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AWS IAM Identity Center vs Microsoft Entra ID comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 2, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.7
AWS IAM Identity Center boosts ROI by enhancing security, streamlining access, and reducing administrative overhead, improving operational efficiency.
Sentiment score
7.5
Adopting Microsoft Entra ID boosted ROI by enhancing security, streamlining operations, and reducing infrastructure and service desk costs.
The return on investment includes operational efficiency gains, security risk reduction, compliance with regulations, improved user experience, productivity benefits, reduced overhead, and better security posture.
We have achieved significant time efficiencies with AWS IAM Identity Center.
We leverage existing licensing, like Windows Server or SQL, and hybrid benefits, and our sales and marketing teams benefit from co-selling and partnership advantages.
We get a return from not needing to pay other vendors to do what we already had from Microsoft, which was better than the competition.
By eliminating the need for multiple VPN channels and enabling direct work from Azure servers, we have achieved approximately 30% efficiency savings.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
AWS IAM Identity Center users find documentation lengthy but praise AWS's prompt and helpful support and appreciate diverse support options.
Sentiment score
6.7
Microsoft Entra ID support receives mixed reviews, with premium support preferred for efficient resolutions and varying response quality.
AWS provides immediate solutions and assistance whenever needed, especially if issues arise that cannot be handled internally.
They are prompt, keep you updated, and provide excellent assistance.
AWS offers better assistance plans for their services.
The actual support when you get to that level is a ten out of ten.
There are immediate answers to any issues that arise with great knowledge and a deep understanding of the product and business needs.
They usually try to deflect, buy time, and often do not address the problem immediately.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
AWS IAM Identity Center excels in scalability and adaptability, but could improve in user group syncing and third-party integration.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Entra ID offers scalable, reliable cloud solutions for organizations, effortlessly supporting varied user counts without performance issues.
AWS Identity Center successfully supports scalable deployments, allowing additional resources as the company grows.
The scalability of AWS IAM Identity Center is excellent.
It can handle both a small number of users and a bigger number of users efficiently.
We experienced no scalability issues with Microsoft Entra ID.
Its scalability is impressive, aided by Microsoft's efforts to expand its data centers.
When dealing with tens of thousands of objects, it requires proper management and best practices to retrieve only necessary data.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
AWS IAM Identity Center boasts 99.96% uptime, stability, reliability, with minor regional login impacts swiftly addressed by AWS.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Entra ID is highly stable and reliable, with minor disruptions, maintaining strong user confidence and high ratings.
There can be issues if there is an outage on AWS's side, which could prevent logging in because your region might be down, affecting the Identity Center's availability.
It offers 99.96% uptime.
Stability-wise, it is functioning well without any outages or crashes.
It's a critical solution that we can't do without.
The stability of the solution is very high at 99.999%.
We rarely had significant problems or crashes.
 

Room For Improvement

AWS IAM Identity Center needs UI clarity, better integration, flexible access controls, enhanced tools, and improved support for users.
Microsoft Entra ID users seek better documentation, integration, security, cost-effective licensing, intuitive interface, and efficient support service improvements.
Having a lot of users on one instance is hard to configure, so I hope for more flexibility and ease in configuration.
Enhancements could include automation tools or a centralized dashboard for managing roles and policies across multiple accounts, simplifying the process.
When configuring it with third-party tools, like Active Directory, the naming convention of permission sets requires careful attention, which can be confusing.
A recent incident we dealt with took four months to resolve with a seven-day deadline, which was quite frustrating.
Synchronization issues occasionally occur, making it challenging to analyze logs and pinpoint the exact problem.
There is a need for better transformation support from on-premises Active Directory policies to the cloud, as Entra ID doesn't cover this sufficiently yet.
 

