MDR pricing in 2025-2026 typically runs $15 to $50 or more per endpoint per month, compared to $3 to $18 per endpoint per month for EDR software alone. The gap reflects a simple tradeoff: a lower EDR license fee buys you detection software that someone still has to watch, while MDR (Managed Detection and Response) wraps that same technology in a staffed service where analysts monitor alerts, investigate threats, and take containment action on your behalf.
EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) is software installed on workstations, servers, and laptops that detects and logs suspicious activity. It generates alerts around the clock, and most businesses under 200 employees don't have a dedicated security analyst on staff to review those alerts at 2 a.m. on a Saturday. That staffing gap is what drives the price difference between EDR and MDR, and it's the real question behind any MDR pricing comparison.
This guide covers real 2025-2026 market pricing for both models, the hidden costs that change the math, what a full MDR contract should include before you sign, and how Bellator Cyber Guard's own managed endpoint plans compare.
Quick Answer
EDR software alone typically costs $3 to $18 per endpoint per month as a license fee, while MDR services that add 24/7 monitoring, alert triage, and incident response run $15 to $50 or more per endpoint per month. For a 50-endpoint business, that works out to roughly $1,800 to $10,800 a year for EDR licenses versus $9,000 to $30,000 a year for entry-level through full MDR, but the EDR figure doesn't include staffing to review the alerts it generates. Bellator Cyber Guard's managed EDR plan, Bellator Shield, starts at $19 per computer per month, and Bellator Core adds remote monitoring and Ransomware Rollback® for $33 per computer per month.
Before comparing the wider market, it helps to know what a managed option looks like in practice. Bellator Shield is Bellator Cyber Guard's managed EDR plan, priced at $19 per computer per month. Because it's managed rather than a self-service license, alert review is handled for you instead of landing in an inbox nobody has time to read. Bellator Core adds remote monitoring and Ransomware Rollback® for $33 per computer per month.
Those prices sit below the market ranges for full MDR covered later in this guide, but they aren't directly comparable to a bare-bones EDR license priced at $3 to $8 per endpoint. A cheaper software-only license doesn't come with anyone reviewing what it flags, which is the gap this guide is about. Use the criteria below to size up how much monitoring and response your business actually needs, then compare that scope, not just the sticker price, against any quote you receive. See the full protection plan comparison for a side-by-side look at Shield and Core.
EDR platforms are sold primarily as per-endpoint, per-year software licenses. Pricing falls into three tiers based on feature depth: entry-level EDR runs $3 to $8 per endpoint per month, mid-market EDR with more advanced detection runs $8 to $18 per endpoint per month, and enterprise-grade EDR with extended detection and response features can run $18 to $35 or more per endpoint per month. Treat these as planning ranges. Actual quotes vary by vendor, contract term, and negotiated discount, so confirm current pricing directly with any vendor you evaluate.
A 50-endpoint business using a mid-market EDR license would spend roughly $6,000 to $10,800 a year on software alone. That number looks attractive until you account for what's missing, starting with the items below. For a closer look at how individual platforms compare on detection quality, see our EDR platform comparison on false-positive rates.
Hidden Costs of Self-Managed EDR
- Security analyst labor: $85,000 to $130,000 a year, fully loaded, for a dedicated SOC analyst
- Deployment and tuning time: roughly 40 to 80 hours for an initial rollout across a 50-seat environment
- Ongoing false-positive management: 5 to 15 hours a week in a poorly tuned deployment
- Incident response retainer fees: typically $300 to $500 an hour if a breach occurs
Add those together and self-managed EDR at 50 endpoints can exceed $150,000 a year, well beyond the software's list price. According to IBM's 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report, the average data breach now costs organizations $4.88 million, part of why insurers and regulators increasingly expect active monitoring rather than passive logging. Verizon's 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report found that attackers commonly remain inside a network for days before detection, often because alerts sat unreviewed. That gap is what MDR is designed to close.
MDR services bundle EDR technology with 24/7 SOC (Security Operations Center) monitoring, a team of analysts who watch alerts and investigate incidents around the clock, threat hunting, alert triage, and, in most contracts, active incident response.
