Amazon Cognito vs Microsoft Entra ID comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are both solutions in the Access Management category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.6, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 7.0% mindshare in AM, compared to Microsoft’s 26.8% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Amazon Cognito

Read 15 Amazon Cognito reviews

1,948 Views
1,831 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Microsoft Entra ID

Read 234 Microsoft Entra ID reviews

25,521 Views
7,146 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Amazon Cognito

Microsoft Entra ID

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 2024

Microsoft Entra ID and Amazon Cognito are prominent identity and access management solutions. Users are happier with the integrations and advanced security features of Amazon Cognito, although Microsoft Entra ID excels in ease of deployment and customer service.

Features: Microsoft Entra ID users value its seamless integration with other Microsoft services and its multi-factor authentication features. Amazon Cognito is appreciated for its robust security features and user management capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Entra ID users have noted a desire for more customization options and improved analytics. Amazon Cognito users seek better documentation and a more intuitive setup process.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Entra ID is praised for its straightforward deployment and excellent customer service. Amazon Cognito, while powerful, is sometimes viewed as complex to set up, and users report mixed experiences with customer support.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Entra ID users find the setup cost reasonable and report solid ROI due to its seamless integration with existing Microsoft solutions. Amazon Cognito users feel the pricing reflects its advanced features, despite higher initial setup costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Cognito vs. Microsoft Entra ID Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Cognito vs. Microsoft Entra ID

June 2025

Download the complete report

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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

9th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Microsoft Entra ID

Ranking in Access Management

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

234

Ranking in other categories

Single Sign-On (SSO) (1st), Authentication Systems (1st), Identity Management (IM) (2nd), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Cognito is 7.0%, up from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 26.8%, up from 23.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Access Management

Featured Reviews

Wojciech Doganowski

Solutions Architect & PMO at AS TV Play Baltics/TV3 Group

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.

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Bahram Piri

Chief Executive Officer & Founder at IDmelon Technologies

Security focus and seamless implementation increase platform productivity

Microsoft Entra ID can be improved in many ways, and there's a big wish list.If we're focusing on security, something that I definitely expect is improvement in the UI and UX for frontline workers. This is important, especially for non-tech savvy individuals. It is something Microsoft Entra ID could do to improve for a wider audience. It's important to focus on the frontline workers since they are non-tech savvy individuals. They are not like those back-office engineering C-level employees who are constantly dealing with computers, and we need to build a specific user experience and user interface for them to handle this stuff. That's something I expect Microsoft to focus on more for Microsoft Entra ID.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What is quite valuable is that we can outsource storage of the credentials to AWS, and they manage it quite securely."

"What I find most valuable about Amazon Cognito is the single sign-on feature that provides a token for accessing protected APIs."

"The federation is one of the most efficient features as the pricing is competitive."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its swift authentication."

"The solution is proto connective and integrates well with other AWS services."

"I rate Amazon Cognito nine out of ten."

"What I find most valuable about Amazon Cognito is the single sign-on feature that provides a token for accessing protected APIs."

"The most valuable features of Amazon Cognito are OTP validation and email validation."

More Amazon Cognito pros

"It has made our work easier in that it’s simplified everything for us."

"I would rate the support as ten out of ten."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to authenticate users using Microsoft Entra ID."

"I would rate the solution as 9. It is a very good solution for unified management."

"Azure is the leading market solution because of its history, features, and maturity."

"With Azure Active Directory we were able to manage with different options the access for different users."

"I would rate Microsoft Entra ID a ten out of ten."

"The most valuable feature of Entra ID is having a cloud-based identity, similar to Google's single sign-on."

More Microsoft Entra ID pros

Cons

"There is room for improvement in Amazon Cognito."

"The secure authentication of Amazon Cognito has benefited our company. We were previously using legacy signup systems."

"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."

"What I found generally lacking in AWS is privileged access management (PAM)."

"Amazon Cognito’s UI needs improvement while onboarding new users."

"Amazon Cognito could be improved by making it easier for us to add more data to the token, allowing customization of JWT."

"You need to evaluate the export users. The multifactor authentication, much less this room for improving the configuration setup of that."

"The MFA related to the solution's side is nonexistent."

More Amazon Cognito cons

"In terms of stability, sometimes the more applications you integrate, the more it becomes a little bit unstable."

"From time to time it takes a little bit of time to replicate, with some of the applications—something like five to 10 minutes. I know that the design is not supposed to enable real-time replication with some of the applications. But, as an administrator, I would like to run a specific change or modification in Azure Active Directory and see it replicated almost immediately."

"The conditional access rules are a little limiting. There's greater scope for the variety of rules and conditions you could put in that rules around a more factual authentication for other users. If you have an Azure AD setup, you can then connect to other people's Azure AD, but you don't have a huge amount of control in terms of what you can do. Greater control over guest users and guest access would be better. It's pretty good as it is but that could be improved."

"Microsoft Entra ID's impact on access and identity management is relatively limited."

"The only improvement would be for everything to be instant in terms of applying changes and propagating them to systems."

"Active Directory could always be more secure. Right now, we've got two-factor authentications. All services based on Active Directory have a username and password. If somebody hacked our username, they could easily get all the data from our side. So I want two-factor authentication and a stronger password policy from Active Directory. The domain controllers should be more secure as well."

