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Amazon Cognito vs Cisco Duo comparison

 

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

Amazon Cognito
Ranking in Access Management
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cisco Duo
Ranking in Access Management
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (3rd), Authentication Systems (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st), AI Data Analysis (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Cognito is 2.5%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Duo is 3.2%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Access Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Duo3.2%
Amazon Cognito2.5%
Other94.3%
Access Management
 

Featured Reviews

BM
Staff Software Engineer at Visa
Custom authentication has enabled secure multi-factor logins and unified access across apps
The features or capabilities of Amazon Cognito that I have found the most valuable so far include its seamless operation and the requirement of fewer integrations from the client side. All the features are there, enabling us to create the users, manage the groups, and manage access. Mostly, the access management is very good in Amazon Cognito, I would say. The benefits and positive impacts that Amazon Cognito has had in my experience include the fact that earlier we needed to implement so many things on behalf of the product itself. Now, the go-to-market strategy requires less than a week to complete integrations of the user flow, specifically mentioning that a basic authentication flow could be completed in a week itself. We don't have to care about how we manage the passwords, how we manage groups, and how we manage access management because all those things are there. It's handy, the documentation is very good, and it is easy to integrate. That's the reason I would say that the impact AWS is building on the product is great.
Charles Slaustas - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Contractor at Insight global
Supports seamless authentication for users across multiple organizations and personal portals
The features I use in Cisco Duo include Duo Pushes to confirm my identity to the device, and eventually as MFA security was increased, I actually had to use exchange passcodes. Sometimes, I have to go into the site and get into Cisco Duo to retrieve the passcode, and many of them have been two-factor, where the sites send a passcode that I have to enter into Cisco Duo. It has been more of the latter. I have not seen issues with lagging or crashing on Cisco Duo's end; it was usually on the client end, often because someone set up a bad upgrade or there were connection issues with the Cisco Duo cloud through the administrative site.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the key benefits of this software is its ease of integration with a wide range of applications, including mobile apps and web applications. This simplifies the process of integration, and it can be seamlessly incorporated with Azure, Kubernetes, and other software systems."
"The features most valuable to us are the ability to integrate with various IDPs and the capability to sync with multiple applications."
"Cognito speeds up our development and saves us time."
"I rate Amazon Cognito nine out of ten."
"This is a scalable solution. If our app or general usage increases, this solution can support it."
"I would recommend Cognito for users who are already AWS customers."
"Amazon Cognito was particularly helpful and clear to use."
"I appreciate Amazon Cognito's ability to scale with demand and its seamless user verification features."
"The administrator tool in the dashboard is the most valuable feature. It's really easy to quickly see if users are locked out from their device, firmware code, or just all the little dashboards and reports I can run to give the security for monthly reports. The dashboard's really good."
"The most valuable feature is the ability for users to connect securely to the office using the VPN."
"Duo is a very consistent product and flexible in how it can be deployed and has good support."
"Cisco Duo is a simple and effective tool that gives detailed information about users who connect to your domain."
"I like the set time that users can log into devices during the day and how many times they can do so. I also like the ability to restrict the regions from which the user can get in. Users outside of our country or even the town cannot log in."
"Cisco Duo scales with the growing needs of our organization by making it easy to acquire more licensing, especially with an enterprise agreement, which allows built-in growth and minimizes worries about licensing as we expand."
"The two-factor login is great. I receive a message and just have to press okay."
"My advice for other companies that are considering getting Cisco Duo is to try it, and you will be amazed at how easy and how productive this tool is."
 

Cons

"Amazon Cognito could be improved by making it easier for us to add more data to the token, allowing customization of JWT. It requires a complex program to customize the token currently, however, the UI could support this configuration better."
"The setup and configuration can be complex, especially for advanced use cases."
"I think Amazon Cognito provides less flexibility to customize at the moment."
"You need to evaluate the export users. The multifactor authentication, much less this room for improving the configuration setup of that."
"I would rate its scalability as five out of ten. Moving users between different pools or accounts creates new identities, which means IDs stored in our database must also be changed."
"The MFA related to the solution's side is nonexistent."
"The secure authentication of Amazon Cognito has benefited our company. We were previously using legacy signup systems."
"Cognito triggers can improve by providing more direct use cases rather than giving a white paper. A white paper is not at all interesting, it has too many details. It would be a benefit to provide a smaller document that is summarized. The smaller version would bring microdata, macro data is not helpful."
"We had some trouble with the password reset function."
"The experience with customer support and tech support when I first started with Cisco Duo was lacking on some parts where we were having issues."
"The only issue is the price is too high when compared to other products; Cisco Duo's pricing is high."
"Its documentation must be in French because we are a French-speaking country. They should also provide more training documentation. Its management interface should also be improved. They should also improve its update period. If I compare its update period with other products such as Palo Alto firewalls, this solution is really slow in updates."
"Scalability could be better if the price were reduced, as scaling is quite expensive."
"Cisco Duo is doing exactly what we need it to do, so I cannot really give a suggestion for areas that could be improved since we do not use everything that it currently offers."
"On a scale from one being the worst to ten being the best, I would rate my customer service and technical support experience as a seven."
"I know that Cisco Duo is pretty expensive; we have affiliates that use the Microsoft product just because Cisco Duo is so expensive, and they don't want to pay for it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay $600 monthly per user for licences and there are no other additional costs."
"The pricing of this solution is good compared to other solutions on the market."
"The price of Amazon Cognito is expensive. We are on an annual subscription."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten."
"The product is relatively inexpensive compared to other tools."
"The price of the solution depends on the number of users using it."
"The pricing is bad so I rate it a two out of ten."
"The price of Amazon Cognito is low. The pricing model is based on the users."
"During testing we are allowed a certain number of licenses for free."
"I haven't seen any information on the pricing in four years, so I can't comment on that."
"My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been good, with no issues. I am pleased that the prices remained stable after Cisco acquired the solution."
"I rate the product pricing a seven out of ten."
"From a reseller perspective, it's still challenging to explain the whole license strategy to a client, so we really have to be ahead of that for all the true forward conversations."
"Their pricing model is a little bit weird. Currently, there is no price advantage in signing up for yearly contracts. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing costs."
"The pricing was a lot more than what we were paying for our previous solution."
"It's very simple. Its price is fair. We use the hardware tokens as well. You get what you pay for. In terms of licensing, Cisco has very complicated products, but Duo Security was surprisingly easy."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
11%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business63
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise79
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Cognito?
I am aware that the pricing of Amazon Cognito is not managed by me directly but is managed by some other teams, specifically the DevOps teams. As far as I know, it is based on how many users we hav...
What needs improvement with Amazon Cognito?
I think Amazon Cognito provides less flexibility to customize at the moment. It is very tightly coupled with its own services, so it does not provide customization according to what the client need...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Cognito?
The usual use cases for Amazon Cognito that I have been working with mostly involve working for TLG Apps for three and a half years, where TLG Apps is a FinTech company in the UK. We were working f...
How does Duo Security compare with Microsoft Authenticator?
We switched to Duo Security for identity verification. We’d been using a competitor but got the chance to evaluate Duo for 30 days, and we could not be happier. Duo Security is easy to configure a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Duo Security?
It is a little bit expensive, but with security, we cannot compromise on it.
What needs improvement with Duo Security?
To improve Cisco Duo, we have some third-party hardware, and for integrations with that, we need more user-friendly integrations since third-party integration can present a lot of compatibility iss...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Duo Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Cognito vs. Cisco Duo and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,701 professionals have used our research since 2012.