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CyberArk Privileged Access Manager vs ForgeRock comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

CyberArk Privileged Access ...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
229
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Enterprise Password Managers (3rd), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (1st), Mainframe Security (2nd), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
ForgeRock
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Identity Management (IM) (15th), Access Management (14th), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (7th)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Ahmet Murat Ülker - PeerSpot reviewer
Devops Engineer and Trainer at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
Easy to use, but customizations can be complicated to handle
I would suggest others use the product after asking them to consider their use cases. SSO may be a use case for some, and using the product as an IDM tool may be a use case. At the moment, my company is not deploying all the components of ForgeRock itself. My company uses ForgeRock for OAuth 2.0. For example, my company is not deploying the IDM and identity gateway components. You should consider your use case and select the required components for that use case. My company does not use the SSO features of the tool. My company uses SSO to access ForgeRock's AM Console for individual users. My company does not use single sign on features of the product and instead, we use Auth0. I rate the tool a seven or eight 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

"Their legacy of more than 20 years is very valuable. It brings a lot of stability to the product and a wide variety of integration with the ecosystem. Because of these factors, it has also been very successful in deployment. So, the legacy and integration with other technologies make the PAM platform very stable and strong. In terms of features, most of the other vendors are still focusing just on the privileged access management or session recording, but CyberArk has incorporated artificial intelligence to make PAM a more proactive system. They have implemented threat analytics into this, and there is also a lot of focus on domain controller production, Windows Server protection, and stuff like that. They have also further advanced it with the security on the cloud and DevOps systems. They have a bundle licensing model, which really helps. They don't have a complex licensing model. Even though in our market, people say CyberArk is expensive as compared to some of the other products, but in terms of overall value and as a bundling solution, it is an affordable and highly scalable product."
"With CyberArk, you can be fully confident that your existing accounts are secure. You will be 100 percent"
"The threat analytics is an important feature."
"One of the best features of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is the capability of Privileged Session Manager (PSM) because it provides visibility into user activities, audit ability, and traceability."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager indeed helps meet compliance and regulatory requirements for customers, especially in the financial sector, by aligning with PCI DSS standards."
"CyberArk's capabilities and functionality outperform other solutions."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager has positively impacted my organization, showing significant improvement since all sessions are monitored and isolated using isolated RDP sessions, which are created temporarily and expire if not used."
"The password protection itself is the most important feature. It's something we didn't have before."
"Their access management solution, OpenAM, is most valuable because it meets the needs of a lot of users."
"In terms of the tool's operational efficiency, ForgeRock Access Management is used in a lot of environments, different regions, and in different stages of production environments."
"We used it to implement multi-factor authentication and to improve our security posture as well as reducing the potential for attacks."
"ForgeRock has CIAM, which other products didn't have, and they have DevOps ready."
"We have found the identity and access management tools in the solution to be particularly useful for our organization."
"It works very well, especially in Identity and Access Management. It helps detect anomalies in user behavior patterns."
"We create and define the permissions and configurations for the users."
"ForgeRock is an extensive product with many functionalities and capabilities, much more than many other tools combined."
 

Cons

"Many of the infrastructure folks who use the product dislike it because it complicates their workflow. They get a little less control, and they have to go through a specific solution. It proactively logs in for them, which obfuscates some of the issues that they may be troubleshooting."
"It can be integrated with other systems, but it is not easy to integrate. It takes too long to integrate it. Its integration should be easier and simpler."
"We found a lot of errors during the initial setup. They should work to improve the implementation experience and to remove errors from the process."
"Having a cloud version would be very helpful. You have to invest a lot of money for the infrastructure hardware so the cloud version would help."
"There is a learning curve when it comes to planning out the deployment strategy, but once it is defined, it runs itself."
"CyberArk has brought a feature called Vendor Team Manager, but it does not provide full access. It requires the vendor team leader to be onboarded as a local account instead of using their email address. Improvements could be made to onboard the vendor team leaders using their email, allowing them to manage their own team. That would greatly reduce the overhead in managing vendor team members."
"Integration with the ticketing system should allow any number of fields to be used for validation before allowing a user to be evaluated and able to access a server."
"It is easily customized, and that customization makes it very easy to start trying to shoehorn the solution into roles it was never intended to fill."
"We would like this solution to be developed for use with mobile applications."
"I find that it's quite expensive for just an open-source system. Support is quite expensive."
"The solution could improve by adding more advertising and marketing."
"The user interface could be improved as it is cumbersome and outdated. It doesn't have a responsive UI."
"The solution's documentation is not very good, and they do not give more details."
"We're worried about the scaling. We're told it will be okay and there won't be issues, however, I'm not 100% convinced."
"The solution requires more simplified customization. However, part of the problem is my clients determining their own preferences. Technology can help and do many things, but you have to define your own policies to ensure that the solution or service works within those parameters. Helping customers understand their business and different processes is another issue not relating to the functionality of this solution."
"They should improve the solution by include reporting."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is quite high and it could be improved."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is on the expensive side. It is very expensive."
"If you are looking at implementing this solution, buy the training and go to it."
"CyberArk DNA is free if you purchase the CyberArk solution. There is no additional charge for CyberArk DNA, which is great."
"The solution is available at a high price"
"Network and security licenses are currently being managed by other outsource vendors, so they are facing some type of problems in the digital aspect."
"I have heard from my leaders that CyberArk is costlier in terms of licensing. The support and maintenance are also costly. We use their premium support, but for the price we pay, we do not get the value."
"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."
"Its licensing is on a yearly basis, but it also depends on the contract that you have with the vendor. They have multiple types of contracts. There are additional costs to the standard licensing fees. If you need some of the features, you have to pay more."
"Its price is comparable to other products in the market."
"ForgeRock's pricing is more competitive than other products."
"ForgeRock is an expensive solution."
"We have multiple clients we are looking at right now. We are at a very small number, however, the idea and the goal is to grow. We are looking at about $100,000 and $50,000 a minimum a month cost. That'd be minimum maybe in a couple of years."
"It's a bit pricey and could be more competitive."
"The pricing of the solution is fair but I do not have the full details."
"The license is purchased annually per user. However, you can negotiate if you are signing for a longer period of time. When comparing this solution to others on the market it is priced fair, it is not at the top of the price range or at the bottom end."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise173
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise13
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about ForgeRock?
The most valuable features of ForgeRock are social login and data protection.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ForgeRock?
Our company was considering switching back to Keycloak from ForgeRock, so as to not pay any license fees. ForgeRock also supports M-PIN and biometric features that Keycloak does not provide. My com...
What needs improvement with ForgeRock?
In the past, I saw that Splunk was integrated with a testing portal, and then it was integrated with Slack. I don't think ForgeRock directly supports integrations with Slack, making it an area wher...
 

Also Known As

CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
ForgeRock Identity Platform, ForgeRock OpenIDM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rockwell Automation
Geico, Thomson Reuters, Salesforce, McKesson, Trinet, SKY, BNP Paribas, Deloitte, Capgemini, North Western University
Find out what your peers are saying about CyberArk Privileged Access Manager vs. ForgeRock and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.