Softwr

Insurance · head to head

Duck Creek vs IBM QRadar

Duck Creek logo

Duck Creek

Insurance

Intelligent digital insurance platform

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
IBM QRadar logo

IBM QRadar

Cybersecurity

Enterprise SIEM licensed by events per second, whose cloud business IBM sold to Palo Alto Networks in 2024.

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Duck Creek pricing is not published; sold by quote through a sales process; IBM QRadar iBM sold the QRadar SaaS business to Palo Alto Networks in 2024 and those customers are being moved to Cortex XSIAM, so anyone buying today is choosing an on-premises product whose vendor has publicly moved the cloud future to a competitor, and the support horizon becomes a contract negotiation rather than an assumption.
  • They diverge on capability: Duck Creek covers Policy administration, IBM QRadar covers Offence model.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 30 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Duck Creek and IBM QRadar actually diverge.

Attributes where Duck Creek and IBM QRadar differ
AttributeDuck CreekIBM QRadar
Pricing modelquotesubscription
PlatformsWebWeb, Api
CategoryInsuranceCybersecurity
Founded20031911

Identical on both: starting price (On request), free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Duck Creek

  • Policy administration
  • Claims management
  • Billing
  • Digital customer portal
  • Mobile app
  • AI-powered workflows
  • Real-time reporting
  • Document management

Only in IBM QRadar

  • Offence model
  • Network flow analysis
  • Device Support Modules
  • Ariel query language
  • Rules and building blocks
  • Deployment topology
  • App Exchange
  • Use Case Manager

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Duck Creek

  • Policy administrationnot IBM QRadar
  • Claims managementnot IBM QRadar
  • Rating and billingnot IBM QRadar
  • Underwriting automationnot IBM QRadar
  • Enterprise insurance operationsnot IBM QRadar

IBM QRadar

  • A regulated enterprise that must keep log data on premises or in a specific jurisdiction and cannot use a shared SaaS SIEMnot Duck Creek
  • A SOC that wants log correlation and network flow analysis in one platform rather than buying an NDR product separatelynot Duck Creek
  • An existing QRadar estate deciding whether to stay on premises or accept the migration path to a different vendor's platformnot Duck Creek
  • Compliance-driven log retention and reporting where the audit requirement is specific about collection, retention and reportingnot Duck Creek

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Duck Creek

  • Pricing is not published; sold by quote through a sales process
  • Cloud-only deployment; no on-premises option

IBM QRadar

  • IBM sold the QRadar SaaS business to Palo Alto Networks in 2024 and those customers are being moved to Cortex XSIAM, so anyone buying today is choosing an on-premises product whose vendor has publicly moved the cloud future to a competitor, and the support horizon becomes a contract negotiation rather than an assumption.
  • Licensing is by events per second and flows per minute, so every additional log source raises the cost directly and teams routinely exclude verbose sources such as DNS, proxy, endpoint and cloud audit logs to stay under the licence, which strips out exactly the data an investigation later needs.
  • It needs a dedicated operator: rule tuning, parser work and offence triage are continuous jobs, and an organisation that deploys QRadar without at least one named engineer accumulates thousands of unreviewed offences and a false sense of coverage.
  • A log source without a matching Device Support Module arrives unparsed, and writing a custom parser with regular expressions against an unfamiliar payload format is specialist work that can take days per source, which quietly determines which systems ever get monitored.
  • On-premises capacity is planned across consoles, processors, collectors and data nodes, so outgrowing the sizing means procuring and racking more appliances rather than changing a subscription tier, and growth becomes a purchasing cycle measured in months.

Pricing, plan by plan

Duck Creek

On request

No published plan breakdown. See the Duck Creek review.

IBM QRadar

On request
  • QRadar SIEMFree
    • Event and flow processing
    • Offense management
    • Threat intelligence
  • QRadar CloudFree
    • Cloud-native deployment
    • Elastic scaling
    • Managed infrastructure
  • QRadar SuiteFree
    • SIEM + SOAR + XDR
    • Unified analyst experience
    • Federated search

Which should you pick?

Choose Duck Creek if

  • You need policy administration.
  • You also want claims management.
Duck Creek review

Choose IBM QRadar if

  • You need offence model.
  • You work on Web, Api.
  • You also want network flow analysis.
IBM QRadar review

Questions people ask

Is Duck Creek or IBM QRadar better?
Neither clearly leads. Duck Creek starts at On request and IBM QRadar at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Duck Creek or IBM QRadar?
Duck Creek starts at On request and IBM QRadar at On request.
Does Duck Creek or IBM QRadar run on more platforms?
Duck Creek runs on Web. IBM QRadar runs on Web, Api.
What is Duck Creek best used for?
Duck Creek is most often used for policy administration, claims management, rating and billing, underwriting automation. Of those, policy administration and claims management are not what IBM QRadar is typically brought in for.
What can Duck Creek do that IBM QRadar cannot?
Duck Creek covers Policy administration, Claims management, Billing, Digital customer portal. IBM QRadar covers Offence model, Network flow analysis, Device Support Modules, Ariel query language.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Duck Creek: How does Duck Creek pricing work?

Duck Creek does not publicly disclose specific pricing plans, costs, or tiers. The company directs interested parties to contact their sales team directly, as solutions are customized for individual clients.

Source
IBM QRadar: Who owns QRadar now?

It is split. IBM sold the QRadar SaaS assets to Palo Alto Networks in a deal announced in May 2024 and closed that September, and those customers are being migrated to Cortex XSIAM. IBM retains and supports the on-premises product.

Duck Creek: What Duck Creek products require pricing discussions?

Duck Creek's Intelligent Core platform (Policy, Rating, Billing, Claims) and Agentic AI Platform pricing depends on factors such as company size, deployment model (cloud vs. on-premise), implementation scope, and specific modules required.

Source
IBM QRadar: Is QRadar being discontinued?

IBM has committed to continuing support for on-premises customers, including security updates, while offering migration assistance. The cloud product's future belongs to Palo Alto. If you are signing a multi-year term, get the support horizon written into the contract.

Duck Creek: How do I get a quote from Duck Creek?

Duck Creek directs prospects to contact their sales team through a 'Talk with an Expert' button or the contact form at their website. They require direct sales engagement for pricing discussions.

Source
IBM QRadar: How is it licensed?

By events per second for logs and flows per minute for network data, with the software or appliance sized to that rate. Add-on modules in the suite are licensed separately.

IBM QRadar: What is an offence?

QRadar's term for a correlated case. Rules group related events and flows against a common indicator such as a host or user, so an analyst reviews one offence rather than the hundreds of events behind it.

IBM QRadar: Do I need a full-time engineer?

In practice yes for anything beyond a small deployment. Parser development, rule tuning and offence triage do not stop, and the most common failure mode is a well-installed QRadar that nobody has tuned since go-live.

Share

Related pages

More on Duck Creek

More on IBM QRadar

Keep looking

Other head to heads