Microsoft Security Copilot vs CrowdStrike Charlotte AI vs SentinelOne Purple AI: Real AI SOC Cost in 2026
These three products cannot be bought as equivalent line items. Microsoft Security Copilot is a standalone, consumption-billed product with its own confirmed hourly rate, purchasable independent of any other Microsoft security tool. Charlotte AI and Purple AI are not standalone purchases at all — they are capabilities layered onto an existing CrowdStrike Falcon or SentinelOne Singularity platform subscription, and neither vendor sells them apart from that underlying platform. Comparing Security Copilot's SCU price against "Charlotte AI's price" as though they were the same kind of purchase would misstate the category.
The short answer
Microsoft Security Copilot bills at a confirmed $4 per Security Compute Unit (SCU) per hour, with $6/hour for overage beyond provisioned capacity — a single SCU running continuously for a month costs about $2,920. As of July 2026, Microsoft 365 E5 and E7 customers receive 400 SCUs per month for every 1,000 licensed users, up to a maximum of 10,000 SCUs per month (that cap is reached at 25,000 or more licensed users, not at 10,000 licensed users) — meaning a large E5-licensed organization may already have meaningful Security Copilot capacity before spending anything new. This included capacity is a monthly SCU allotment, not hourly-billed provisioned capacity, and Microsoft does not document a rate to convert it into a dollar value. CrowdStrike's Charlotte AI is reported to add $8–14 per endpoint per year on top of Falcon's own published $7.99–19.99/device/month platform pricing — a genuinely separate, additive cost, but small relative to the underlying platform itself. SentinelOne's Purple AI is not sold as a separate SKU at all; it now ships inside the Singularity Complete tier (published from $179.99/endpoint/year list), so its cost is simply whatever the Complete tier costs, with no way to buy Purple AI's specific agentic capability apart from that platform commitment.
What's actually purchasable, by vendor
| Microsoft Security Copilot | CrowdStrike Charlotte AI | SentinelOne Purple AI | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sold standalone? | Yes — a genuinely independent, consumption-billed product | No — an add-on capability requiring an existing Falcon platform subscription | No — bundled inside the Singularity Complete tier specifically, not sold apart from it |
| Confirmed/reported rate | $4/SCU-hour provisioned (confirmed, official); $6/SCU-hour overage (confirmed, official) | Reported $8–14/endpoint/year, on top of Falcon's own published $7.99–19.99/device/month platform tiers | Not priced separately — tracks whatever Singularity Complete costs (published from $179.99/endpoint/year list; negotiated 200–2,000-endpoint deals reported at $135–153/endpoint) |
| Bundled allowance | 400 SCUs/month per 1,000 Microsoft 365 E5 or E7 licensed users, up to a 10,000 SCU/month cap reached at 25,000+ licensed users, at no additional cost (effective July 2026); this is a monthly allotment, not hourly-billed capacity | Not applicable — no bundled AI allowance separate from whichever Falcon tier is purchased | Not applicable — included once on Singularity Complete, with no separate consumption meter reported |
| Platform prerequisite | An Azure subscription and Microsoft Entra ID; no Microsoft security platform purchase is strictly required, though E5/E7 customers get substantially more value from existing signal sources (Defender XDR, Entra ID P2, Purview) | CrowdStrike Falcon (any tier); Charlotte AI cannot be purchased independent of a Falcon platform subscription | SentinelOne Singularity Complete tier specifically — a lower tier does not include Purple AI at any price |
| Billing model | Pure consumption (SCU-hours) | Reported flat per-endpoint annual add-on | Bundled into platform per-endpoint pricing, no separate meter |
The E5 bundled allocation, worked through
Microsoft's July 2026 change is a genuinely material shift for any organization already licensed for Microsoft 365 E5 or E7: 400 SCUs per month for every 1,000 licensed users, up to a maximum of 10,000 SCUs per month regardless of organization size beyond that point.
