BUYER NOTE · PUBLISHED 9 SEPTEMBER 2026

Replacing SOAR with AI: six myths checked against vendor material

Cyber AI Comparison team · Last checked September 2026 · Editorial assessment

Published 9 September 2026

BasicsSOAR

What to know

Most assumptions about AI SOC platforms do not survive a reading of the vendors' own pages. Playbooks do not disappear, the SOAR does not have to go first, agents are not given full autonomy on day one, integration counts are not the whole story, prices are not published, and vendor figures are not benchmarks. Each point below cites what vendors publish.

Myth 1: does an AI SOC mean no more playbooks?

No. Fixed automation survives in most designs. Torq supports "agentic and deterministic workflows" in one engine. Mate Security describes Gamebooks as "Deterministic where it can. Intelligent where you need it." Palo Alto's Cortex AgentiX adds AI prompts inside existing Cortex XSOAR playbooks rather than removing them. What changes is where the logic for the long tail of alerts comes from: an author writing it in advance, or an agent choosing it at run time inside guardrails.

Myth 2: do you have to remove your SOAR first?

No. Several platforms are built to sit next to it. Dropzone AI executes response through connected SOAR platforms, including Cortex XSOAR, Splunk SOAR, Tines and Torq. Intezer routes incidents to SOAR and ticketing systems. 7AI says it "connects to the tools you own rather than replacing them". Even platforms positioned as replacements are usually introduced next to the SOAR in a parallel run; our migration guide explains the order of costs.

Myth 3: do AI agents act on their own from day one?

Not as the vendors describe it. Most platforms we score describe a staged path. Mate Security starts in Recommend only mode, moves to Supervised, and reserves Auto-run for trusted categories. Conifers describes starting with a human in the loop and expanding autonomy after validation. Prophet Security runs Agent Actions autonomously or with your sign-off, and 7AI puts actions behind approval gates. Autonomy is something you grant per category, and should be able to take back.

Myth 4: does the biggest integration count mean the best coverage?

Not necessarily. Counts are published differently and measure different things. Cortex XSOAR lists 900+ prebuilt integrations and automation packs, Torq 300 pre-built integrations and 4,000+ pre-built steps, and Dropzone AI 90+ across 14 categories. Mate Security and 7AI publish no count, which does not tell you they cover little; it tells you to ask. What matters is whether your tools are supported, and whether the platform can act in them or only read from them.

Myth 5: can you compare AI SOC prices online?

No. None of the nine platforms we scored in September 2026 published a list price at the time. Two publish a pricing unit: Dropzone AI prices by investigations per year per AI analyst, and Intezer by endpoints with no volume fees. Splunk SOAR offers a free trial. For everything else you need a quote, which is why our calculator re-ranks platforms on your weights but shows no costs.

Myth 6: are vendor performance figures benchmarks?

They are claims. Torq says it can "Close Over 90% of Security Cases. Autonomously." That figure comes from the vendor's own measurement and cannot be checked from public material. Shared testing is still being built: in June 2026, Corelight, Dropzone AI, SCYTHE, SimSpace and Sondera launched the AI Proving Grounds Consortium to validate AI defences and agentic workflows before production. Until shared tests exist, the number to trust is the one from your own proof of value.

What does hold true?

Two things hold across the vendor material. AI SOC platforms are aimed at the long tail of alerts that playbooks handle poorly, and all of them expect people to keep the high-impact decisions for a while. The practical question is not whether to use AI in the SOC, but which alert categories to move first and under what controls. Our rankings score how well each platform fits that job.