No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Amazon Cognito vs Microsoft Entra ID comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 2024

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
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Entra ID
Ranking in Access Management
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
276
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (1st), Authentication Systems (1st), Identity Management (IM) (3rd), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Cognito is 3.0%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 12.1%, down from 26.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Access Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Entra ID12.1%
Amazon Cognito3.0%
Other84.9%
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.
Stafin Jacob - PeerSpot reviewer
Microsoft 365 Security & Compliance Practice Lead at Invoke
Identity has become our central gatekeeper and has provided secure single sign-on for all users
Microsoft Entra ID can improve by focusing more on new passwordless methods and becoming a primary adopter. One feature we would like to see is the ability to have security questions for password resets. I know the current capability is phasing out, so we do not have an alternative method yet. Customers who already use security questions require a smoother transition for that capability to be available. My experience with the deployment has had some challenges, particularly around the Microsoft MFA campaigns. The hardest part is moving users from a different MFA provider to the Microsoft MFA provider, as it ultimately depends on user activity. In large enterprises with numerous users across various geographies, this transition takes time. If there are ways to exert more control around that process, it would improve the situation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its swift authentication."
"Amazon Cognito was particularly helpful and clear to use."
"I would recommend Cognito for users who are already AWS customers."
"The solution is proto connective and integrates well with other AWS services."
"The features most valuable to us are the ability to integrate with various IDPs and the capability to sync with multiple applications."
"The multi-factor authentication setup has room for improvement."
"This is a scalable solution. If our app or general usage increases, this solution can support it."
"Overall it has helped place our security posture in a good position."
"It's not intuitive and we use it mainly for our Office 365 files. The integration between the two is interesting. However, the learning curve is high."
"With Azure Active Directory we were able to manage with different options the access for different users."
"Entra ID can be deployed using a hybrid model for organizations with a significant on-premises presence, or in a fully cloud-based setup for those that do not."
"It's user-friendly and easy to understand."
"The features of Microsoft Entra ID that I appreciate the most are the Conditional Access policies, because they provide granular aspects to enable features and offer flexibility across my user base, allowing me to provide the security features and protections needed for complex organizations."
"Every feature in Microsoft Entra ID plays a crucial role in overall security."
"We use BitLocker for policy enforcement. And now, because of the Microsoft 365 Business Premium package, we get Intune as a part of it. That's very useful for us for setting policies and managing the systems. The biggest strength of Azure AD is Intune."
 

Cons

"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."
"What I found generally lacking in AWS is privileged access management (PAM)."
"You need to evaluate the export users. The multifactor authentication, much less this room for improving the configuration setup of that."
"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. It requires a complex program to customize the token currently, however, the UI could support this configuration better."
"I think Amazon Cognito provides less flexibility to customize at the moment."
"The secure authentication of Amazon Cognito has benefited our company. We were previously using legacy signup systems."
"Amazon Cognito’s UI needs improvement while onboarding new users."
"The visibility in the GUI is not good for management. There are a lot of improvements that could make it better. It should be more user-friendly overall. It is not user-friendly because everything keeps changing on the platform. I can understand it because I know the platform, am familiar with it, and use it every day. However, for a lot of clients, they don't use it every day or are not familiar with it, so it should be more user friendly."
"The quality of support has declined in recent years."
"The solution has certain limitations. For example, it has very little governance functionality."
"I would rate my customer service and technical support as about a five right now, as we just got in contact with our Microsoft rep, so it is improving."
"My main concern is the occasional lack of documentation and the frequency of changes, which can make feature location challenging."
"In my opinion, the on-premises deployment is still king with respect to stability. We are able to control what's happening there, unlike the cloud instances when the service is down."
"I think sometimes Microsoft Entra ID provides a bit too much information from the start."
"Microsoft Entra ID should improve workload identities. It should set conditional access."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is relatively inexpensive compared to other tools."
"We pay $600 monthly per user for licences and there are no other additional costs."
"The price of the solution depends on the number of users using it."
"The price of Amazon Cognito is expensive. We are on an annual subscription."
"The pricing is bad so I rate it a two out of ten."
"The pricing of this solution is good compared to other solutions on the market."
"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 low. The pricing model is based on the users."
"This product is sold as part of the enterprise package and our licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"Entra has P1 and P2 licenses that are bundled with lots of applications."
"We have various levels of their licensing, which includes users on different levels of their enterprise offering."
"The licensing model makes it difficult to understand the real cost of the solution, especially because it changes all the time."
"Azure has an educational package available for students with a variety of licenses and different software available."
"The P1 version costs $6 per user per month."
"It's really affordable."
"It's pretty good. We're using the native features. It's bundled with our Office 365 licenses. We aren't paying anything extra for Azure Active Directory. It's pretty good for us because it's complementary to Office 365. We're only paying for Office 365."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Access Management solutions are best for your needs.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

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 Business90
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise161
 

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 Azure Active Directory?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that going through and being able to use these things is always part of delivering an M365 bundle, so I don't think the experience is great ...
What needs improvement with Azure Active Directory?
Microsoft Entra ID can be improved by open-sourcing it. You already have Windows Subsystem for Linux, which is open-source Linux in Microsoft. One major shift for Microsoft would be using the commo...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Azure AD, Azure Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Authenticator
 

Interactive Demo

 

Overview

 

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.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Cognito vs. Microsoft Entra ID and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.