| Licensed E5/E7 users | Included SCUs/month |
|---|---|
| 1,000 | 400 |
| 5,000 | 2,000 |
| 10,000 | 4,000 |
| 25,000 | 10,000 (the cap) |
| 25,000+ | 10,000 (capped — additional licensed users beyond 25,000 do not increase the included allocation further) |
This is a monthly SCU bucket, not an hourly-billed allotment — Microsoft describes it as included capacity rather than a provisioned, hourly-metered resource, and does not publish a formula to convert this monthly allocation into an equivalent dollar value at the standalone $4/hour rate. This article does not attempt that conversion. What can be said with confidence: an E5-licensed organization gets a real, non-trivial starting allocation before any new spend is required, and the practical question for such an organization is not "how much does Security Copilot cost" but "how much SCU capacity beyond the E5 allocation does our actual analyst workload require."
Modeling three SOC sizes
Because Charlotte AI and Purple AI aren't independently priced, this article models them against an illustrative endpoint count derived from SOC analyst headcount (1 analyst monitoring roughly 200 endpoints, an assumption stated explicitly rather than a vendor ratio), while Security Copilot is modeled on its own confirmed SCU rate independent of endpoint count.
5-analyst SOC
| Estimated annual cost | |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Security Copilot, 1 SCU running continuously (illustrative sizing) | 1 × $4 × 24 × 30 × 12 = $34,560/year, before any E5 bundled offset |
| CrowdStrike Falcon platform (illustrative 1,000 endpoints) + Charlotte AI | Falcon: $95,880–$239,880/year (published platform range) + Charlotte AI: $8,000–$14,000/year (reported add-on) |
| SentinelOne Singularity Complete (illustrative 1,000 endpoints, includes Purple AI) | 1,000 × $179.99 = $179,990/year at list, or lower at negotiated 200+ endpoint rates |
20-analyst SOC
| Estimated annual cost | |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Security Copilot, 3 SCUs continuous (illustrative sizing) | 3 × $4 × 24 × 30 × 12 = $103,680/year, before any E5 bundled offset |
| CrowdStrike Falcon (illustrative 4,000 endpoints) + Charlotte AI | Falcon: $383,520–$959,520/year + Charlotte AI: $32,000–$56,000/year |
| SentinelOne Singularity Complete (illustrative 4,000 endpoints) | 4,000 × $179.99 = $719,960/year at list |
100-analyst SOC
| Estimated annual cost | |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Security Copilot, 10 SCUs continuous (illustrative sizing) | 10 × $4 × 24 × 30 × 12 = $345,600/year, before any E5 bundled offset |
| CrowdStrike Falcon (illustrative 20,000 endpoints) + Charlotte AI | Falcon: $1,917,600–$4,797,600/year + Charlotte AI: $160,000–$280,000/year |
| SentinelOne Singularity Complete (illustrative 20,000 endpoints) | 20,000 × $179.99 = $3,599,800/year at list, likely negotiated meaningfully lower at this scale |
These endpoint-to-analyst ratios are this article's own illustration, not a vendor-recommended sizing — a real SOC's endpoint-to-analyst ratio varies enormously by industry, environment complexity, and coverage model.
Do not compare an AI add-on against an entire platform
The comparison this article's own scenario tables illustrate is genuinely lopsided in a way worth stating plainly: Charlotte AI's and Purple AI's incremental AI cost (reported at $8–14/endpoint/year for Charlotte specifically) is small relative to the Falcon or Singularity platform underneath it, while Security Copilot's cost is the entire purchase, with no separate "platform" layer required beneath it in the same sense. A fair reading of this comparison is not "Security Copilot costs $103,680 while Charlotte AI costs $32,000–56,000" — it's "Security Copilot is a complete, standalone purchase at that price, while Charlotte AI is a small addition to a platform commitment that, in this illustration, already costs $383,520–959,520 on its own." An organization evaluating these three should keep platform cost and AI-add-on cost in clearly separate lines rather than let a small add-on figure imply the whole SOC AI investment is cheap.
