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

Amazon Cognito vs Okta Platform comparison

Why PeerSpot?
Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 2026

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

Cisco Duo
Sponsored
Ranking in Access Management
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
165
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (5th), Authentication Systems (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st), AI Data Analysis (7th)
Amazon Cognito
Ranking in Access Management
9th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Okta Platform
Ranking in Access Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
127
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (1st), Authentication Systems (3rd), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (3rd), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (3rd), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (1st), AI IT Support (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 3.1%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon Cognito is 2.6%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Okta Platform is 11.1%, up from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Access Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Okta Platform11.1%
Cisco Duo3.1%
Amazon Cognito2.6%
Other83.2%
Access Management
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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.
SN
Identity and Access Management Specialist at a university with 10,001+ employees
Automated lifecycle management has cut onboarding times and now drives secure, clean access
Although I am a fan of Okta Platform overall, there are areas where it could improve security outcomes and reduce admin friction. My top improvement areas include the system log and analytics upgrade, which are great for point troubleshooting, but trending and root cause analysis across large tenants still require exporting to SIEM. Verbose queries and long-range retention costs can add up. Additionally, while certificate rotations are better than most, the process is still manual for busy portfolios, especially concerning multi-SP SAML certificate rotations and app metadata drift. Two more buckets of potential improvements for Okta Platform involve user experience and security. There is the issue of push fatigue and prompt sprawl, where users receive multiple prompts across different apps and sessions. I arrived at the rating of eight because the core controls are strong and reliable, but a few operational UX and UI gaps prevent it from being rated higher. The reasons for not giving it a nine or ten include ongoing issues concerning safety and change safety, the complexity of group rules and mappings, and the lack of robustness in policy management. Additionally, there remains a need for more manual involvement than necessary, especially for large portfolios and dual certificate rotation, along with proactive SP data metadata validation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has definitely reduced embedding. We found a lot of problems with attackers being able to compromise accounts. Now, when they try to access accounts, they are not able to do so because there is an added layer of protection. Once we know that a username and password are compromised, we just reset the password to protect the company."
"My experience with Cisco Duo's strong security authentication system has been good; it is seamless and easy to integrate, and it is flexible."
"It was a simple way of providing two-factor authentication for remote access when we hit the COVID pandemic. It was very easy and quick to get it going."
"Cisco Duo has positively impacted our organization by improving our overall access security by adding an extra layer of protection beyond passwords."
"It's easy to deploy. It's easy to manage. It's easy to integrate with other applications."
"The feature of Cisco Duo that I value the most is that it's easy to use; it monitors all our devices to ensure everything is updated before we're given access to those applications."
"Multifactor authentication is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable features of Duo Security are visibility and OTP authentication. The OTP is very important because it is a self-enrollment feature, you are able to enroll users very quickly with a shorter time period."
"This is a scalable solution. If our app or general usage increases, this solution can support it."
"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 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."
"They offer a permission tool to help us manage multi-factor authentication."
"I would recommend Cognito for users who are already AWS customers."
"Amazon Cognito was particularly helpful and clear to use."
"Okta is not only a single sign-on platform but also life cycle management, the core of the identity management platform, and Okta Access Gateway can publish on-premise legacy applications to the cloud."
"This solution has a lot of capabilities and features."
"Okta Customer Identity is a very good technology to work with, with a very knowledgeable support team."
"The ease of deployment, ease of use, and speed of delivery is what I like about Okta Workforce Identity. It is very easy to use. For a lot of software, you need to be trained extensively and have a very technical background. Okta Workforce Identity is quite simple. You can integrate any software into Okta. They've got a network of 7,000 applications that easily integrate into it."
"The most valuable features of Okta Workforce Identity are MFA, and SSO, which have high security."
"It is very seamless."
"The support for YubiKey is really good because you don't actually have to type in your username and password."
"The security rails and the logs around Okta Platform are very good."
 

