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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 June 2025, in the Enterprise Password Managers category, the mindshare of AWS Secrets Manager is 18.0%, down from 21.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is 8.0%, down from 9.0% 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.
Abdul Durrani - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables granular and secure access with just-in-time access and Zero Trust model
CyberArk provides a good amount of control over access types. However, as a future enhancement, having additional features for cross-platform integration would be beneficial. It would be good to have integrations with other tools and firewalls, such as Zscaler and CrowdStrike. Although I am not fully aware of recent updates, more cross-platform integration would be valuable. A SOC analyst would like to have centralized access in terms of information flowing in even for privileged access management. They would like to have control over everything instead of opening four to five tabs for different sorts of information. Cross-platform integration would help with that. Customers also want CyberArk's pricing to be better so that they can implement it further and have more licenses. Implementing a privileged access management solution can be challenging. It would be great if CyberArk could provide recommendations based on the compliance standards of an organization. It would help system admins ensure that all the required ports are closed and the systems are being managed properly. If any system is not being used anymore, any ports opened for that system need to be closed. Having such recommendations would be helpful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's highly scalable, so I'd rate it a ten out of ten."
"The API is fine and works well."
"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 is usability, as it is quite user-friendly."
"Integrating with other services was straightforward, especially within the AWS environment."
"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."
"Secrets Manager helps in retrieving the enrollment variables used by the code."
"I would highly recommend AWS Secrets Manager for secret management in AWS."
"I appreciate CyberArk's real-time capabilities. I can secure critical sessions, such as SSH or database sessions."
"Ensures accounts are managed according to corporate policies."
"The main feature of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is the ability to manage who has access to what and when, especially with shared accounts."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager’s ability to safeguard credentials for our organization is very important because it helps in managing the keys to the kingdom, especially the privileged access for various platforms."
"CyberArk makes our environment more secure and prevents possible attacks by compromised accounts."
"It takes people out of the machine work of ensuring credentials remain up-to-date, and handles connection brokering such that human usage and credential management remain independent."
"The regulation of accounts is by far the most needed and valuable part of the application."
"Because we now have the ability to grant access to management utilities like DNS Manager, Sequel Studio, and MMC, in a secure fashion, without system admins being required to continually reenter various passwords that are stored who knows where, it has really made the system admin's job much easier. It has made the PSM's job much easier. It has made the auditor's job and the security team's job and the access manager's job significantly easier, because we're able to move much more quickly toward a role-based access management system, and that is really streamlining the whole onboarding/offboarding management process."
 

Cons

"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 room for improvement in terms of integrating with certain other platforms."
"The price of the solution could improve."
"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."
"There is a potential improvement in connecting AWS Secrets Manager to Jenkins CI/CD pipeline to automatically reflect changes in production."
"We occasionally have problems with rate limits, although that is a problem more generally with AWS."
"If we could have some kind of out-of-the box feature that you can simply say "no" so they don't have to go into a development mode, that would a really helpful feature."
"The solution's architecture could be improved. It requires installation on four to five different servers. Each server has a purpose, but when you need to troubleshoot, it can be difficult because you need to access each of them. Reducing the number of servers would be helpful."
"Their support can be better. Their SLA timings are higher than others."
"It is only good as a PAM solution. If they could work more on Privileged Threat Analytics, it would be beneficial. It has limitations, so improvements on PTA would be fine."
"It is complicated to deploy for Windows servers compared to other vendors."
"I'd like it to be a little more granular. I want a little bit more control over exactly what we do. I know if you do that, you add more knobs and dials to deal with, but that's just my personal approach: granular access."
"The challenge with the product is pricing since it's expensive. It also needs to improve the customization. We encountered some stability issues as well."
"CyberArk PAM could greatly benefit from an under-the-hood update; integrating machine learning algorithms could provide predictive insights."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't believe there is a license cost for the solution."
"The cost is somewhat high."
"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."
"This solution is expensive."
"CyberArk has been Gartner's number-one pick for the past ten years, so you can infer that their pricing is higher than everyone else. When you are the best, you will charge appropriately for it."
"The price of this solution is expensive."
"It costs us around $200 per user."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"Pricing and licensing depend on the environment."
"It can be an expensive product."
"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."
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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
27%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
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?
The pricing for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is quite expensive, and the pricing varies from region to region. In APAC, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager can be obtained for less than in Nor...
 

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: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.