What the advertised price misses
- Security Copilot's SCU-hour billing creates a real risk of expensive, unpredictable spikes precisely during active incidents — the moments when analysts most need the tool's capacity are also the moments most likely to push usage into the $6/hour overage rate, a structural mismatch between when the tool is valuable and when it's cheapest.
- Neither Charlotte AI's nor Purple AI's reported figures include the underlying platform's own hidden costs (data retention beyond default windows, premium support tiers, professional services for deployment) that are common across this broader endpoint-security category.
- SentinelOne's Purple AI being bundled into Singularity Complete rather than sold separately means an organization on a lower Singularity tier cannot evaluate Purple AI's specific cost in isolation at all — the only way to get pricing is to price the full Complete-tier jump from whatever tier is currently in use.
- CrowdStrike's own pricing is reported, not published, for Charlotte AI specifically — the $8–14/endpoint/year figure comes from benchmark data on signed Falcon deals, not from CrowdStrike's own rate card, and real negotiated figures may differ.
Break-even: analyst hours saved
As a formula: required analyst hours saved/month = AI tool's monthly cost ÷ loaded analyst hourly rate. Using an illustrative $75/hour loaded SOC analyst cost and the 20-analyst SOC's Security Copilot figure ($103,680/year, or $8,640/month, before any E5 offset): the tool needs to save about 115 analyst-hours a month across the team to break even — roughly 5.75 hours per analyst per month, under 90 minutes a week. This is a modest bar for a tool specifically designed to accelerate incident investigation and reduce manual log correlation, though it assumes the illustrative $75/hour rate and full SCU utilization, neither of which is a vendor-confirmed figure.
Which product fits which organization
- A Microsoft 365 E5 or E7 shop, especially one already generating substantial Defender XDR, Entra ID, and Purview signal, gets real starting SCU capacity at no incremental cost — the practical question for this buyer is sizing additional SCU capacity beyond the bundled allocation, not whether to buy Security Copilot from zero.
- An organization already standardized on CrowdStrike Falcon faces a comparatively small incremental decision in Charlotte AI, reported at $8–14/endpoint/year against a platform it's already paying for.
- An organization already on or evaluating SentinelOne Singularity gets Purple AI as part of the Complete tier decision specifically — there is no smaller, standalone Purple AI purchase to evaluate separately.
- An organization not yet committed to any of the three underlying platforms should treat this as three separate platform decisions with AI capability as one factor among several, not as a direct three-way AI-tool price comparison.
Limitations and uncertainty
Microsoft Security Copilot's SCU pricing ($4/hour provisioned, $6/hour overage) and its July 2026 E5/E7 bundled allocation (400 SCUs per 1,000 licenses, 10,000 SCU cap) are confirmed directly from Microsoft's own official pricing documentation. The exact conversion between the bundled monthly SCU allocation and hourly provisioned capacity is not fully documented by Microsoft and is not estimated in this article. Charlotte AI's reported $8–14/endpoint/year figure and Falcon's published $7.99–19.99/device/month range come from third-party benchmark data on signed deals, not CrowdStrike's own rate card for Charlotte specifically. Purple AI's bundling into Singularity Complete and that tier's list price ($179.99/endpoint/year) are reported by multiple independent sources but not confirmed on SentinelOne's own current pricing page in this research. All endpoint-to-analyst ratios and the illustrative loaded hourly costs used in this article's scenarios and break-even calculation are this article's own assumptions, not vendor or industry-confirmed figures.
Sources
Checked late September 2026. Microsoft: microsoft.com (Security Copilot pricing documentation, confirmed including the July 2026 E5/E7 allocation change). CrowdStrike and SentinelOne do not publish standalone AI-feature pricing; figures in this article are drawn from multiple independent third-party pricing analyses and benchmark data on signed enterprise deals.