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

AWS Certificate Manager vs Azure Key Vault comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 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

AWS Certificate Manager
Ranking in Certificate Management Software
3rd
Average Rating
9.8
Reviews Sentiment
8.7
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Azure Key Vault
Ranking in Certificate Management Software
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Password Managers (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (20th), Secrets Management Tools (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Certificate Management Software category, the mindshare of AWS Certificate Manager is 12.1%, down from 30.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Key Vault is 16.8%, down from 31.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Certificate Management Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Azure Key Vault16.8%
AWS Certificate Manager12.1%
Other71.1%
Certificate Management Software
 

Featured Reviews

SK
Senior IT Auditor at Ernst & Young
Have experienced several challenges while managing certificate lifecycle processes
The renewal function and automated certificate renewal are very helpful for our operations. AWS Certificate Manager provides central control of certificate lifecycle management, which helps to improve security. It streamlines the process and reduces human error. I use ACM Private Certificate Authority for additional security measures. I see benefits of using AWS Certificate Manager in integration with AWS for secure data transmission. I see a positive impact in managing SSL and TLS certificates, which simplifies compliance and reduces risk.
Rajthilak BS - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Vice President (Data Security & Protection - Confidential AI) at Standard Chartered Bank
Have addressed compliance challenges but still struggle with seamless integration of certificate issuance between environments
In terms of Azure Key Vault improvements, we have to compare the competitor. If we consider AWS, our bank has Microsoft PKI, which is a Microsoft product, for the entire digital certificate infrastructure. Even in the cloud, when it is AWS, the internal certificates are MS PKI. When we had a problem, users had to come to on-premise to get a certificate and import it to AWS Certificate Manager and assign it. We wondered why we could not issue the certificate directly from the cloud for cloud users. There was a simple way in AWS. They have a Private Certificate Authority (PCA) and Amazon Certificate Manager. Private Certificate Authority issues certificates to Amazon services. They also provide Amazon Certificate Manager to store and deploy certificates. These are two neat components - one is an issuer and another is storage and deployment solutions for certificates. With PCA, I can directly enable it and get certificates from AWS itself. AWS can issue SSL/TLS certificates if you enable it directly. If you consider Azure, it is not very clear. Even the naming convention, Key Vault, might not suggest that this is a PKI or certificate manager. You cannot issue certificates directly. They have app certificates and did not have a clear-cut certificate management solution in the cloud when I worked at that time. I am not sure whether they have updated Azure Key Vault as a full-fledged PKI solution now. From what I saw, it was not a full-fledged PKI solution. We are not majorly using Azure Key Vault because it is only for storing secrets. If some solutions can provide guidance on how we can maximize leverage, we can immediately look forward to doing that. We already have some business problems we want to solve. While our primary focus is AWS, many of the services such as ADO are running on Azure, and the secondary services are growing bigger.

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 are definitely the alerts."
"It is easy to generate, easy to use, easy to integrate, and very cost-effective."
"It offers encryption with specific algorithms for better management."
"AWS Certificate Manager provides central control of certificate lifecycle management, which helps to improve security."
"The solution has an import dashboard where we can import the certificates or create new certificates."
"Among the features that have helped improve our security posture are storing secrets in a secure location to create a trusted situation, trusted resources, and incorporating identity access management so that we know who has access to what."
"The most valuable aspect of the product is its ability to keep our admin password accounts for keys and a lot of our high-value assets."
"The best feature is the integrity of the .NET applications in our company."
"AI has been introduced to Azure."
"With Azure Key Vault you have something that is free, enterprise-level, global, and it just works."
"The integration management of access to Key Vault is beneficial for me."
"The solution can scale up as needed."
"It integrates well with Azure services and is easy to use and quick to provision."
 

Cons

"The AWS Certificate Manager's technical support team is sometimes unavailable."
"Currently, there is no option to customize beyond the default settings, and it would be beneficial to have the ability to customize certificates to fit specific requirements."
"One potential improvement could be enabling the extraction of the certificate as a file to be used outside of AWS, even with an additional charge."
"Better reporting features would be beneficial."
"Maybe more integration with third-party certificate authorities would be useful."
"While it is reliable, enhancing security and protection should always be the priority."
"Azure Key Vault takes time to fetch values while integrating it with the code written in .NET format."
"The solution does not allow you to integrate with XML parties if it is not inside Azure itself."
"The rotation of key needs improvement."
"The product must provide AI features."
"If you check the capabilities of other key management services across Amazon, HashiCorp, and Google, there are features that Key Vault doesn't have. It could be the case that when you use Key Vault, you might be forced to use a third-party solution to get certain services. If those services could be included in Key Vault, there would be diminished reasons to go for a third-party key management system."
"There are additional charges for data transfers. However, the pricing is mostly reasonable for the licensing overall."
"Many times, the first round of support itself will fail, and they will bring some more competent people in the subsequent support. So it gets into a hierarchical mode. By then, we will lose a good amount of time. The technical support needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Azure Key Vault is expensive."
"The cost of the Azure Key Vault is very high and the pricing model is based on the number of keys that you store and retrieve."
"It is a cheap option."
"We use a pay-as-you-go license for the solution, which is not very expensive."
"You don't need to pay for a license for Azure Key Vault. It is billed on a pay-as-you-go basis."
"Pricing is quite reasonable and support is included, although premium support is available for an additional fee."
"Azure is cheaper than CyberArk... CyberArk is good, but it's quite expensive."
"Currently, the solution's pricing is based on the number of transactions, which is very high in some cases."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Certificate Management Software solutions are best for your needs.
902,417 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise27
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with AWS Certificate Manager?
While AWS Certificate Manager works well within AWS, one limitation is that it is tightly coupled with AWS services. Exporting certificates for use outside AWS is not straightforward unless you use...
What is your primary use case for AWS Certificate Manager?
My primary use case for AWS Certificate Manager is to manage SSL/TLS certificates for securing applications running on AWS services like Application Load Balancer, CloudFront, and API Gateway. In d...
What advice do you have for others considering AWS Certificate Manager?
My advice would be to use AWS Certificate Manager if you are already operating within AWS, as it simplifies certificate management significantly. I would also recommend using Route 53 for DNS valid...
Which is better - Azure Key Vault or AWS Secrets Manager?
Azure Key Vault is a SaaS solution. You can easily store passwords and secrets securely and encrypt them. Azure Key Vault is a great solution to ensure you are compliant with security and governanc...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Key Vault?
Based on my three years of experience, I believe there have been no updates to Azure Key Vault. I think the product needs upgrades in terms of access control and certification improvements. While A...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure Key Vault, MS Azure Key Vault
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Adobe, DriveTime, Johnson Controls, HP, InterContinental Hotels Group, ASOS
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Certificate Manager vs. Azure Key Vault and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,417 professionals have used our research since 2012.