"Technical support could be better."

"Whatever business requirements we needed in the past three years, users were created, with the name of the user and they were not connected with the Active Directory. We were trying to in house in three years and with directory, but we were not able to achieve it."

More Microsoft Entra ID cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is relatively inexpensive compared to other tools."

"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 price of Amazon Cognito is expensive. We are on an annual subscription."

"The price of Amazon Cognito is low. The pricing model is based on the users."

"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 pricing is bad so I rate it a two out of ten."

"The price of the solution depends on the number of users using it."

"We make sure that we only enable the licenses that are needed for the users, rather than enabling licenses in a blanket fashion."

"We are working with the Premium P2 licenses, which are reasonable. If you invest in the on-premises environment setup, then it costs so much. However, on-prem AD gives you the ability to manage your organization in a very organized manner, where you can create a group policy."

"We are currently on the education plan, so the price is slightly better than the development plan."

"The solution was fairly priced the last time I checked the costs."

"The price of the solution was reasonable."

"Microsoft Entra ID service can be quite costly due to its hidden expenses linked to usage."

"It is in line. Because we are so early, we have not had to come back on a cycle where we are having to negotiate again."

"The process for buying licenses from Microsoft is somewhat messy and really hard to do. We have to talk to someone because it's hard to find out how many licenses we need. If I'm applying for 2,000 users, how many Windows licenses do we need? They could also charge less for support."

More Microsoft Entra ID pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Educational Organization

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Cognito?

The most valuable feature of the solution is its swift authentication.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon Cognito?

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Azure Active Directory?

It is very simple. The Active Directory functions are very easy for us. Its integration with anything is very easy. We can easily do third-party multifactor authentication.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory?

Our experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Microsoft Entra ID involves leveraging Microsoft 365 E5 licensing, so it's included. Being included in Microsoft licensing makes it mu...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 11% of the time

Cloudflare One vs Amazon Cognito

Compared 9% of the time

ForgeRock vs Amazon Cognito

Compared 4% of the time

Ping Identity Platform vs Amazon Cognito

Compared 3% of the time

Okta Workforce Identity vs Amazon Cognito

Compared 3% of the time

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Google Cloud Identity vs Microsoft Entra ID

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Intune vs Microsoft Entra ID

Compared 9% of the time

Okta Workforce Identity vs Microsoft Entra ID

Compared 6% of the time

Auth0 vs Microsoft Entra ID

Compared 5% of the time

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager vs Microsoft Entra ID

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Entra ID Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Cognito

July 2025

Download Amazon Cognito product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Entra ID

June 2025

Download Microsoft Entra ID product report

Also Known As

No data available

Azure AD, Azure Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Authenticator

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Microsoft

Overview

Amazon Cognito is a simple user identity and data synchronization service that helps you securely manage and synchronize app data for your users across their mobile devices. You can create unique identities for your users through a number of public login providers (Amazon, Facebook, and Google) and also support unauthenticated guests. You can save app data locally on users’ devices allowing your applications to work even when the devices are offline. With Amazon Cognito, you can save any kind of data in the AWS Cloud, such as app preferences or game state, without writing any backend code or managing any infrastructure. This means you can focus on creating great app experiences instead of having to worry about building and managing a backend solution to handle identity management, network state, storage, and sync.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Microsoft Entra ID is used for extending on-premises Active Directory to the cloud, managing application access, enabling multi-factor authentication, and single sign-on. It facilitates policy enforcement and secure access, ensuring centralized identity management across cloud and on-premises resources.

Organizations utilize Microsoft Entra ID for robust user and group management, identity synchronization, and conditional access. Its seamless integration with third-party apps, scalability, and support for remote work make it a preferred choice. The admin center streamlines identity and access tasks, enhancing efficiency and security with features like privileged identity management and audit logs.

What are the key features of Microsoft Entra ID?

Single Sign-On: Simplifies user access to multiple applications with one login.
Multifactor Authentication: Enhances security by requiring additional verification.
Conditional Access: Establishes policies that determine how users' access cloud apps.
Integration: Easily integrates with various third-party applications.
User Identity Protection: Safeguards user identities from threats.
Privileged Identity Management: Manages elevated access to sensitive resources.
Audit Logs: Provides thorough activity logs for oversight and compliance.

What benefits should users look for in Microsoft Entra ID reviews?

Enhanced Security: Offers strong multifactor authentication and identity protection.
Administrative Efficiency: Simplifies identity and access management tasks.
Scalability: Supports growing user bases and remote work environments.
Integration Capabilities: Compatible with numerous third-party applications.
User-Friendly Interface: Makes managing user identities straightforward.

Microsoft Entra ID implementation varies across industries. Tech firms leverage it for secure, scalable access management, while healthcare organizations utilize its identity protection features to safeguard patient data. Educational institutions adopt Entra ID for streamlined user management and policy enforcement, ensuring secure access for students and staff across on-premises and cloud resources.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

Microsoft Entre ID is trusted by companies of all sizes and industries including Walmart, Zscaler, Uniper, Amtrak, monday.com, and more.

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Cognito vs. Microsoft Entra ID

June 2025

Free Report: Amazon Cognito vs. Microsoft Entra ID

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