Per-endpoint pricing is the most common structure. As a planning range for 2025-2026, entry-level MDR with monitoring and limited response typically runs $15 to $25 per endpoint per month. Full MDR with containment, forensics, and remediation guidance runs $25 to $50 per endpoint per month. Premium MDR with a dedicated analyst and proactive threat hunting can run $50 to $100 or more per endpoint per month. Confirm which tier a quote actually covers: MDR is not a standardized term, and providers use it to describe services with very different response capabilities. A 50-endpoint business using full MDR would typically spend $15,000 to $30,000 a year, which includes SOC coverage that would cost $85,000 to $130,000 or more to staff internally.
Some providers targeting businesses under 100 users offer flat monthly fees instead, generally $1,500 to $5,000 a month for environments up to 50 to 100 endpoints. This model gives predictable budgeting and has become more common among managed security providers serving small businesses. Our review of one widely used MDR platform's pricing and tradeoffs walks through how a single vendor's model breaks down in practice. List prices across the market are often negotiable by 15 to 30 percent, so confirm a current quote before budgeting against any of these ranges.
What MDR Should Always Include Before You Sign
- 24/7 SOC monitoring with written SLAs, commonly under 30 minutes to investigate and under 4 hours to contain high-severity alerts
- Active alert triage and false-positive suppression, not just notification
- Proactive threat hunting that is scheduled, documented, and delivered in regular reports
- Incident containment capability, clearly defined as autonomous or approval-required in the contract
- Threat intelligence mapped to a recognized framework such as MITRE ATT&CK
- Documented incident response playbooks covering ransomware, phishing, and credential theft
- Executive reporting on a regular cadence with metrics, incidents, and threat hunting findings
- Compliance-ready documentation for HIPAA, PCI DSS, or NIST SP 800-171, as applicable to your business
Healthcare practices handling Protected Health Information, individually identifiable health data protected under HIPAA, often find MDR the most practical way to meet HIPAA-related endpoint monitoring expectations without building an in-house SOC. Accounting and tax practices face a parallel obligation under the FTC Safeguards Rule and IRS Publication 4557 guidance for protecting taxpayer data.
Important
The HIPAA Security Rule §164.312(b), PCI DSS 4.0 Requirement 10.7, and NIST SP 800-171 Control 3.14.6 all call for active review of and response to security events, not just logging. According to HHS guidance on the Security Rule, passive logging without documented active review does not, by itself, satisfy HIPAA's audit control requirement. If your business stores PHI or processes payment cards, deploying EDR without an active monitoring process can leave a documentation gap in an audit or breach investigation.
Several regulatory frameworks include monitoring and response requirements that are difficult to satisfy with EDR alone if you don't have dedicated security staff.
HIPAA Security Rule §164.312(b) requires covered entities to implement mechanisms that record and examine activity in systems containing Protected Health Information. HHS guidance makes clear that passive logging without active review does not, on its own, meet this standard.
PCI DSS 4.0 Requirement 10.7, published by the PCI Security Standards Council, requires that failures of critical security control systems be detected, reported, and responded to promptly. For any business that processes payment cards, this is a binding contractual requirement tied to your merchant agreement.
NIST SP 800-171, which applies to Department of Defense contractors and subcontractors handling Controlled Unclassified Information, requires continuous monitoring of system security under Control 3.14.6 and malicious code protection under Control 3.14.2. The current NIST SP 800-171 guidance addresses the need for active response capability, not detection logging alone.
Cyber insurance underwriting has moved in the same direction. Many carriers now ask applicants for documented evidence of 24/7 monitoring and incident response capability, and coverage questions can arise when EDR was deployed but no active monitoring can be demonstrated at claim time. Confirm what your specific policy requires with your broker; this is an underwriting and coverage question, not a legal one, and requirements vary by carrier and policy.
Bottom Line
For most businesses under 200 employees without a dedicated security operations team, MDR, or a managed EDR service with active alert review like Bellator Shield, typically costs less in total than self-managed EDR once you add staffing, tuning, and incident response. The software license price of EDR looks attractive on its own, but it doesn't include anyone watching what it finds.
