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AWS Secrets Manager vs CyberArk Privileged Access Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 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

AWS Secrets Manager
Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
CyberArk Privileged Access ...
Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
223
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (1st), Mainframe Security (2nd), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Enterprise Password Managers category, the mindshare of AWS Secrets Manager is 18.7%, down from 20.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is 7.8%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Password Managers
 

Featured Reviews

Atul-Yadav - PeerSpot reviewer
Ensures dynamic secret retrieval and automates security measures
AWS Secrets Manager is a fully managed service that allows our applications to retrieve secrets dynamically at runtime. This protects sensitive information, such as keys or credentials, from being compromised. It also automates the secrets, eliminating the need for manual rotation, thereby providing significant security and efficiency benefits. Furthermore, secrets are encrypted at rest using the AES 256-bit standard encryption algorithm.
Lasantha Wijesinghe - PeerSpot reviewer
We have visibility and control through real-time user behavior analytics
It took us some time to realize its benefits because there was a learning curve for us. It took us about a year to get our heads around this product and start effectively using it. It is a journey. It takes at least five years for any company to make this product very useful and reach maturity. It is not only the product's fault. The company needs to have a vision, and the company culture needs to go with it. Senior leadership needs to support the vision. You need to have lots of ingredients for success. If everything is in place, you will see success after one year. In the first year, it is a struggle for everybody. My company was bought by a bigger company, and they were very new to privileged access management. Everybody was struggling. The advice I would give is to have a good vision for privileged access management. You need dedicated teams, senior management support, and proper company policies and standards before implementing the solution. Start building knowledge slowly and avoid jumping into the deep end without preparation. I would rate CyberArk Privileged Access Manager a nine out of ten.

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 feature of AWS Secrets Manager is the ability to keep data secret and assign access permissions to people to grant or restrict access."
"The solution is very scalable."
"All our workloads are running on AWS, so integration with our workload is much easier on AWS Secrets Manager than going with another solution such as Thycotic."
"AWS Secrets Manager is used for storing secret information that has to be a secret from your customer and your employees."
"The most valuable feature of AWS Secrets Manager is its seamless integration with various AWS services."
"The product is easy to use and is inexpensive."
"I would highly recommend AWS Secrets Manager for secret management in AWS."
"The most valuable feature is usability, as it is quite user-friendly."
"CyberArk has allowed us to get the credentials and passwords out of hard-coded property files."
"The logs and reporting features are impressive."
"It's a good solution, it works, and the bank is happy with it."
"We can make a policy that affects everybody instantly."
"Within the solution, I love the fact that everything is recorded. The configuration capabilities are great, too."
"The key aspects of privileged access management are being able rotate passwords, make sure someone is accountable, and tie it back to a user (when the system is being used)."
"Rather than multiple tools for maintaining regulatory compliance around passwords and privileged accounts, we have centralized as much as possible with CyberArk. This is now a one stop shop for end users to access their elevated credentials."
"We have accomplished our security goals. We have two-factor authenticated and vaulted our important accounts, so people can't just steal stuff from us."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in terms of integrating with certain other platforms."
"The sidecar feature has room for improvement."
"There is a potential improvement in connecting AWS Secrets Manager to Jenkins CI/CD pipeline to automatically reflect changes in production."
"If you add one more layer of security to AWS Secrets Manager, even the programmer will not be able to see the secrets."
"There is a need for better environmental implementation, such as having a security fund as a solution."
"The solution's initial setup process is complicated."
"AWS Secrets Manager could support hybrid infrastructure."
"It would be good if the AWS Secrets Manager were more customizable."
"CyberArk PAM is a very broad product as everyone's requirements for implementation are different. In our particular case, the initial implementation was planned and developed by people who didn't know our specific network requirements, so the initial implementation needed to be tweaked over time. While this is normal, at the time all these "major" changes required CyberArk professional services to come in-plant and "assist" with the changes."
"This is probably a common thing, but they do ask for a lot of log files, a lot of information. They ask you to provide a lot of information to them before they're willing to give you anything at all upfront. It would be better if they were a little more give-and-take upfront: "Why don't you try these couple of things while we take your log files and stuff and go research them?" A little bit of that might be more helpful."
"CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault can improve the distributive vault feature. Distributing the vault in multiple areas and multiple data centers should improve."
"If there is an area that has room for improvement, it's probably working with their support and getting people on the phone. That is hard to do with most products in general, but that seems to be the difficult area. The product is fantastic, but sometimes we want somebody on the phone."
"If CyberArk wants people to pay for cloud services, they need to make the cloud services much more real-time."
"We would like to expand the usage of the auto discovery accounts feed, then on our end, tie in the REST API for automation."
"It's a big program. To scale excessively, locally, on an on-prem application, takes a lot of servers."
"CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault's deployment is complex for resources with little experience. Tech support needs to be improved as well based on quality and knowledge."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"We've observed that AWS Secrets Manager pricing is based on a per-secret-per-month model. As a result, we prefer to divide our secrets into individual pieces to increase security and grant specific access permissions to certain secrets, systems, or individuals. However, this approach results in higher costs. Therefore, we have been exploring ways to combine our secrets into groups to reduce expenses and simplify management. Nonetheless, we acknowledge that this issue may not be related to the secret manager's functionality."
"We purchase a monthly license for the product."
"The cost is somewhat high."
"I don't believe there is a license cost for the solution."
"It's per-company, license-based."
"If you are looking at implementing this solution, buy the training and go to it."
"Before we bought it, they were licensing each function individually, which got complicated and very expensive. When we decided to buy it, it was much more straightforward and still quite expensive, but it brings a lot of value and risk reduction to the organization."
"In comparison to other products on the market, CyberArk is a more costly product."
"The price of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is expensive. There are no other fees other than the standard licensing fees."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is on the expensive side. It is very expensive."
"The price of CyberArk support could be a little bit less. Otherwise, pricing is fine."
"Although CyberArk Privileged Access Management is expensive, its protection capabilities outweigh the cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
33%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
Which is better - HashiCorp Vault or AWS Secrets Manager?
HashiCorp Vault was designed with your needs in mind. One of the features that makes this evident is its ability to work as both a cloud-agnostic and a multi-cloud solution. As a cloud-agnostic sol...
What do you like most about AWS Secrets Manager?
The most valuable feature of AWS Secrets Manager is its seamless integration with various AWS services.
How does Sailpoint IdentityIQ compare with CyberArk PAM?
We evaluated Sailpoint IdentityIQ before ultimately choosing CyberArk. Sailpoint Identity Platform is a solution to manage risks in cloud enterprise environments. It automates and streamlines the m...
What do you like most about CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
The most valuable features of the solution are control and analytics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
With the current model of licensing, for my use cases, sometimes it's hard to convince the management and get budget approvals for it. It's expensive and you're not getting anything new. It's just ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Autodesk, Clevy, Stackery
Rockwell Automation
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Secrets Manager vs. CyberArk Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,471 professionals have used our research since 2012.