Cons

"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."
"Cisco Duo can be improved by integration into Security Cloud Control, which would be a significant advantage."
"Regarding the Premier licensing, it is a little bit pricey, but it is in the market range with the competitors."
"Integration with a product such as Microsoft Sentinel would be great. As the product continually improves, I'm unsure if this feature is available."
"It is good on the functionality side, but their pricing model is a little bit weird."
"Cisco Duo can be improved by exploring a way to make it a more seamless integration and by deploying an in-house server."
"I believe there are two new features. I am interested in adding auto-admin services and incorporating icons for easier navigation. This could contribute to a new business idea platform. I have seen the features, and they make things easier, resolving issues from before. The platform has been updated, and there's now another link in my platform for media access. When it comes to improvements, the UI can be more user-friendly, and there is room for easier navigation. Perhaps there could be enhancements in customization. I haven't faced issues in storage or backup, but I am open to improvements in customization functionality. It's not my environment, but I see possibilities for improvement in the deployment of funds. The addition of new features is appreciated, and for customization, it could provide more freedom for users."
"However, I need to look into Cisco Duo; I had not realized they had an email aspect."
"There is room for improvement in Amazon Cognito."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The secure authentication of Amazon Cognito has benefited our company. We were previously using legacy signup systems."
"I think Amazon Cognito provides less flexibility to customize at the moment."
"I believe this product could improve by enriching user profiles."
"What I dislike about Okta Platform is that sometimes there has been some downtime."
"To improve Okta Platform, I suggest simplifying web manuals to be more understandable for non-technical users, making it easier for them to navigate both the API and user interface levels."
"I would like to see the provisioning simplified."
"I would not say Okta Platform is a cost-effective solution. It is an enterprise-grade solution, so it is comparatively on the higher side in terms of cost."
"When you are doing basic things, it is straightforward, but if you are going to be doing workflows, other things, or recon and trust, then there is effort involved, and that is where it gets convoluted."
"Therefore, if you have 10 million users, that's almost 100 million, so it is costly."
"The only aspect in which it can be improved is that the interface could be cleaner. I found this even when I was trying to do my certification exam because the certification is hands-on. You find yourself fumbling around a little bit to find simple things. This happens even when you start to get familiar with the product."
"We still had to write several internal programs/scripts to complete the user-provisioning process. Okta does not have the ability to provision mailbox accounts for on-premise Exchange or in a hybrid O365 environment. The Group Push function from Okta to AD did not work reliably in our environment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With regard to pricing, for a small business buying a one off, it's pretty expensive. If it's an enterprise that has thousands of employees, however, it's really nothing to protect your data because if your network goes down or it's breached, you're losing millions of dollars every minute. When it comes to a large enterprise, it's priced where it should be because you're talking business to business. You're not talking business to consumer."
"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."
"The cost was reasonable. Licensing was pretty straightforward for a change."
"During testing we are allowed a certain number of licenses for free."
"I haven't seen it in a while, but it's at par with everything else licensing-wise."
"Cisco has the most expensive products because market leaders tend to charge a lot."
"The pricing is pretty competitive. It's pretty cheap. Anybody can adopt it."
"From a business perspective, it is a little bit costly. The licensing is on a per-user basis."
"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."
"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."
"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 solution is not the cheapest but not the most expensive. They are in the middle rating."
"The pricing for Okta Workforce Identity could still be improved or made cheaper. It costs from 50 to 100 euros a year per user. Okta Workforce Identity has different packages you can choose from, and my previous company had all of them, particularly the full Okta suite."
"It is costly for large companies."
"The cost per user for this solution is really high and could be reduced."
"Okta has fairly competitive pricing."
"The licensing model is fine for general service usage. However, the charges for API features and API tokens can be quite high."
"License is around US$20,000 annually."
"The price of this product could be lower."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Access Management solutions are best for your needs.
921,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business65
Midsize Enterprise28
Large Enterprise83
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business53
Midsize Enterprise27
Large Enterprise65
 

Questions from the Community

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 Du...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Duo Security?
Regarding the pricing, what actually happened was that we got the product purchased through our HQ, so the costing as...
What needs improvement with Duo Security?
I do not have a straight answer for how Cisco Duo can be improved at this time. With the implementation that we are g...
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, speci...
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 ...
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 an...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Okta Workforce Identity?
Pricing for Okta is reasonably not that much, however, I don't have access to the commercial aspect.
What needs improvement with Okta Workforce Identity?
Currently, in Okta Workforce Identity we get the two-digit authentication code. Instead of getting the two-digit auth...
What is your primary use case for Okta Workforce Identity?
I don't have many details about Okta Workforce Identity. I use the tool just to sign in to different applications tha...
 

Also Known As

Duo Security
No data available
Okta Customer Identity, Workforce Identity
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
FedEx, Zoom, Takeda, Lululemon Athletica, GrunHub, jetBlue, McKensson, Bain & Company, Engie, Peloton, Sonos, T-Mobile, Hewlett Packard, MGM Resorts, Ally Financial, Priceline, Albertsons, Itercom, Classy, FICO, Kensho, Live Nation, Drata, Rotary, and others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Cognito vs. Okta Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
921,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.