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Amazon Cognito vs Okta Workforce Identity 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
9th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Okta Workforce Identity
Ranking in Access Management
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (2nd), Authentication Systems (6th), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (7th), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (11th)
 

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 Okta Workforce Identity is 10.4%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Access Management
 

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.
Tor Nordhagen - PeerSpot reviewer
Extremely easy to work with, simple to set up, and reasonably priced
The drawback of this solution is that in our shops, many staff members sometimes have to be borrowed from one shop to another and the solution does not really support having multiple roles. The user experience we would like to have when a person works in shop A which pays their salary is that they should have access to pretty much everything. Maybe you have somebody who is a manager in that shop A, he should be able to order new wear, he should be able to change the pricing, he should be able to empty the cash registry, and ship it to the bank. But when for instance, in COVID, people had to fill in for people in shops where a lot of people were sick, then they had to actually use user accounts of people that work in shop B. If you were employed in shop A, you could not work in shop B without borrowing somebody else's user ID and password. Which is really bad. We haven't been able to work around that and Okta Workforce Identity does not have a solution for it. We are now piloting their identity governance solution. Obviously, it's easy to give somebody access, give them an account, and give them roles, but it's hard to maintain that. For example, if you moved from, say working in a shop to working in a warehouse. But why do you still have all this shop access? The solution has until now not had anything to really support the process of taking away access. But now we are in a better release program of Okta's identity governance solution. Although it's very basic, the solution has started on a journey, but identity governance is something that Okta Workforce Identity really needs to improve. The ability or the options in the solution for changing the look and feel are not good enough because in our partner portal, essentially what they have is an ugly admin interface. The admin interface is good enough for us technical people because that's all we need. We work with the product and we're able to see the data but when it comes to presenting the service portal, Okta Workforce Identity does not have any capabilities really for making it look pretty. To add branding and different graphical user interface elements than Okta basic for essentially delegated admin for the business-to-business portal is horrifying because you're essentially using the tech admin. The only option we had and used, was to take the tech admin console and strip it. so that a vendor that has some goods that are sold in the shops, when they want to add a user on their side, say a driver or a packer on their side who should know how much they've packed in a truck to come to our warehouse, then the user interface that this vendor is using, these functional people will then have to use an extremely basic user interface.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is proto connective and integrates well with other AWS services."
"I appreciate Amazon Cognito's ability to scale with demand and its seamless user verification features."
"The federation is one of the most efficient features as the pricing is competitive."
"This is a scalable solution. If our app or general usage increases, this solution can support it."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its swift authentication."
"Cognito speeds up our development and saves us time."
"What is quite valuable is that we can outsource storage of the credentials to AWS, and they manage it quite securely."
"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."
"It's reliable and it does what it is advertised to do."
"The most valuable feature is the identity access authentication."
"Okta integrates well with other solutions. Once you have integrated an application into Okta and onboarded a user, they will be onboarded for just-in-time provisioning."
"The solution so far has been very stable."
"The tool helps improve our security and productivity."
"It is dependent on the evolution of your user base. It depends on usage per user, so the more sign-ins there are, the more expensive it becomes, so it works best for smaller companies from a financial perspective."
"Other than Okta being an easy and awesome integration tool, one of the best features it has is the provisioning and deprovisioning, which makes management way easier. You don't need to be too technical to understand how it works."
"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."
 

Cons

"The ease and simplicity of integration could be improved when using this solution. When using Okta, scope is a single endpoint with a parameter as a scope. In the Cognito for each scope, there is a separate endpoint."
"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."
"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."
"Amazon Cognito could be improved by making it easier for us to add more data to the token, allowing customization of JWT."
"Amazon Cognito could improve by simplifying the configuration."
"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."
"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 initial setup can be complex at first."
"Okta Workforce Identity could improve provisioning it can be made simpler."
"The integration with third-party tools needs to be improved."
"It can have more API integrations."
"Okta Workforce Identity can improve by having more features in governance."
"The stability could be better."
"They also have single sign-on (SSO). When we bought Okta Workforce Identity a year and a half ago, I was also looking at SSO, but not much documentation was available for SSO. The documentation for SSO should be a little more robust for somebody who is implementing it for the first time."
"I would appreciate it if Okta Workforce Identity becomes more user-friendly. Its API technology is complicated. Certain applications may pose challenges in terms of integration, especially when they require IDP technologies that aren't easily codable. While I can't provide specific examples, some applications may not integrate with Okta Workforce Identity."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The price of Amazon Cognito is expensive. We are on an annual subscription."
"The price of the solution depends on the number of users using it."
"The product is relatively inexpensive compared to other tools."
"The pricing is bad so I rate it a two out of ten."
"We pay $600 monthly per user for licences and there are no other additional costs."
"The solution's pricing model could be better for SMBs."
"The solution’s pricing needs to be reasonable. You are dealing with a lot of components and the pricing is component-based."
"The price of the solution is good."
"This solution is costly. Pricing is decent if you have less users, but it significantly goes up the more users you have, with its cost not justified."
"It is costly for large companies."
"This is an expensive solution but the security makes it worthwhile."
"The price of Okta Workforce Identity is reasonable."
"The price of this product could be lower."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
 

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.
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...
What do you like most about Okta Workforce Identity?
Okta has introduced the Universal Directory. It has custom attribute capability and user permissions to read/write on their profiles or hide them. Profile sources and identity profile sourcing are ...
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?
Areas for improvement with Okta Workforce Identity would be in the governance place; for me, it is light. Okta is mostly focused on execution and runtime, which means maintaining authentication and...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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 Workforce Identity and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
863,429 professionals have used our research since 2012.