MDR pricing in 2026: what managed detection and response costs

Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is usually priced per endpoint per month, and the range is wide: roughly $3 to $45, with a mid-market typical around $6. What you’re really buying is a 24/7 human team on top of detection tooling — so the price reflects people and coverage, not just software.

Here’s how MDR pricing works in 2026, what the major providers charge, and the factors that move a quote.

MDR pricing at a glance

Tier	Typical price	What you get
Value / SMB	~$3–$7 / endpoint / mo	Alert triage + guided response, business-hours-plus
Mid-market	~$7–$15 / endpoint / mo	24/7 monitoring, active response, onboarding
Premium / enterprise	~$15–$45 / endpoint / mo	Full active response, threat hunting, bundled tooling

For an organisation with, say, 1,000 endpoints, that’s roughly $70K–$180K a year at the mid-market band — a fraction of building a 24/7 in-house SOC, which needs 8–12 analysts (well over $1M a year in loaded salaries at ~$162K per FTE).

How the major providers compare

Most MDR pricing is quoted, not publicly listed, so treat these as directional:

• Huntress — positioned at the value end, commonly reported in the low single digits per endpoint per month; popular with SMBs and MSPs.
• Arctic Wolf — typically priced per user or per device on annual contracts, mid-band, with a concierge security-operations model.
• CrowdStrike Falcon Complete — the premium, fully-managed tier on top of Falcon; higher per-endpoint cost but bundles leading EDR.
• SentinelOne Vigilance, Red Canary, Sophos MDR — mid-to-premium, often layered on their own or third-party EDR telemetry.

Because these are negotiated, the same 1,000-endpoint deal can land at very different prices depending on tier, term length, and whether tooling is bundled.

What drives the price

1. Endpoint count. The core unit. Per-endpoint rates usually fall as volume rises.
2. Coverage and response depth. Alert-only triage is cheapest; full 24/7 active response (the provider contains threats for you) costs more.
3. Bundled tooling. If the MDR includes its own EDR/telemetry (e.g. Falcon Complete), you’re paying for both in one line — compare against buying EDR separately.
4. Term length. Multi-year commitments typically discount meaningfully.
5. Region. Pricing varies by market — MDR in Canada, the UK, or the Nordics won’t match US list, and currency and local delivery costs play in.

MDR vs building it in-house

The reason MDR exists is math: 24/7 coverage needs shift-based staffing. A round-the-clock in-house SOC realistically needs 8–12 security FTEs to cover nights, weekends and holidays — $1.3M–$2M a year in salaries alone. For most organisations under a few thousand employees, MDR delivers 24/7 detection for a fraction of that, which is why it’s become the default.

See MDR in your full budget

MDR is one line in a complete program — it sits alongside EDR, identity, SIEM, cloud and staffing. To model it against the rest for your endpoint count and industry, run the free cybersecurity budget calculator, or read the deeper MDR cost guide and our EDR vs MDR vs XDR comparison.