Setup Cost

AWS IAM Identity Center is cost-effective, mainly free, with extra charges for premium features and competitive with other providers.
Microsoft Entra ID provides scalable, cost-effective pricing with features like P1 and P2, competitive rates, and discounts for specific sectors.
AWS IAM Identity Center is available as a free service by default.
It is not that expensive, rated at three out of ten for costs.
Pricing for AWS IAM Identity Center is very affordable, rated at two out of ten with one being cheap.
We are getting our money's worth.
Microsoft sets pricing based on customer demand, adjusting to find the optimal balance between sales volume and profit per unit, similar to how Costco manages product prices.
Most features of Entra ID are part of Microsoft's ecosystem and included in Microsoft 365 bundles, which means there are no additional costs associated with pricing and licensing.
 

Valuable Features

AWS IAM Identity Center centralizes permission management with templates, role-based access, MFA, and SSO for streamlined security.
Microsoft Entra ID enhances security and user experience with robust identity management, integration, and data protection features.
It provides the least privilege-based access control, which limits users to only the operations they need to perform without interfering with unrelated configurations.
These features allow for excellent micro-level control over resources, ensuring specific permissions are granted.
Its valuable features include granular access control, allowing precise control over who can access specific AWS resources and under what conditions using JSON-based policies.
We can secure the applications that we are building and make sure that if the application were to be compromised, there is no full access to a customer's environment causing issues and other security concerns.
It's integrated with Microsoft technologies like Authenticator, SSO, and MFA, streamlining operations and creating a seamless environment.
The granular control, such as preventing logins from specific locations, enhances security significantly.
 

Categories and Ranking

AWS IAM Identity Center
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
8th
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
7th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Entra ID
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
1st
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
235
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (1st), Identity Management (IM) (2nd), Access Management (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of AWS IAM Identity Center is 2.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 24.5%, down from 25.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

Featured Reviews

Khaled Saidi - PeerSpot reviewer
Manage cloud security with granular access control and enhanced authentication
Managing IAM in complex environments can be challenging, and there are several areas for improvement. First, incorporating automation tools or a centralized dashboard for managing roles and policies across multiple accounts would simplify administration, especially for large organizations. Additionally, policy debugging and validation could be more streamlined, as troubleshooting misconfigurations can be time-consuming and prone to errors. A more robust error messaging system or a dedicated debugging tool would be beneficial. Another area for improvement is temporary access credentials. AWS documentation should offer more detailed guidance on edge cases and exceptions, along with clearer examples of how to handle various scenarios. Lastly, enhanced session-level policies that are more context-sensitive and based on specific conditions (such as IP address, device, or time) would greatly increase flexibility and allow for more granular control over user sessions.
Bahram Piri - PeerSpot reviewer
Security focus and seamless implementation increase platform productivity
Microsoft Entra ID can be improved in many ways, and there's a big wish list.If we're focusing on security, something that I definitely expect is improvement in the UI and UX for frontline workers. This is important, especially for non-tech savvy individuals. It is something Microsoft Entra ID could do to improve for a wider audience. It's important to focus on the frontline workers since they are non-tech savvy individuals. They are not like those back-office engineering C-level employees who are constantly dealing with computers, and we need to build a specific user experience and user interface for them to handle this stuff. That's something I expect Microsoft to focus on more for Microsoft Entra ID.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Performing Arts
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS IAM Identity Center?
The product is easy for beginners to learn and use.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS IAM Identity Center?
AWS provides the lowest pricing among other service providers like Azure, Google, Oracle. It is cost-effective, and they use a pay-as-you-go model.
What needs improvement with AWS IAM Identity Center?
The tech support for AWS is time-consuming, as we have experienced this issue. However, I am not aware of many other cases.
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 do you like most about Azure Active Directory?
It is very simple. The Active Directory functions are very easy for us. Its integration with anything is very easy. We can easily do third-party multifactor authentication.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory?
Our experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Microsoft Entra ID involves leveraging Microsoft 365 E5 licensing, so it's included. Being included in Microsoft licensing makes it mu...
 

Also Known As

AWS Single Sign On, AWS SSO
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 AWS IAM Identity Center vs. Microsoft Entra ID and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.