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AWS IAM Identity Center vs Okta Workforce Identity 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
7.2
Okta Workforce Identity offers high ROI through enhanced security, reduced IT burdens, automation, and improved scalability and reliability.
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 have our dashboard to log in via Okta Workforce Identity.
 

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
7.2
Okta Workforce Identity offers responsive customer service, though delays occur; many benefit from fast, knowledgeable support and web resources.
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.
They are very supportive; they just open a ticket, and they support us very professionally.
We had an issue with the Okta Workforce Identity dashboard once in 2023 when we had an outage, but it recovered in a few minutes.
 

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
7.5
Okta Workforce Identity is highly scalable, supporting growth without performance issues, making it ideal for medium to large enterprises.
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.
 

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
Okta Workforce Identity is praised for its stability and reliability, with users noting minimal issues and quick recovery from outages.
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.
Okta Workforce Identity is a stable product.
 

Room For Improvement

AWS IAM Identity Center needs UI clarity, better integration, flexible access controls, enhanced tools, and improved support for users.
Okta Workforce Identity needs UI improvements, better integration, enhanced support, and more features for effective user experience.
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.
If there was a fingerprint option, then only the person who has already added their fingerprint on their mobile phone could access it.
It could improve in the governance part, particularly regarding better role management and workflow, as I feel it is tedious on Okta.
Okta should have at least a local peering partner for countries that align with or comply with GDPR, so there are no compliance or audit questions.
 

Setup Cost

AWS IAM Identity Center is cost-effective, mainly free, with extra charges for premium features and competitive with other providers.
Okta Workforce Identity is costly but valued by larger enterprises for its comprehensive features and straightforward setup.
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.
 

Valuable Features

AWS IAM Identity Center centralizes permission management with templates, role-based access, MFA, and SSO for streamlined security.
Okta Workforce Identity enhances security and efficiency through centralized management, Single Sign-On, automation, and seamless integration with applications.
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.
For the end user, it is beneficial as they do not have to remember a password or keep the password on a post-it for different applications; they just authenticate once to access several services and service providers.
Multi-factor authentication in Okta Workforce Identity is very useful so people who do not have access or are trying to access using just a user ID and password will be completely blocked because of this two-factor authentication.
You can only log in if you have the access, which protects the applications by avoiding cross-site scripting.
 

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
Okta Workforce Identity
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
2nd
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
68
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (6th), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (6th), Access Management (4th), ZTNA as a Service (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) category, the mindshare of AWS IAM Identity Center is 1.4%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Okta Workforce Identity is 11.5%, down from 15.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
 

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.
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.
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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
13%
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 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.
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...
 

Also Known As

AWS Single Sign On, AWS SSO
No data available
 

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 AWS IAM Identity Center vs. Okta Workforce Identity and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.