Bitdefender vs SentinelOne is a genuine decision with a genuine answer, and most comparisons you will find get the pricing part wrong. Not slightly wrong. Wrong in a way that flatters whoever wrote them.

This guide uses only prices each vendor publishes on its own site, explains where a like-for-like comparison is not possible, and says which situations point to SentinelOne. We license Bitdefender, so weigh it accordingly and check the prices yourself. Both are linked.

Terms this guide uses

• EPP (endpoint protection platform) is prevention: blocking known and novel threats before execution.
• EDR (endpoint detection and response) records endpoint activity and gives an analyst the means to investigate and respond after something gets through.
• Data retention is how long that recorded activity is kept. It sets how far back an investigation can look.
• Quote-only tier is a product with no published price, scoped rather than looked up.

Bitdefender vs SentinelOne on published price

Both vendors publish some list pricing, and neither publishes all of it.

The rungs line up by position on each vendor's published ladder, not feature for feature. What sits inside them is the next section, and it is where the comparison gets interesting.

Bitdefender figures are list prices for ten devices on a one-year term from Bitdefender's comparison page, where a 30% vendor promotion was running at the time of writing. SentinelOne figures come from SentinelOne's own packages page, whose fine print states that listed prices do not reflect final pricing because all purchases go through an authorized partner.

A warning about every other price you will find. SentinelOne publishes four prices. Two of them, Core and Control, appear only inside the compare-table plan switcher and never on the pricing cards at the top, which is why most write-ups miss them. Search for SentinelOne pricing anyway and you get monthly per-endpoint figures and seat bundles from aggregator and reseller blogs, several of them selling competing products. Check one: $8 to $10 per endpoint monthly for Control works out at $96 to $120 a year against SentinelOne's own $79.99. Treat third-party pricing for any vendor as a lead, not a fact.

Bitdefender EDR vs SentinelOne: the comparison that needs a quote

Here is where most comparisons quietly mislead, including ones written by people in our position.

Singularity Complete at $179.99 includes EDR. Bitdefender Business Security Premium at $88.00 does not. Bitdefender describes Premium as early advanced attack prevention without additional detection and response capabilities. GravityZone's EDR arrives in Business Security Enterprise, which is quote-only with no published price.

So the honest position is this: you cannot do a like-for-like EDR comparison from published list prices. Anyone telling you Bitdefender is half the price of SentinelOne is comparing a prevention tier against an EDR tier and calling it a saving.

What you can say from published figures:

• At the prevention layer both vendors publish numbers, so this part is comparable. SentinelOne's compare table marks Core and Control as having no extended detection and response and no data retention, which puts them in the same job as Bitdefender's three self-serve tiers. Core at $69.99 and Control at $79.99 both land under Bitdefender Business Security Premium's $88.00 list price.
• At the EDR layer, SentinelOne publishes $179.99 and Bitdefender quotes. Which is cheaper for you is a real question with a real answer, and getting it requires asking both.

If you are evaluating EDR, get a Business Security Enterprise quote at your device count before comparing anything. Our tier comparison covers what sits in each GravityZone level.

Is SentinelOne an antivirus?

Yes, in the sense that matters: it replaces your antivirus rather than sitting alongside it. SentinelOne positions Singularity as AI-driven endpoint and cloud workload protection with real-time threat detection and response, which covers the prevention job traditional antivirus did and adds the investigation layer on top.

The reason people ask is usually procurement. If a compliance questionnaire asks whether you run antivirus, a modern endpoint protection platform is the answer to that question. The same is true of GravityZone.

What you should not do is run both. Two enforcing endpoint agents on one machine cause file contention, duplicated alerts, and degraded performance. That applies to any pair of these products, and it is the single most expensive mistake in this category. Our migration guide covers sequencing the swap so the gap stays in minutes and runs unattended.

SentinelOne Complete vs Control, and what the tiers include

SentinelOne's published packages break down like this:

• Singularity Core, $69.99 per endpoint per year. The endpoint protection platform on its own, with role-based access control and multi-tenant management. Their compare table marks it as having no extended detection and response, no cloud workload protection, and no data retention.
• Singularity Control, $79.99 per endpoint per year. Adds device and firewall control, remote shell, cloud workload protection, and autonomous prevention, detection, and response. Still no extended detection and response and no data retention.
• Singularity Complete, $179.99 per endpoint per year. AI-driven endpoint and cloud workload protection, real-time threat detection and response, an AI security assistant, and 14 days of data retention.
• Singularity Commercial, $229.99 per endpoint per year. Everything in Complete, plus identity detection and response, 90 days of data retention, and managed threat hunting.
• Singularity Enterprise, quoted. Everything in Commercial, plus an agentic AI SOC analyst for automated triage, full visibility and forensics, and expert-led onboarding.

Complete is the first rung with extended detection and response, and the first with any data retention at all. That is the rung the EDR comparison turns on.

The retention difference deserves more attention than it usually gets. Fourteen days sounds fine until you are investigating something that started five weeks ago. Mandiant's M-Trends 2026 reports that global median dwell time rose to 14 days from 11, so the median intrusion now begins right at the edge of what Complete keeps. Commercial's 90 days is the published answer. SentinelOne's Complete page also names an upgrade to 365 days of historical EDR data, priced on request rather than listed. Either way, settle the lookback your compliance regime or your insurer expects before comparing headline numbers.

