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Cybersecurity · head to head

Feedzai vs IBM QRadar

Feedzai logo

Feedzai

Cybersecurity

Real-time transaction fraud and financial crime detection for banks and payment processors

From
On request
Rated
-
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
-

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Feedzai pricing is per transaction with an annual minimum, so a bank with seasonal or growing volume commits to a floor it may not use and pays overage above the band.; 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: Feedzai covers Real-time scoring, IBM QRadar covers Offence model.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Feedzai and IBM QRadar actually diverge.

Attributes where Feedzai and IBM QRadar differ
AttributeFeedzaiIBM QRadar
Pricing modelquotesubscription
PlatformsWeb, LinuxWeb, Api
FoundedUnknown1911

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

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 Feedzai

  • Real-time scoring
  • Rule and model hybrid
  • Case manager
  • Behavioural biometrics
  • Model explainability
  • Deployment options

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.

Feedzai

  • A bank joining an instant payments scheme where transfers are irrevocable and post-hoc recovery is impossiblenot IBM QRadar
  • A card issuer whose existing rules engine cannot be changed without a release, so fraud waves run for daysnot IBM QRadar
  • An acquirer needing per-merchant risk models rather than one portfolio-wide modelnot IBM QRadar
  • A bank required by its regulator to explain automated declines to customers, which rules out opaque scoringnot 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 Feedzai
  • A SOC that wants log correlation and network flow analysis in one platform rather than buying an NDR product separatelynot Feedzai
  • An existing QRadar estate deciding whether to stay on premises or accept the migration path to a different vendor's platformnot Feedzai
  • Compliance-driven log retention and reporting where the audit requirement is specific about collection, retention and reportingnot Feedzai

Where each one falls short

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

Feedzai

  • Pricing is per transaction with an annual minimum, so a bank with seasonal or growing volume commits to a floor it may not use and pays overage above the band.
  • It sits in the authorisation path, which makes every upgrade a change-controlled event with rollback plans, and the operational burden falls on the bank rather than the vendor.
  • Out of the box models need months of the customer own labelled fraud history before they beat the rules they replace, so the value case starts late.
  • AML and fraud are licensed as separate modules, so institutions expecting one platform fee find the transaction monitoring capability is a second line item.
  • The buyer profile is large institutions, so smaller banks and fintechs face minimums that make per-transaction economics unattractive below significant scale.

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

Feedzai

On request
  • Feedzai Financial Crime Platform$undefined/year
    • Priced by transaction volume with annual minimum commitment
    • Modules for fraud, AML and account opening licensed separately
    • Cloud, private cloud and on-premises deployment

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 Feedzai if

  • You need real-time scoring.
  • You work on Web, Linux.
  • You also want rule and model hybrid.

Choose IBM QRadar if

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

Questions people ask

Is Feedzai or IBM QRadar better?
Neither clearly leads. Feedzai 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, Feedzai or IBM QRadar?
Feedzai starts at On request and IBM QRadar at On request.
Does Feedzai or IBM QRadar run on more platforms?
Feedzai runs on Web, Linux. IBM QRadar runs on Web, Api.
What is Feedzai best used for?
Feedzai is most often used for a bank joining an instant payments scheme where transfers are irrevocable and post-hoc recovery is impossible, a card issuer whose existing rules engine cannot be changed without a release, so fraud waves run for days, an acquirer needing per-merchant risk models rather than one portfolio-wide model, a bank required by its regulator to explain automated declines to customers, which rules out opaque scoring. Of those, a bank joining an instant payments scheme where transfers are irrevocable and post-hoc recovery is impossible and a card issuer whose existing rules engine cannot be changed without a release, so fraud waves run for days are not what IBM QRadar is typically brought in for.
What can Feedzai do that IBM QRadar cannot?
Feedzai covers Real-time scoring, Rule and model hybrid, Case manager, Behavioural biometrics. IBM QRadar covers Offence model, Network flow analysis, Device Support Modules, Ariel query language.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Feedzai: Can Feedzai run on-premises?

Yes. On-premises and private cloud deployments are supported, which is why it appears in markets where transaction data cannot legally leave the country.

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.

Feedzai: Does it cover AML as well as fraud?

It does, but transaction monitoring is a separately licensed module. Assume two line items if you want both.

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.

Feedzai: How fast are decisions?

Designed for the authorisation window, typically tens of milliseconds. This is the constraint that rules out batch scoring architectures.

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.

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