Best MDR for Small Business (November 2026)

What does a managed detection and response service do for a small business?

An MDR service puts analysts behind the EDR agent on your computers. When the agent flags something, a person at the vendor looks at it, decides whether it is real and acts or tells you what to do. For a small business the value is time: an attack that starts at 2am on a Saturday gets looked at before Monday.

This page ranks only products where that 24/7 service is part of the base price. Several other products sell it separately: WatchGuard Endpoint Security 360, Webroot Business Endpoint Protection list managed response as an add-on. Those can be good choices, but you have to buy and budget for the service as a second item, and the leaderboard above does not include them.

Is MDR worth it for a small business, or is EDR enough?

MDR is worth it when nobody on staff can answer a security alert within the hour, day or night. EDR records what happens on each computer and raises the alarm; if the alarm goes to an inbox nobody reads until Monday, the licence has bought you a record of the attack and little else. A business with an IT person who watches the console, or an MSP contracted to, can run EDR on its own and spend the difference elsewhere.

The difference is the cost of people. The cheapest EDR in our EDR ranking lists at $36.00 per seat per year; the cheapest product here, with analysts included, lists at $99.00. For ten seats that is $990.00 a year for ThreatDown Elite. If you would otherwise pay an IT provider to watch alerts, compare that figure with their monitoring fee, not with the EDR licence. The EDR vs MDR vs XDR vs antivirus guide sets out what each layer adds.

How much does MDR cost for a small business?

Among the products ranked here, the lowest published price with 24/7 managed response included is $99.00 per seat per year, for ThreatDown Elite at ten seats. Huntress Managed EDR costs $107.88 per endpoint per year and is sold direct only from 50 endpoints, with lower rates at higher volumes; through an MSP, the MSP sets the price. Cynet All-in-One publishes no price and quotes by package. The MDR pricing guide covers the wider market, including the providers that sell only by quote, with every published price by seat count.

Managed EDR or MDR: which should a small business buy?

Managed EDR is an EDR product with the vendor's analysts watching it around the clock; MDR is the broader service name, and some MDR services also take in identity, cloud or network signals. For a small business the two are bought the same way, per endpoint or user a year, and the three products here span both: Huntress Managed EDR is sold as managed EDR, ThreatDown Elite bundles EDR with ThreatDown's MDR service, and Cynet All-in-One is a platform whose All-in-One package includes its CyOps analysts. Choose on how you buy and what you need covered, not on the label.

How do you buy each MDR product?

The products here differ less in what they detect than in how they reach you.

ThreatDown Elite is a web-store product. You can buy it yourself in ThreatDown's online store, from 5 to 20 endpoints, at $99.00 per endpoint per year; larger quantities go through ThreatDown or a partner, by quote. It ranks 1 of 3 here on a Fit Score of 52, mostly because it is the easiest to buy. ThreatDown publishes a median of 5 minutes to detect and 19 minutes to contain for its MDR service; those are ThreatDown's own internal figures, and contractual SLAs come only with its MDR Plus service.

Huntress Managed EDR is a channel product. It integrates with the RMM and PSA tools that MSPs run, supports multi-tenant management, and Huntress sets no seat minimum when an MSP buys it. Bought direct or from a reseller, it has a 50-endpoint minimum and no online checkout. Huntress advertises an 8-minute mean time to respond (MTTR), a marketing figure rather than a contractual SLA.

Cynet All-in-One is a sales-led product. It bundles endpoint protection and EDR, includes its CyOps 24/7 MDR service in the Elite and All-in-One packages (check which package a quote names), publishes no price, and sells through a quote. Its sales orders are final and non-cancellable once signed.

Product	Ransomware rollback	Device control	Patch management	macOS	Linux	RMM/PSA integration
ThreatDown Elite	Included	Included	Included	Included	Included	Included
Huntress Managed EDR	Not offered	Not offered	Not offered	Included	Included	Included
Cynet All-in-One	Included	Included	Not offered	Included	Included	Included

Which MDR service is best for your business?

• No IT staff and no MSP: ThreatDown Elite. It is the only product here you can buy and deploy without a sales call, and it adds ransomware rollback on Windows and patch management.
• An MSP already runs your IT: ask whether they resell Huntress Managed EDR. It fits the tools they already use, and buying through them avoids the direct minimum.
• You already run Microsoft Defender for Business: it includes EDR but no managed service, and Microsoft's Defender Experts attach only to its enterprise suites. Keep it and add the watching, from an MSP or one of the products here, rather than replacing it.
• HIPAA-covered or other regulated data: none of the products here publishes a business associate agreement offer. ThreatDown and Huntress both state they do not sign one; Cynet All-in-One maps its reporting to HIPAA, PCI DSS and CMMC but does not say publicly whether it signs one, so ask.
• Defence supply chain work under CMMC: Huntress publishes CMMC documentation in its trust centre and describes itself as a Security Protection Asset rather than a system that handles controlled unclassified information. Confirm that position with your assessor.
• Fewer than five computers: ThreatDown will not sell below 5. Huntress through an MSP or a quote from Cynet are the routes left.

Which MDR buying mistakes should you avoid?

Assuming the service will fix everything. Analysts can isolate a machine and tell you what happened, but recovery is often still your job. Ransomware rollback on Huntress Managed EDR is not offered; Huntress relies on its analysts' remediation instead, so your backups carry more weight. ThreatDown's rollback covers Windows only.

Signing before the pilot ends. Cynet's non-cancellable sales orders make the trial period the only point where walking away is free. Run the pilot on real devices and review what the analysts sent you before you sign.

Buying EDR and calling it managed. An EDR licence with the managed service listed as an add-on is not the same purchase. If the quote does not name a 24/7 service, nobody is watching.

Paying the direct price for Huntress. A ten-person office buying Huntress direct pays for the 50-endpoint minimum. The same business buying through an MSP pays whatever that MSP charges, with no floor from Huntress.

What can the Fit Score tell you about an MDR service?

The Fit Score has no input for how good a vendor's analysts are, how fast they respond in practice or how clearly they explain an incident. It scores the agent, the price and the buying process. Every product here scores low on efficacy: ThreatDown Elite's latest MITRE ATT&CK result is from the 2024 round and now outside our 18-month window, Huntress Managed EDR publishes no independent lab results, and Cynet All-in-One earns only the MITRE share of the efficacy points, having detected all 90 substeps on MITRE's default view in the 2025 round but has no AV-Test or AV-Comparatives result. Cynet All-in-One also loses every price point for publishing no price.

None of that says the service is weak. It says you should judge the service on evidence you gather yourself: the pilot, the reports and a reference call with a customer of your size.

Which managed detection and response providers sell to small businesses?

The 3 products ranked above include 24/7 managed response in the product we track. Many more MDR providers sell to small businesses, most of them on quotes: Arctic Wolf, Blackpoint, Sophos MDR, CrowdStrike Falcon Complete and others. The MDR pricing guide lists them with every price we could find published, by seat count, and marks the ones that sell only on quotes.

What should you ask an MDR vendor before you sign?

1. When your analysts confirm an attack, what do they do without asking us, and what needs our approval?
2. How do you contact us out of hours, and what happens if we do not answer?
3. Which response actions work on macOS and Linux as well as Windows?
4. What is the renewal price, and how much notice do we need to give to leave?
5. If we handle regulated data, will you sign a BAA or the equivalent agreement our regulator expects?