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Amazon Cognito vs WSO2 Identity Server 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
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Access Management (11th)
WSO2 Identity Server
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Identity and Access Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Amazon Cognito is designed for Access Management and holds a mindshare of 2.5%, down 5.7% compared to last year.
WSO2 Identity Server, on the other hand, focuses on Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM), holds 2.6% mindshare, up 1.6% since last year.
Access Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon Cognito2.5%
Okta Platform11.5%
Microsoft Entra ID11.4%
Other74.6%
Access Management
Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
WSO2 Identity Server2.6%
Okta Platform14.3%
Auth0 Platform12.1%
Other71.0%
Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM)
 

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.
Ritesh_Shah - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Solution Architect at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Utilizing key management and seamless single sign-on integration for enhanced user profile management
WSO2 Identity Server's key management feature stands out as a particularly impactful feature for enhancing security. Additionally, from a user perspective, the self-user portal and user profile management capabilities are highly valuable. It allows users to manage their profiles, change passwords, and offers a self-care portal type of functionality. The single sign-on capability integrates seamlessly with various platforms, including Google, Facebook, LDAP, and Active Directory, which supports rapid product launches.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of Amazon Cognito are OTP validation and email validation."
"The federation is one of the most efficient features as the pricing is competitive."
"I would recommend Cognito for users who are already AWS customers."
"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."
"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 multi-factor authentication setup has room for improvement."
"What is quite valuable is that we can outsource storage of the credentials to AWS, and they manage it quite securely."
"They offer a permission tool to help us manage multi-factor authentication."
"I would rate the solution's stability eight or nine out of ten."
"It's very easy to implement everything."
"The solution gets the job done, and we don't have to do the main configuration."
"We are able to use this tool to better secure next generation data centers, which use software defined networks."
"The keystore feature has been most valuable for us."
"The single sign-on procedure itself, as well as the ability to connect to external user sources such as Microsoft Active Directory and LDAP servers, are the solution's most valuable features."
"Some of the valuable features of the solution are the easy integration with processes, such as Single Sign-On, and overall WSO2 is straightforward and does not need customization."
"The Identity Server has been able to manage our complete user base with ease - including authorization and authentication."
 

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."
"Amazon Cognito’s UI needs improvement while onboarding new users."
"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."
"You need to evaluate the export users. The multifactor authentication, much less this room for improving the configuration setup of that."
"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 improve by simplifying the configuration."
"The MFA related to the solution's side is nonexistent."
"The secure authentication of Amazon Cognito has benefited our company. We were previously using legacy signup systems."
"The solution's licensing model could be more flexible, and pricing could be improved."
"I found the initial setup to be very complex."
"The price of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The solution could improve its development from a user perspective."
"The high availability architecture has to be improved."
"This solution does not have BPM workflows already integrated, we had to integrate the BPM module externally. They do not provide full-featured auditing and certification modules out of the box."
"I tried the product but I found it very cumbersome, so I no longer use it."
"The solution seems to be pretty outdated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution depends on the number of users using it."
"The price of Amazon Cognito is low. The pricing model is based on the users."
"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 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 price of Amazon Cognito is expensive. We are on an annual subscription."
"The product is relatively inexpensive compared to other tools."
"The pricing of this solution is good compared to other solutions on the market."
"WSO2 Identity Server is not an expensive solution."
"I have found the solutions license is priced competitively compared to others."
"I rate the product price an eight out of ten. There is a need to pay more for the extra features provided by the solution."
"They should bring in some good pricing models to host the marketplace."
"At this time we are working with the open-source version."
"We have to take their support, but that is a minimal charge if I'm comparing it to other identity managers."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
11%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Transportation Company
11%
Media 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 Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WSO2 Identity Server?
The pricing is currently the same as the API Manager, so it's not surprising. Since we used it primarily for SSO and the self portal, there were no additional pricing concerns.
What needs improvement with WSO2 Identity Server?
Currently, all required features are supported. If new use cases for artificial intelligence arise, it could be beneficial to incorporate those. However, for our current projects, WSO2 Identity Ser...
What is your primary use case for WSO2 Identity Server?
We deployed WSO2 Identity Server to fulfill our single sign-on (SSO) requirements. Whenever we implement the API Manager, instead of using the API Manager's inbuilt key manager, we use WSO2 Identit...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Nutanix, ELM, AlmavivA, BDigital, StubHub, M-creations, MedVision360
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Okta, Cisco and others in Access Management. Updated: August 2026.
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