Bitdefender GravityZone vs SentinelOne on operating model

Price aside, these platforms assume different buyers, and this decides more outcomes than any feature.

SentinelOne assumes capability and rewards it. Autonomous response, rich telemetry, and an analyst-facing investigation experience. Given people who know what to ask, it is genuinely strong. Given nobody, it is an expensive product doing a fraction of its job.

GravityZone assumes a lean team and automates toward them. Detections arrive correlated into incidents with the attack scope assembled, so a generalist can understand what happened without being a malware analyst.

Neither is better in the abstract. The question is who opens the console on Monday morning, and whether that person's job title contains the word security. Our comparisons with CrowdStrike and Microsoft Defender for Business work through the same question with different opponents.

Managed detection and response MDR solutions from both vendors

If nobody covers nights and weekends, this section matters more than everything above it.

Both vendors sell a managed service and neither publishes a price. SentinelOne includes managed threat hunting from the Commercial tier and offers it as an add-on at Complete. Its full managed service, currently branded Wayfinder MDR, is an add-on on top of a platform tier rather than something bundled into one. Bitdefender sells MDR and MDR PLUS, where the base service commits to a security account manager calling your emergency contact within 30 minutes of an incident, with enhanced monitoring for 72 hours afterwards.

The comparison most buyers should actually run is an unmanaged premium platform against a managed mid-tier one, because a console nobody watches at 3am is not protection, it is evidence collection. Our MDR guide covers what that service includes and when it is the wrong buy.

Where SentinelOne is the right buy

Four situations where we would point you at SentinelOne rather than GravityZone.

You have security analysts, or you are hiring them. The platform is built for people who run investigations, and it pays back when they do.

You need long data retention as a hard requirement. Ninety days at the Commercial tier is a published, checkable number, and matching it elsewhere is a scoping conversation.

Autonomous rollback is central to your risk model. SentinelOne's remediation and rollback story is a real differentiator, particularly for ransomware scenarios on endpoints you cannot afford to rebuild.

You are consolidating onto their broader platform. If you are already invested in their cloud or identity modules, platform gravity is a legitimate reason to stay.

If two or more of those describe you, buy SentinelOne. A comparison from a Bitdefender partner that never reaches that conclusion is a sales page.

Questions buyers ask us

Which detects better? Both score well in independent testing, and anyone claiming a decisive raw-detection gap is usually selling one of them. The differences that show up in daily operation are tuning effort, alert noise before tuning, how much investigation is automated, and whether anyone is watching after hours.

Can we run both during a migration? Only in sequence, with one in a non-enforcing state, and only briefly. Two enforcing agents on one machine is a fault, not a safety net.

Is Bitdefender cheaper? At the published prevention tiers, on list price, Bitdefender is lower at the bottom two rungs, and SentinelOne Core at $69.99 and Control at $79.99 both come in under Bitdefender Business Security Premium at $88.00. At the EDR layer nobody can tell you without a quote, because Bitdefender's EDR tier is quote-only. Be suspicious of any source that answers this question with a single multiplier.

What about the 100-device limit? That is Bitdefender's self-serve checkout ceiling, not a product cap. Above it, Bitdefender routes buyers to its own inquiry form and to its partner network. Both routes work, and our guide to buying through a reseller covers what changes either way.

Do you cover the US as well as Canada? Both. We are a Bitdefender Reseller Gold Partner working with businesses across the United States and Canada, and licensing, deployment, and renewals run the same way in either country. That Gold status is what makes the pricing work: it opens deeper partner discounts across the GravityZone catalog, and that room goes into your quote.

We are mid-renewal and want to switch. What is the sequence? Model it at your real device count, include migration effort honestly, and time the cutover against your existing expiry so you are not paying twice or leaving a gap. Our renewal guide covers that timing.

The short version

• Published prices: Bitdefender $32.50 / $38.50 / $88.00 per device per year; SentinelOne Core $69.99, Control $79.99, Complete $179.99, Commercial $229.99 per endpoint per year, Enterprise quoted.
• Those tiers are not equivalent. Singularity Complete includes EDR; Bitdefender Premium explicitly does not, and GravityZone's EDR tier is quote-only.
• Read SentinelOne's prices off SentinelOne's page, including the Core and Control prices inside the compare-table switcher. Third-party monthly figures for those two do not match it.
• Data retention is 14 days at Complete and 90 at Commercial, and Core and Control carry none. Median dwell time is now 14 days, so treat the lookback as a scoping decision.
• SentinelOne rewards a security team. GravityZone automates for a lean one.
• If nobody watches alerts overnight, compare managed services before comparing consoles.

Send us a device count split by workstations, servers, and mobiles, plus what you run today, your renewal date, and whether anyone covers nights. We will quote the right GravityZone tier at partner-tier pricing, including a Business Security Enterprise number if EDR is what you are actually comparing, and tell you plainly if your environment calls for SentinelOne instead. We are a Bitdefender Reseller Gold Partner serving businesses across the United States and Canada. Gold is a discount tier rather than a badge, so the quote comes back at deeper partner pricing than the checkout shows, and our Bitdefender Gold Partner practice in Canada covers how we run deployments. The consolidation thinking behind decisions like this runs through our workflow automation practice.