Prevent, Falcon Device Control, host firewall control (Falcon Firewall Management) and support services.
- Falcon Enterprise, at $184.99 per device per year, includes Falcon Prevent, Falcon Device Control, Falcon Firewall Management, threat hunting and intelligence (Falcon OverWatch), extended detection and response (Falcon Insight XDR) and support services.
- Falcon Complete MDR is CrowdStrike's managed detection and response service. It offers Falcon Prevent, Falcon OverWatch, Falcon Insight XDR and IT hygiene (Falcon Discover), and options to add firewall and identity protection. Contact CrowdStrike for Complete MDR pricing.
Falcon for Mobile protection for smartphones and tablets is available as a separate add-on for Pro, Enterprise and Complete MDR.
Performance and evaluation comparison
Adopters' opinions of the SentinelOne and CrowdStrike offerings seem to be consistent. According to verified reviews on Gartner Peer Insights as of the writing of this article, the EPP performance of both products has an average rating of 4.7 out of 5, with 99% of each of their ratings being three stars or higher. CrowdStrike's Falcon had 724 ratings from the past year compared to 227 for SentinelOne's Singularity.
SentinelOne slightest reported advantage over CrowdStrike was pricing flexibility -- 4.4 to 4.2 rating, while CrowdStrike's biggest reported advantage was availability of third-party resources -- 4.7 to 4.4 rating.
Mitre ATT&CK Evaluations included CrowdStrike and SentinelOne in its 2023 testing, which simulated a nation-state attacker. In that evaluation, CrowdStrike's attack technique detection outperformed SentinelOne's, while both offerings had similar results for their protection capabilities. In the 2024 evaluations, CrowdStrike did not participate while SentinelOne successfully detected each tested attack technique.
Common CrowdStrike complaints on Gartner Peer Insights mention complicated licensing and a lack of support for hybrid environments. For SentinelOne, customers said they were frustrated by the Android OS capabilities, which seem to generate more false positives.
Questions to ask when selecting an EPP tool
All organizations should use endpoint security tools to protect their user devices. Larger organizations are likely to deploy, manage and monitor endpoint security tools themselves. Smaller organizations might not have the resources, so they might adopt managed services that provide the same endpoint security tools to an organization, but the services also perform much or most of the management and monitoring. Some services also provide incident response services in conjunction with the organization's own capabilities.
Following are some questions organizations should ask when evaluating endpoint security tools and services:
- How well integrated is the platform? For example, is there a single agent deployed to each endpoint or a combination of agents? Is the product a truly unified single platform or a collection of services hidden under a unified interface?
- How is the quality in terms of accuracy, speed and comprehensiveness of the platform's data gathering, logging, analysis, alerting and alert prioritization? High quality should be the foundation of any EPP.
- How effectively does the platform use cyberthreat intelligence? What threat intelligence sources does it use? How often are they updated?
- What techniques does the platform use to analyze events and detect attacks? How effective is it at detecting sophisticated and novel attacks?
- How automated is it? This could include protection, detection and incident response capabilities. Highly accurate automation that makes sound decisions in real time can be the difference between ransomware infecting a few endpoints and affecting the whole enterprise.
Karen Scarfone is the principal consultant at Scarfone Cybersecurity in Clifton, Va. She provides cybersecurity publication consulting to organizations and was formerly a senior computer scientist for NIST.