How much does EDR cost in 2026?

If you’ve ever tried to get a price from a major EDR vendor you’ll know the drill: fill in a form, wait for an SDR, sit through a discovery call, get a proposal two weeks later with a number that’s six figures before negotiation. Pricing transparency is not the industry’s strong suit.

This post walks through what EDR actually costs in 2026, what drives those numbers, and where to look if you’re running a lean team or a small MSSP.

Why EDR pricing is so opaque

The major enterprise vendors - CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Defender for Endpoint, and Palo Alto Cortex - don’t publish per-seat prices publicly. The market is structured around annual enterprise contracts, and price varies significantly based on agent count, module selection, and how much the vendor thinks you’ll pay.

A few structural reasons for this:

• Module add-ons. The base agent is rarely the whole story. Identity protection, threat intelligence feeds, managed detection layers, and XDR connectors all arrive as separate SKUs. A deployment that starts at £20/endpoint can reach £50-80 once you tick the boxes your security team actually wants.
• Volume tiers. Per-seat pricing drops significantly at scale. An organisation with 10,000 endpoints gets a very different rate than one with 200.
• Platform fees. Some vendors charge separately for the SIEM ingestion layer, storage beyond a default retention window, or API access at volume.
• Support contracts. 24/7 incident response assistance, dedicated account management, and integration support are typically not bundled into the base price.

The net effect is that published benchmark data is scarce. Analyst reports cite ranges, and procurement forums share anecdata, but nothing authoritative.

Rough market ranges in 2026

Based on publicly available information and community reporting, here’s what mid-market buyers typically see:

Vendor	Approx. base price (per endpoint/year)	Notes
CrowdStrike Falcon	£80-150+	Depends heavily on module tier (Go, Pro, Enterprise, Elite)
SentinelOne	£60-130+	Singularity platform tiers; XDR adds cost
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint	Bundled in M365 E5 (£50+/user/month)	Standalone P2 available; true cost depends on licence bundle
Elastic Security	Free open-source tier; managed cloud from ~£0.30/GB/day	Pricing model differs - data volume not endpoint count

These are indicative. Real quotes will differ based on contract size, relationship, and timing. None of these vendors will let you sign up online and deploy tomorrow - all require sales engagement.

What actually drives your bill

Rather than quoting a number, it helps to understand the cost levers.

Agent count is the primary driver for seat-based vendors. The billing unit is almost always an enrolled endpoint, not a user. Servers count. Cloud VMs count. A 300-person company with 600 servers and VMs pays for 600 seats.

Retention period matters for investigation depth. Most base tiers offer 30-90 days of telemetry. Extending that - useful for slower-burning incidents or compliance requirements - often costs extra.

AI and automation features are increasingly add-ons. AI-powered alert triage, automated playbooks, and natural language threat hunting capabilities are sometimes bundled into upper tiers and sometimes sold separately.

MSSP pricing is typically more aggressive than direct, but comes with platform minimums and tiered margins that affect resale economics. Factor in whether you need a multi-tenant control plane or whether you’re provisioning separate instances per client.

Professional services can equal or exceed the licence cost in year one. Large vendors often assume you’ll pay for deployment scoping, integration work, and quarterly business reviews. If you’re doing this in-house, budget the time instead.

What to watch for in the small print

A few clauses that regularly catch buyers out:

- Overage charges on telemetry volume above your contracted tier
- Retroactive price increases on renewal (common after the first year)
- Minimum commit periods - 3 years is standard at enterprise tier
- "Seats" vs "devices" - check whether mobile, IoT, and containers count
- Data residency requirements that force a specific hosting region

Ask for a sample contract alongside the quote. Negotiate the renewal cap upfront.

Where LightEDR fits

LightEDR is priced from £5/agent/month, with a free tier for up to five agents. There’s no sales call required to see the number - it’s on the website.

The model is deliberate. EDR shouldn’t require a procurement cycle for teams that just want to get something deployed. Whether you’re an internal SOC analyst evaluating options or an MSSP pricing a new client proposal, you need a number before you can make a decision.

AI-powered alert triage, Zero Trust endpoint scoring, and 90-day telemetry are included at all paid tiers - not sold as separate modules.

If you want to talk through MSSP reseller pricing or a larger deployment, get in touch.