How to Evaluate MDR vs EDR Vendors: A Structured Approach
Map your compliance requirements
Identify which regulatory frameworks apply to your business: HIPAA Security Rule §164.312, PCI DSS 4.0, NIST SP 800-171, or the FTC Safeguards Rule. Each has monitoring and response expectations that can be difficult to satisfy with EDR alone if no one is reviewing the alerts.
Inventory your endpoints and existing tools
Count workstations, servers, cloud instances, and mobile devices, and note any EDR tool already deployed. Some MDR providers work on top of your existing platform; others require migrating to their preferred tool, which has cost and operational implications.
Assess your internal security capacity
Determine whether your IT team can realistically triage alerts around the clock, including nights and weekends. If not, the true cost of EDR-only grows once you add incident response retainer fees and the risk of gaps in after-hours coverage.
Request SLA documentation, not marketing claims
Ask vendors for Mean Time to Respond (MTTR) and Mean Time to Contain (MTTC) figures backed by contract language. A vendor that can only offer vague ranges instead of specific commitments is telling you something about its operational maturity.
Model the true total cost of ownership
For EDR, add the software license cost, security analyst labor, IR retainer fees, and deployment and tuning hours. For MDR, get an all-in quote and compare it against that fully loaded number, not against the EDR license price alone.
Verify threat hunting is documented and scheduled
Threat hunting should be a regular, reportable activity with written deliverables, not an ad-hoc claim. Ask for a sample report before you sign, and weigh the provider against the NIST Cybersecurity Framework as a baseline for a mature response process. Pairing MDR with access controls, MFA, and tested <a href="/small-business/ransomware-protection">ransomware recovery planning</a> still matters.
Vendor Evaluation Checklist
- What EDR platform do you use, and can I keep my existing tool?
- What are your MTTR and MTTC figures, and are they backed by the contract rather than marketing language?
- Do your analysts take containment action autonomously, or do they need my approval first?
- How is threat hunting documented and reported, and can I see a sample report?
- Where are your SOC analysts located, and what certifications do they hold?
- Walk me through a ransomware event from detection to remediation, step by step.
Talk with a cybersecurity expert
Get a vendor-neutral review of your current endpoint protection and a straight answer on whether EDR, MDR, or a managed plan like Bellator Shield or Core fits your budget and compliance needs.
Frequently Asked Questions: MDR vs EDR Pricing
Full MDR with active response typically costs $25 to $50 per endpoint per month. For a 50-endpoint business, that's roughly $15,000 to $30,000 a year, including 24/7 monitoring and incident response that would otherwise cost $85,000 or more a year to staff internally. Flat-fee MDR plans for smaller environments are sometimes available starting around $1,500 to $2,500 a month.
The license costs less upfront, typically $3 to $18 per endpoint per month versus $25 to $50 for full MDR. But once you add security analyst labor, deployment time, and incident response retainer fees, self-managed EDR at 50 endpoints can exceed $150,000 a year, more than a comparable MDR contract, unless you already have in-house staff to run it.
Many MDR providers are platform-agnostic and can layer monitoring and response on top of an EDR tool you already have deployed. Others require migrating to their own preferred platform, which adds switching cost and can affect pricing at renewal. Confirm platform requirements and any lock-in terms before you sign.
A properly structured MDR service can help satisfy the continuous monitoring expectations of HIPAA Security Rule §164.312(b) and PCI DSS 4.0 Requirement 10.7. EDR alone, without active monitoring and documented response, generally does not. Confirm any MDR agreement includes compliance-specific reporting you can hand to an auditor, and route specific compliance questions to counsel.
A traditional Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) mainly monitors and alerts; it typically notifies you of a threat but doesn't take action itself. MDR providers actively respond, with autonomous or approval-required containment built into the service, and usually include proactive threat hunting as a standard deliverable rather than a paid add-on.
For a small business with no dedicated IT security staff, MDR or a managed EDR plan is often the most cost-effective option even at that scale. Flat-fee or per-endpoint MDR pricing can cover under-25-endpoint environments for substantially less than part-time security staffing, and provides the active monitoring documentation compliance frameworks and cyber insurers increasingly ask for.
Compare the operating outcome, not just the price
Choose the option that makes ownership and total cost clear
A useful comparison shows what is included, who watches and responds, where extra work remains, and which costs appear after the headline quote.
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