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Fortinet FortiGuard vs MetaDefender comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiGuard
Ranking in Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP)
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
MetaDefender
Ranking in Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP)
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (12th), Anti-Malware Tools (3rd), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiGuard is 1.7%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MetaDefender is 1.9%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
MetaDefender1.9%
Fortinet FortiGuard1.7%
Other96.4%
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP)
 

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Kamran Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief information security officer at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Improves email filtering and network protection but has limited accessible support and feature discovery
When going for support and asking for support for features, the support team asks to go for professional services, which are not covered in the support agreement. This is the reason exploration of the product features has been limited. To learn or explore something about the product, professional services need to be taken. When creating a ticket for support with configuration features, the support is reluctant to provide that support. This is the reason every feature of Fortinet FortiGuard cannot be explored. Currently Fortinet FortiGuard is working fine with no issues, but newsletters or communications about new features in the product are not being received from Fortinet. This limits knowledge of what new features are available in the product. There is no knowledge about the behavior analytics feature in Fortinet FortiGuard.
Ravi Raushan Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Infra Architect at a educational organization with 11-50 employees
File protection has improved and now keeps millions of daily transfers secure and compliant
In my organization, while using this tool, we found that there were a few files flagged as suspicious; however, those were not suspicious and it was a false positive, so that can be improved. False positive results were an issue, and it took time to scan files if the file size was greater than 1 GB. For larger files greater than 1 GB, it needs to be improved. In some cases, the reconstruction of the file led to a failure of code deployment and it flagged a valid file as malicious, which was not effective; however, in other types of files, it was very effective and could scan files properly. We have already covered all the main suggestions; however, it can be improved to reduce false positive results, and scanning could be faster to process more files in a day.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable features of the solution are its ease of use and efficiency."
"The benefits I gain from using Fortinet FortiGuard include peace of mind; it has contributed to ensuring that we are always available and can meet our availability targets, which means that productivity is maintained and revenues will rake in as planned."
"The content filtering feature helps protect data by filtering potentially dangerous websites and brings significant benefit to the organization."
"The main benefits Fortinet FortiGuard provides are that it secures the network from external threats, it provides security, and it has a very perfect graphical user interface that is very easy to use."
"The best features in Fortinet FortiGuard that I appreciate are the nice interface, ease of use, and straightforward administration and setup."
"MetaDefender is leading with respect to competitors as an all-in-one platform because no other tool has all the platform built-in."
"The percentage of accuracy is great and the integration of multi-scanning and Content Disarm and Reconstruction affects my data security operations effectively because OPSWAT blocks the file types that we are not willing to have inside the company or are not approved."
"For one of my clients, a major bank in Turkey, they reported saving approximately 30 percent of their SOC time on analyzing emails since implementing MetaDefender."
"The best feature of MetaDefender is that it can isolate USB devices from the connected network, blocks malware and unsafe files, and ensures all endpoints follow security policy, so that my organization remains safe and reduces the risk of these threats."
"OPSWAT is the best alternative."
"MetaDefender is a useful tool for scanning all incoming and outgoing files and keeping our applications and servers in compliance, and I found it useful because we can integrate it with multiple file transfer tools such as Globalscape EFT, GoAnywhere, or Sterling, which is the best feature as it integrates with multiple tools."
"MetaDefender is flexible because, for a free product, you can enroll up to 50 devices, and I have only used about eight devices so far."
"In my experience, the best feature that MetaDefender offers is its perfect documentation, which is critical for API integrations to ensure files are not corrupted or infected with viruses."
 

Cons

"The dashboard is an important and integral part of the product that could be improved."
"I think that automated response could be improved if they can add automated response features into Fortinet FortiGuard."
"Currently, for our usage, the areas that have room for improvement are pricing and customization."
"If the tool can be cheaper or less expensive, it can be good for users."
"When creating a ticket for support with configuration features, the support is reluctant to provide that support."
"What I would like to see improved in MetaDefender includes reducing the high cost of the license, as the pricing is very high."
"I would rate it an eight because its interface can be improved and it can improve their integrations as well, so there is room for improvement."
"The main improvement needed is pricing because, as an enterprise solution, smaller partners do not often receive the attention they deserve."
"While MetaDefender's mail gateway already gives fewer false positives, there is still room for improvement in reducing those even further."
"I did not manage to enroll my IoT devices, including my child's device running on iOS and some Amazon products."
"We could enhance the user interface and user experience, as the platform has many security capabilities, but some configuration and policy management tasks can take time to understand, especially for someone using the product for the first time."
"In my opinion, MetaDefender could improve its async version of their APIs, as the documentation is not that good for the async APIs and can be a bit complex to navigate for integrations."
"Reporting still requires improvement, but otherwise the solution is excellent."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If one is very cheap and ten is very expensive, I rate the tool's price as a six to seven."
"We bought a three-year license, and that was pretty expensive. We agreed that it was really worth buying. It could be cheaper, but we understand that quality comes at a price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Educational Organization
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiGuard?
Regarding pricing, I must say it is quite pricey, but if you look at the value it gives you, I think the value justifies the cost.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiGuard?
When going for support and asking for support for features, the support team asks to go for professional services, which are not covered in the support agreement. This is the reason exploration of ...
What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiGuard?
Fortinet FortiGuard is used to filter emails coming to the email server. Fortinet FortiGuard threat intelligence is utilized, but not dedicatedly or specifically for threat intelligence purposes. F...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MetaDefender?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that the cost and license fee is increasing every year.
What needs improvement with MetaDefender?
MetaDefender can be improved by upgrading the Linux version, which is using many free tools such as MongoDB, Postgres, and OpenSSL. It can be easily targeted by hackers. If MetaDefender can upgrade...
What is your primary use case for MetaDefender?
My main use case for MetaDefender involves the Central Management Console, core service, and ICAP service. In my day-to-day work, I use MetaDefender to scan endpoint security, but we did not have a...
 

Also Known As

No data available
OPSWAT MetaDefender, MetaDefender Core
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiGuard vs. MetaDefender and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.