No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

AWS Secrets Manager vs Idira Privileged Access Manager comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 2, 2026

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
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Secrets Management Tools (3rd)
Idira Privileged Access Man...
Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
230
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (1st), Mainframe Security (1st), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Enterprise Password Managers category, the mindshare of AWS Secrets Manager is 12.9%, down from 16.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Idira Privileged Access Manager is 6.1%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Password Managers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Idira Privileged Access Manager6.1%
AWS Secrets Manager12.9%
Other81.0%
Enterprise Password Managers
 

Featured Reviews

Mahadev Metre - PeerSpot reviewer
Dev Ops 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.
Singaravelu C - PeerSpot reviewer
CyberArk Engineer at Tata Consultancy
Provides full visibility into user activity and ensures secure end-to-end access across critical systems
In CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, I see room for improvement as I am working in the on-premises networks, and now we are also having the cloud-based PAM. So there, everything is maintained by the CyberArk Privileged Access Manager team, and we are only maintaining the PSM servers. So it is already upgraded from the on-premises network to the cloud network. If you ask me what we can implement beyond that, I just need a few minutes to think about what new things, because it is already an end-to-end security on-premises itself. Now, when it comes to PCloud, Privileged Cloud, it is more secure than the on-premises networks because most of the things are handled using the cloud itself. So it is an already upgraded version; we do not need to implement something new. But if you think in that way, we can have a chance to implement our things. If anything could be improved in CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, I think we could build a small agent AI in my team, we could give access to these logs—the Vault logs, PSM logs, and CPM logs. Whenever the system is going down, the AI will automatically check. If we actually implement agent AI in CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, it will check the logs, and if any errors are coming, it automatically triggers alerts and gives the solution. That is the best improvement I can think of because these days, most things are done by agent AI. So if we also implement this agent AI in CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, we can add more features.

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 its seamless integration with various AWS services."
"The most valuable feature is the management of credentials."
"The product is easy to use and is inexpensive."
"It's highly scalable, so I'd rate it a ten out of ten."
"AWS Secrets Manager has impacted my organization positively through security improvements because on that basis, I can rotate my keys and passwords at a certain time."
"The most valuable feature is usability, as it is quite user-friendly."
"Secrets Manager helps in retrieving the enrollment variables used by the code."
"AWS Secrets Manager plays a significant role in optimizing IT infrastructure security and efficiency."
"It's been a big win for us as we're now able to start managing service accounts with AIM."
"This is a stable, reasonably priced product, and it has good security features as well."
"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."
"It's a highly flexible solution that can adapt to each customer's needs."
"The audit capabilities include video so that not only keystrokes but also mouse clicks are captured, providing safety and reassurance for anyone working in our infrastructure."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager has helped our organization by controlling users' access."
"The product has allowed us to improve both the management and access to privileged credentials, while also creating a full audit trail of all activities happening within isolated sessions of all tasks and activities taking place within the solution."
"The tool has safe vaults. We keep our passwords in the Vault. The tool’s recording feature is also valuable for us."
 

Cons

"The solution's initial setup process is complicated."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing model."
"The price of the solution could improve."
"If you add one more layer of security to AWS Secrets Manager, even the programmer will not be able to see the secrets."
"We occasionally have problems with rate limits, although that is a problem more generally with AWS."
"We contacted AWS support and waited approximately an hour for assistance."
"There is a potential improvement in connecting AWS Secrets Manager to Jenkins CI/CD pipeline to automatically reflect changes in production."
"The sidecar feature has room for improvement."
"As they grow, the technical support is having growing pains. One of the things is just being able to get somebody on the phone sometimes."
"The main challenge was integrating with in-house IT and business applications, which are not standard. We needed to create special updates for that kind of integration."
"I would like easier integrations for creating an online dashboard that executives would look at or are able to run reports from the tool."
"New functionalities or discovered bugs take a little longer to patch. We would greatly appreciate quicker development of security patches and bug corrections."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager can be improved because I have experienced one issue where a user connected through RDP to a Linux server and the PAM could not fetch any commands or key store logging from the Linux server, which works fine on Windows servers."
"The continuous scanning of the assets is limited to Windows and Unix. We like to have the solution scan any databases, network devices, and security devices for privileged accounts. That would be very helpful."
"CyberArk is not friendly in terms of having a Community Edition. It's a very, very costly app."
"Pricing is a problem. CyberArk is expensive compared to other products I know."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is somewhat high."
"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."
"I don't believe there is a license cost for the solution."
"It costs us around $200 per user."
"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 a control, but in terms of risk, you are covering a big impact on the company. Improvement in the licensing prices is something I would want to have."
"Generally, I don't get involved in the licensing or the purchasing side of it, but I do know that the licenses are expensive."
"The price of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager could be less expensive."
"Compared to other solutions, it is costly."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"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."
"The pricing is slightly higher compared to other solutions, but it is reasonable because there are better security features."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Enterprise Password Managers solutions are best for your needs.
912,565 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise175
 

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 needs improvement with AWS Secrets Manager?
AWS Secrets Manager could not be better because there has been no frustration with the product.
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 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...
What needs improvement with CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
I believe account discovery and rolling support need to be improved. Account discovery is important when integrating with other systems, as other PAM solutions can perform account discovery and onb...
 

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. Idira Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
912,565 professionals have used our research since 2012.