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CyberArk Privileged Access Manager vs Symantec Privileged Access Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 6, 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

CyberArk Privileged Access ...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
229
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Enterprise Password Managers (3rd), Mainframe Security (2nd), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
Symantec Privileged Access ...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
17th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category, the mindshare of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is 11.6%, down from 20.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Privileged Access Manager is 1.7%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
CyberArk Privileged Access Manager11.6%
Symantec Privileged Access Manager1.7%
Other86.7%
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

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.
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior technical Consultant at CA Africa
Secure management of sensitive servers and seamless applications with direct linking
The credential injection feature is highly valued, particularly for RDP sessions. A majority of customers use it for RDP, and a couple for Linux servers. The broader capabilities, including access to multiple systems, web-based applications, and clustering, have never posed an issue. The threat analytics aspect is also a robust feature that analyzes all pertinent information.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"CyberArk's GUI is user friendly."
"The most valuable feature is platform management. It is quite easy to manage privileged access for certain target platforms with CyberArk Privileged Access Manager as compared to other products I have worked with."
"Helped us meet our standards and requirements to help us comply with industry standards and banking regulations."
"With PAM in place, we've experienced a significant reduction in potential security breaches."
"It's secure and reliable. I especially appreciate that it's locked down and only allows access to authorized components."
"Password rotation, session recording & isolation and on-demand privileges."
"The password protection itself is the most important feature. It's something we didn't have before."
"It's a highly flexible solution that can adapt to each customer's needs."
"We found that the architecture is scalable and very resilient."
"We have received good support from the tech support team."
"For me, it is the robust API which is the most valuable feature. This allows for low maintenance costs and allows applications to automatically connect. This is great to automate security of the DevOps pipeline for shared secrets across environments. Also, being on Linux and a virtual appliance is great."
"It's easy to use and easy to configure."
"It is simple to implement and is suitable for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"The credential injection feature is highly valued, particularly for RDP sessions."
"Comprehensive coverage of the required features for the PAM solution."
"The DB clustering is a really good benefit of using CA PAM."
 

Cons

"The product documentation has to be more precise in certain aspects with explanations for functionality limitations along with reference material or screenshots."
"Having a centralized place to manage the solution has been something that I have always wanted, and they are starting to understand that and bring things back together."
"The only problem involves granting access to people who are authorized to view it."
"I would like easier integrations for creating an online dashboard that executives would look at or are able to run reports from the tool."
"There was a situation when one of our presidents had an issue, but I can't recall the specifics."
"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."
"Report creation could be improved. The policies could be more customized."
"The solution's architecture could be improved. It requires installation on four to five different servers."
"An improvement for this solution is that it should not be constantly based on user name and password. There should be a condition to edit and update your username."
"What I hope happens with the new product CA PAM is to keep all the useful features that exist in PA, but what I’ve noticed with many new products is the UI gets polished but systems lags stability and performance or it adds additional complexity instead of simplifying the user experience."
"They need to do a little bit more on the mainframe side.​"
"They need to have zero tier and active-active setup ​with zero minimum downtime, which they are working on it. ​"
"Instead of just giving passwords to the user based on job function, from auditing perspective, turn that cycle around. That would really help from an auditing standpoint."
"I’m no fan of Java as an application front-end, as it tends to have issues depending on what browser one’s using."
"The management console could be improved."
"They should include some assignments in the test environment to explore the product's features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It's an affordable platform."
"It's not a cheap application. It's very expensive."
"Its price is high. I have also worked with Delinea. CyberArk is comparatively expensive compared to other PAM solutions, such as Delinea, especially during renewal."
"Overall, its pricing is really good. The main difference from all the other vendors is that they have one package that covers all the functionality and modules of the basic PAM, except the add-on modules like adware and server protection. It also doesn't include the licenses for domain controller protection or maybe an API call-related feature. For the basic privileged access management, the bundle pricing is really good, but when it comes to an agent-based solution for advanced cyber protection or application identity managers, it is expensive. Services are also very expensive if you hire the services team from CyberArk, but these guys are really good. For a couple of large banking projects, we had an experience with them. The banks wanted to have things quickly and efficiently, so we had to hire them. If we take four weeks, these guys can do everything on a weekend. They charge quite a big sum of money, but they know the system well."
"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."
"There are additional features added to our CyberArk Privileged Access Manager license. For example, features that allow us to integrate into various kinds of platforms."
"I would prefer better licensing options for the 20-100 users we have at a given time."
"Appliances are relatively cheap, don’t skimp. Make sure you have redundancy, high availability, and enough appliances to manage the concurrent workload."
"It is reasonably priced."
"They offer per-device, per-user, or monthly and yearly licensing models."
"Don’t go with an agent model. Don’t go with a model that has you buying a thousand different parts. Go with PAM that gives you everything, or you’ll just be paying costs of implementing another tool that PAM would have just given you up front."
"Cost-wise, CA was better compared to others in the market. ​"
"The version we are using is affordable compared to BeyondTrust, which is maybe three to four times as expensive, but it depends on the features."
"Pricing is fair compared to other top vendors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

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 Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise30
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
Due to the nature of the solution, it is hard to gauge, but compared to competitors, the pricing is very good. I would rate it as an eight and a half out of ten.
What needs improvement with Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
Recent releases need improvement in webpage management. For instance, navigating through a webpage that acts like a wizard, where I proceed to the next page and enter more information, is not handl...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
With the customers that I have so far, I help them broker RDP sessions to sensitive servers, particularly those that manage aspects like physical access. I have also done it for backend databases, ...
 

Also Known As

CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
CA PAM, Xceedium Xsuite, CA Privileged Access Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rockwell Automation
NEOVERA, Telesis, eSoft
Find out what your peers are saying about CyberArk Privileged Access Manager vs. Symantec Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.