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IBM Cloud Identity Service vs Okta Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 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

IBM Cloud Identity Service
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
29th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Okta Platform
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (2nd), Authentication Systems (3rd), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (3rd), Access Management (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (1st), AI IT Support (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) category, the mindshare of IBM Cloud Identity Service is 1.0%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Okta Platform is 8.9%, down from 13.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Okta Platform8.9%
IBM Cloud Identity Service1.0%
Other90.1%
Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1054431 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Excellent support, beneficial integration, and low maintenance
I have found IBM Cloud Identity Service to be highly scalable. It can handle thousands of users. IBM solutions are truly enterprise-grade. You don't find a lot of use cases for small businesses, or even sometimes medium businesses, the price point does not fit smaller businesses. The implementation effort, it's hard to find that cost-benefit.
SN
Identity and Access Management Specialist at a university with 10,001+ employees
Automated lifecycle management has cut onboarding times and now drives secure, clean access
Although I am a fan of Okta Platform overall, there are areas where it could improve security outcomes and reduce admin friction. My top improvement areas include the system log and analytics upgrade, which are great for point troubleshooting, but trending and root cause analysis across large tenants still require exporting to SIEM. Verbose queries and long-range retention costs can add up. Additionally, while certificate rotations are better than most, the process is still manual for busy portfolios, especially concerning multi-SP SAML certificate rotations and app metadata drift. Two more buckets of potential improvements for Okta Platform involve user experience and security. There is the issue of push fatigue and prompt sprawl, where users receive multiple prompts across different apps and sessions. I arrived at the rating of eight because the core controls are strong and reliable, but a few operational UX and UI gaps prevent it from being rated higher. The reasons for not giving it a nine or ten include ongoing issues concerning safety and change safety, the complexity of group rules and mappings, and the lack of robustness in policy management. Additionally, there remains a need for more manual involvement than necessary, especially for large portfolios and dual certificate rotation, along with proactive SP data metadata validation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the most valuable features of IBM Cloud Identity Service is that it delivers integrations with the commercial SaaS software that's available."
"IBM Cloud Identity Service is highly stable."
"It is stable. We can automate many of our daily operations with it, and we don't have to manage many things manually."
"It is multiple identity and access management, so all of the applications are valuable. It's also part of the automated process."
"After implementing Okta Platform with centralized authentication and policy enforcement on top of the existing sign-in approach, our workflow has become much easier and the best part is that manual toil has almost vanished."
"Okta Platform is absolutely stable, with no experienced lag, which ensures immediate action upon changes applied within Okta Platform, stabilizing operations in managing user accounts, identities, logins, and user profiles."
"Our customers use it for multi-factor authentication, lifecycle, and workflow."
"It is dependent on the evolution of your user base. It depends on usage per user, so the more sign-ins there are, the more expensive it becomes, so it works best for smaller companies from a financial perspective."
"The biggest benefit my company gained from Okta Workforce Identity is that everything just works securely so that all your managed devices can access all your applications without any hassle because they are trusted devices, but if you want to use your father's or mother's PC to access the company application, then it will ask more MFA (multifactor authentication) steps."
"Okta Platform has positively impacted my organization by doing a lot of cleanup, simplifying operations, improving visibility, governance, and security across the board."
"The positive impact I have seen from using Okta Platform is that it makes it easier for new joiners to get birthright access and have users added based on department or employee type."
"We find the solution to be reliable for our customers and it is nice that it is cloud-based and can be accessed from anywhere."
 

Cons

"Everything can be more stable and secure. There could also be more account features. I would like to be able to do more things through it to manage users' accounts."
"IBM Cloud Identity Service is going in the right direction with the product. They need to keep building out the integrations and having the library is very critical."
"The initial setup is complex, it's not straightforward. It takes months because it's not straightforward."
"You don't find a lot of use cases for small businesses, or even sometimes medium businesses, the price point does not fit smaller businesses."
"Whenever I write Cypress test cases, we encounter problems with logging in through Okta."
"The stability could be better."
"The only aspect in which it can be improved is that the interface could be cleaner."
"The solution’s policies are difficult to understand due to the policy methods. They use authentication. The solution’s workflow is also difficult and not very active. They need to have proper documentation on it. In the next release, I would like to see the workflows being more digestible."
"Okta Platform can be improved by enhancing the mobile application because sometimes it has issues."
"Maybe the interface could use some work but, for the most part, the tool is pretty cool."
"Okta could improve by making their learning materials more user-friendly."
"In the future, we'd like to see the product implement more security features, like, for example, zero-trust."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is expensive for non-enterprise companies. IBM's always going to be a little more expensive, you're going to be paying a premium. However, depending on the organization's needs, there's probably a benefit there to do even with the price being the way it is."
"The price of the solution is good."
"Okta has fairly competitive pricing."
"Pricing might be high, but it comes down when the number of people using the product goes up."
"Price-wise, Okta Workforce Identity is a cheap solution. The overall cost depends on the license since you can negotiate with Okta or any of Okta's partners only if you opt for many licenses."
"The solution's pricing model could be better for SMBs."
"It is costly for large companies."
"Okta Customer Identity is not an expensive solution."
"Workforce Identity is well-priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise61
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Okta Workforce Identity?
Pricing for Okta is reasonably not that much, however, I don't have access to the commercial aspect.
What needs improvement with Okta Workforce Identity?
Currently, in Okta Workforce Identity we get the two-digit authentication code. Instead of getting the two-digit authentication code, if we had an option to do fingerprint verification, that would ...
What is your primary use case for Okta Workforce Identity?
I don't have many details about Okta Workforce Identity. I use the tool just to sign in to different applications that we have. We basically set up Okta Workforce Identity in our mobile phone. We d...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Okta Customer Identity, Workforce Identity
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Baxter Healthcare, 
FedEx, Zoom, Takeda, Lululemon Athletica, GrunHub, jetBlue, McKensson, Bain & Company, Engie, Peloton, Sonos, T-Mobile, Hewlett Packard, MGM Resorts, Ally Financial, Priceline, Albertsons, Itercom, Classy, FICO, Kensho, Live Nation, Drata, Rotary, and others.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cloud Identity Service vs. Okta Platform and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.