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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
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Secrets Management Tools (3rd)
CyberArk Privileged Access ...
Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
229
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 December 2025, in the Enterprise Password Managers category, the mindshare of AWS Secrets Manager is 15.9%, down from 20.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is 7.5%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Password Managers Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
AWS Secrets Manager15.9%
CyberArk Privileged Access Manager7.5%
Other76.6%
Enterprise Password Managers
 

Featured Reviews

Mahadev Metre - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at Paydoh
Consistent security and efficiency improvements optimize IT infrastructure with effective management
When creating AWS Secrets Manager, it should be automated using tools such as Terraform, Puppet, or Ansible. With Terraform code, you specify the encryption key, secret name, rotation policy, and secret replication. Human error occurs when feeding secret values manually, especially with large amounts of secrets to input. Secrets should never be protected only by IAM. They should be protected by multiple layers, such as IAM and one or two KMS keys. Additional security measures could be beneficial if necessary. The rotation policy is crucial because some secrets may become obsolete, require updates, or get compromised. With a weekly rotation policy, if unauthorized access occurs, the exposure is limited to seven days. The rotation policy can be customized according to needs.
SI
Senior PAM Consultant at iC Consult GmbH
Makes privileged access management easy with automation and granular control
Many people underestimate the value of these tools because they treat them as simple automated password management. Once you realize the volume of passwords in your organization and factor in nonhuman passwords, you realize its value. Last year, CyberArk Impact cited 45 nonhuman passwords for every human password. If you have 10,000 employees, you can imagine the number of passwords. There are also many other operations. For example, you have a Qualys scanner that needs to reach out and touch all your endpoints and scan them for vulnerabilities. They use an API call to CyberArk to pull out a Privileged credential that allows them to log in to that target. This is an automated machine call. It is tapping into CyberArk to get that credential. There can be hundreds of thousands of those operations a day. You do not want to manage those passwords by hand. Some people marginalize the significance of such a solution by saying that it is just a fancy password changer. It goes well beyond that, especially with API calls and automation. Its importance extends beyond merely changing passwords; it involves automation, API calls, and process integration, crucial in agile environments for standing up new Amazon servers or other processes needing privileged credentials. CyberArk can automate these tasks into their build processes. Another critical feature is the proxy service via Privileged Session Manager (PSM), providing not only a proxy between your user and the target servers, protecting against malware but also offering session recording. Many companies I have worked with implemented a PAM product as a knee-jerk reaction to SOX audit requirements. They discovered they needed session recording and retention for regulatory compliance. This has become a major factor for clients instituting CyberArk, so PSM is a big deal in addition to regular password rotation.

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 is usability, as it is quite user-friendly."
"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."
"AWS Secrets Manager is used for storing secret information that has to be a secret from your customer and your employees."
"AWS Secrets Manager plays a significant role in optimizing IT infrastructure security and efficiency."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is security."
"The most valuable feature is the management of credentials."
"The most valuable feature of AWS Secrets Manager is its seamless integration with various AWS services."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager makes it easy for users to retrieve and manage their passwords."
"The ability to monitor privileged accounts throughout the enterprises."
"The regulation of accounts is by far the most needed and valuable part of the application."
"I appreciate CyberArk's real-time capabilities. I can secure critical sessions, such as SSH or database sessions. As a security professional, I have real-time visibility into ongoing sessions. If anything suspicious occurs, I can terminate or freeze the session, which is part of user behavior analytics."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager has made our operations more streamlined."
"The flexibility of integrating with other technologies is important because of a lot of applications - a lot of COTS products - are not supported when we are bringing the application IDs. The CyberArk platform provides a lot of opportunities to do customization."
"The established sessions on the target systems are fully isolated and the privileged account credentials are never exposed to the end-users or their client applications and devices."
"You can see the benefits of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager immediately."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in terms of integrating with certain other platforms."
"We occasionally have problems with rate limits, although that is a problem more generally with AWS."
"It would be good if the AWS Secrets Manager were more customizable."
"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."
"If you add one more layer of security to AWS Secrets Manager, even the programmer will not be able to see the secrets."
"An area for improvement in AWS Secrets Manager could be expanding integration options beyond AWS services."
"The initial setup was somewhat complex."
"CyberArk's license is too expensive. I rate it seven out of 10 for affordability."
"The initial setup has room for improvement to be more straightforward."
"The one place where we found that this product really needs to improve is the cloud. Simple integrations don't exist, even today. We don't have anything specific on CyberArk for managing, SaaS products, SaaS vendors, SaaS credentials. I understand it's a vendor-based thing and that they have to coordinate with the other vendors to be able to do that, and there are integrations coming. But these are the major places where CyberArk definitely needs to invest some more time."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager could improve the integration with other solutions and ease of use. Additionally, there should be a feature to have remote connections without a VPN."
"Initially, there was a lot of hiccups, because there were a lot of transitions due to manual installations."
"The greatest area of improvement is with the user interface of the Password Vault Web Access component."
"The session monitoring and recording feature is also a good feature feature, but we're currently experiencing an issue with session monitoring not working correctly. We're working with CyberArk to resolve it. We aren't able to view active sessions or historical recordings of sessions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We purchase a monthly license for the product."
"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."
"I don't believe there is a license cost for the solution."
"The cost is somewhat high."
"Pricing and licensing depend on the environment."
"No, I do not have any advice on the price of the product."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is more expensive than its competitors, such as BeyondTrust, Delinea, and ManageEngine PAM360."
"The main problem for the tool is its licensing. I work for a really big company. When you try to develop this as a service, usually you work with leverage teams who are formed with dozens of members. You might dedicate one FTE, or less, for something, e.g., an antivirus administrator. You might have half an FTE's effort dedicated to administering the antivirus, but then you have a team of about 30 users who might access that ticket. The problem is that CyberArk eliminated the possibility of concurrent users years ago. This is a big problem for companies who work with leverage teams. You need to pay for everyone. 40 licenses are used by 20 or 30 people. This is a big problem because licenses are not precisely cheap."
"The pricing is slightly higher compared to other solutions, but it is reasonable because there are better security features."
"My company always complains about the cost of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager because it's too high."
"CyberArk is one of the best PAM solutions and one of the most expensive, but it works better than the others, so the pricing is fair."
"Since CyberArk is at the top of the Gartner list, the cost is indeed on the higher side, but customers must discern which entities are essential to purchase. They should weigh the cost against the quality received."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise173
 

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?
My thoughts on the pricing of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager depend entirely on the vendors' requirements. If they want their things to be secure, they have to spend accordingly. We have four t...
 

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: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.