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Amazon Cognito vs CyberArk Privileged Access Manager 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
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Access Management (10th)
CyberArk Privileged Access ...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
228
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Enterprise Password Managers (3rd), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (1st), Mainframe Security (2nd), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
 

Featured Reviews

Wojciech Doganowski - PeerSpot reviewer
International setup localization challenges drive custom development while outsourcing credential management enhances security
We are using it in an international setup where we have multiple services running in multiple countries. Cognito localizes only regarding language, but the service is localized in each country. Cognito has the possibility to render the login screen and all the customer flows related to managing the account. Still, it's useless in an international setup. They are unable to localize these screens, so we had to write our own screens and just use the Cognito API. I hope they will fix this soon because it's useful to rely on already prepared flows for all the account management. As it doesn't work with different languages, rewriting it is quite complicated. Additionally, maybe they could find another step in the price so there is not such a significant jump from the basic to extended functionality. Some flexibility would be helpful.
Atul-Gujar - PeerSpot reviewer
Secures critical infrastructures with essential user session audit records
A potential area for improvement is enhancing support for cluster environments and distributed Vaults. Clients in multiple countries that need central access have different challenges that require better solutions from CyberArk. For financial services, CyberArk can improve incident response by ensuring fast support for critical priority tickets to meet compliance requirements. Providing more documentation on CyberArk is recommended for new team members to enhance their troubleshooting capabilities. I understand it's up to the client, but 99% fail to change the demo key, so it's crucial for CyberArk to emphasize changing the key and documenting it as part of the installation process.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I appreciate Amazon Cognito's ability to scale with demand and its seamless user verification features."
"I rate Amazon Cognito nine out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its swift authentication."
"What I find most valuable about Amazon Cognito is the single sign-on feature that provides a token for accessing protected APIs."
"The features most valuable to us are the ability to integrate with various IDPs and the capability to sync with multiple applications."
"The federation is one of the most efficient features as the pricing is competitive."
"The solution is proto connective and integrates well with other AWS services."
"The most valuable features of Amazon Cognito are OTP validation and email validation."
"I would recommend CyberArk Privileged Access Manager because it is a leading solution for privileged access management."
"I appreciate CyberArk's real-time capabilities. I can secure critical sessions, such as SSH or database sessions. As a security professional, I have real-time visibility into ongoing sessions. If anything suspicious occurs, I can terminate or freeze the session, which is part of user behavior analytics."
"It is scalable."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to delegate access to admins when they need it."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager has been helpful in managing over 125,000 privileged accounts in a single environment for our client, and we have multiple CyberArk environments for different clients with different numbers of accounts."
"PSM (Privilege Session Manager."
"Password Vault's main advantage is its scalability. We constantly see huge enterprises implementing something like this, and the privileged session management is an excellent piece. You can kind of watch videos of whatever an admin has done."
"All the features of CyberArk are useful for me, but the biggest one is that CyberArk has logs for all the features. That is important when there is a problem. You know where to look and you have the information. In cyber security, the most important aspect is information."
 

Cons

"The setup and configuration can be complex, especially for advanced use cases."
"Amazon Cognito could be improved by making it easier for us to add more data to the token, allowing customization of JWT."
"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."
"What I found generally lacking in AWS is privileged access management (PAM)."
"Amazon Cognito’s UI needs improvement while onboarding new users."
"In a future release, we would like to have different methods to validate the characteristic of a user. For example, we would like to use biometric data to analyze the behavior of users."
"The secure authentication of Amazon Cognito has benefited our company. We were previously using legacy signup systems."
"There is room for improvement in Amazon Cognito."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager can be improved because I have experienced one issue where a user connected through RDP to a Linux server and the PAM could not fetch any commands or key store logging from the Linux server, which works fine on Windows servers."
"CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault must incorporate connectors for password and session managers in the marketplace."
"I think having a distributed architecture would certainly help this solution."
"Initially, there was a lot of hiccups, because there were a lot of transitions due to manual installations."
"Stability is a huge concern right now. We are on a version which is very unstable. We have to upgrade to stabilize it. It is fine, but the problem is we have to hire CyberArk to do the upgrade. This costs money, and it is their bug."
"The solution's architecture could be improved. It requires installation on four to five different servers."
"The support services could act faster when people reach out to resolve issues."
"If CyberArk wants people to pay for cloud services, they need to make the cloud services much more real-time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of this solution is good compared to other solutions on the market."
"The price of the solution depends on the number of users using it."
"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."
"We pay $600 monthly per user for licences and there are no other additional costs."
"The price of Amazon Cognito is low. The pricing model is based on the users."
"The price of Amazon Cognito is expensive. We are on an annual subscription."
"The product is relatively inexpensive compared to other tools."
"The pricing is bad so I rate it a two out of ten."
"The cost is high compared to other products."
"The pricing is slightly higher compared to other solutions, but it is reasonable because there are better security features."
"I would rate the tool’s pricing a six out of ten."
"If you want a Ferrari, it will cost you. The solution is really nice, so it costs the client, but in the long run, it is very good. If you buy a solution that costs a lot to maintain because it is not stable, and you are frequently asking for consultant support, it costs more."
"Although CyberArk Privileged Access Management is expensive, its protection capabilities outweigh the cost."
"With reducing the privileged account access, there has been a huge improvement. They are now bringing more accounts on a little at a time."
"In comparison to other products on the market, CyberArk is a more costly product."
"No, I do not have any advice on the price of the product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise41
Large Enterprise171
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Cognito?
The most valuable feature of the solution is its swift authentication.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Cognito?
The basic functionality is reasonably priced, but the extended functionalities, especially the extended security, are quite expensive. There is a significant jump from the basic to the extended fun...
What needs improvement with Amazon Cognito?
We are using it in an international setup where we have multiple services running in multiple countries. Cognito localizes only regarding language, but the service is localized in each country. Cog...
How does Sailpoint IdentityIQ compare with CyberArk PAM?
We evaluated Sailpoint IdentityIQ before ultimately choosing CyberArk. Sailpoint Identity Platform is a solution to manage risks in cloud enterprise environments. It automates and streamlines the m...
What do you like most about CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
The most valuable features of the solution are control and analytics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
Regarding costs, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is not a cheap product; hence, many companies struggle with its high licensing cost. While it's valuable, it comes with a high price tag, making ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Rockwell Automation
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Cognito vs. CyberArk Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.