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Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) vs Okta

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.5
Microsoft Entra ID improves efficiency and security, reduces costs, and enhances performance with integrated security and automated identity management.
Sentiment score
7.2
Okta Workforce Identity offers high ROI through enhanced security, reduced IT burdens, automation, and improved scalability and reliability.
We leverage existing licensing, like Windows Server or SQL, and hybrid benefits, and our sales and marketing teams benefit from co-selling and partnership advantages.
We get a return from not needing to pay other vendors to do what we already had from Microsoft, which was better than the competition.
The return on investment comes from not needing as many IT staff to manage and verify user identity and ensuring seamless device connection without needing to administer device compliance manually.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Microsoft Entra ID support is generally positive but quality varies; premium options offer faster and more expert assistance.
Sentiment score
7.4
Okta Workforce Identity offers responsive customer service, though delays occur; many benefit from fast, knowledgeable support and web resources.
The actual support when you get to that level is a ten out of ten.
There are immediate answers to any issues that arise with great knowledge and a deep understanding of the product and business needs.
They usually try to deflect, buy time, and often do not address the problem immediately.
They are very supportive; they just open a ticket, and they support us very professionally.
We had an issue with the Okta Workforce Identity dashboard once in 2023 when we had an outage, but it recovered in a few minutes.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Entra ID offers seamless scalability and integration, effectively supporting diverse and large-scale enterprise operations globally.
Sentiment score
7.6
Okta Workforce Identity is highly scalable, supporting growth without performance issues, making it ideal for medium to large enterprises.
We experienced no scalability issues with Microsoft Entra ID.
Its scalability is impressive, aided by Microsoft's efforts to expand its data centers.
When dealing with tens of thousands of objects, it requires proper management and best practices to retrieve only necessary data.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Entra ID is praised for its stability and reliability, despite minor MFA issues and occasional sluggish response times.
Sentiment score
8.1
Okta Workforce Identity is praised for its stability and reliability, with users noting minimal issues and quick recovery from outages.
It's a critical solution that we can't do without.
The stability of the solution is very high at 99.999%.
We rarely had significant problems or crashes.
Okta Workforce Identity is a stable product.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Entra ID requires better documentation, integration, user interfaces, pricing clarity, support, stability, and enhanced features for improved functionality.
Okta Workforce Identity needs UI improvements, better integration, enhanced support, and more features for effective user experience.
A recent incident we dealt with took four months to resolve with a seven-day deadline, which was quite frustrating.
Synchronization issues occasionally occur, making it challenging to analyze logs and pinpoint the exact problem.
There is a need for better transformation support from on-premises Active Directory policies to the cloud, as Entra ID doesn't cover this sufficiently yet.
It could improve in the governance part, particularly regarding better role management and workflow, as I feel it is tedious on Okta.
Okta should have at least a local peering partner for countries that align with or comply with GDPR, so there are no compliance or audit questions.
I believe that if we integrate the workflows section into the main Okta Workforce Identity dashboard, it can be very useful.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Entra ID offers flexible user-based pricing and licensing tiers, with discounts for educational and nonprofit organizations.
Okta Workforce Identity is costly but valued by larger enterprises for its comprehensive features and straightforward setup.
We are getting our money's worth.
Microsoft sets pricing based on customer demand, adjusting to find the optimal balance between sales volume and profit per unit, similar to how Costco manages product prices.
Most features of Entra ID are part of Microsoft's ecosystem and included in Microsoft 365 bundles, which means there are no additional costs associated with pricing and licensing.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Entra ID enhances security and efficiency with features like single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, and seamless third-party integration.
Okta Workforce Identity enhances security and efficiency through centralized management, Single Sign-On, automation, and seamless integration with applications.
We can secure the applications that we are building and make sure that if the application were to be compromised, there is no full access to a customer's environment causing issues and other security concerns.
It's integrated with Microsoft technologies like Authenticator, SSO, and MFA, streamlining operations and creating a seamless environment.
The granular control, such as preventing logins from specific locations, enhances security significantly.
For the end user, it is beneficial as they do not have to remember a password or keep the password on a post-it for different applications; they just authenticate once to access several services and service providers.
You can only log in if you have the access, which protects the applications by avoiding cross-site scripting.
Okta enables multi-factor authentication, which enhances security, especially for SaaS applications.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Entra ID
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
1st
Ranking in Authentication Systems
1st
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
1st
Ranking in Access Management
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
234
Ranking in other categories
Identity Management (IM) (2nd), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
Okta Workforce Identity
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
2nd
Ranking in Authentication Systems
6th
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
3rd
Ranking in Access Management
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Privileged Access Management (PAM) (7th), ZTNA as a Service (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 26.8%, down from 28.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Okta Workforce Identity is 12.1%, down from 14.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Bahram Piri - PeerSpot reviewer
Security focus and seamless implementation increase platform productivity
Microsoft Entra ID can be improved in many ways, and there's a big wish list.If we're focusing on security, something that I definitely expect is improvement in the UI and UX for frontline workers. This is important, especially for non-tech savvy individuals. It is something Microsoft Entra ID could do to improve for a wider audience. It's important to focus on the frontline workers since they are non-tech savvy individuals. They are not like those back-office engineering C-level employees who are constantly dealing with computers, and we need to build a specific user experience and user interface for them to handle this stuff. That's something I expect Microsoft to focus on more for Microsoft Entra ID.
Tor Nordhagen - PeerSpot reviewer
Extremely easy to work with, simple to set up, and reasonably priced
The drawback of this solution is that in our shops, many staff members sometimes have to be borrowed from one shop to another and the solution does not really support having multiple roles. The user experience we would like to have when a person works in shop A which pays their salary is that they should have access to pretty much everything. Maybe you have somebody who is a manager in that shop A, he should be able to order new wear, he should be able to change the pricing, he should be able to empty the cash registry, and ship it to the bank. But when for instance, in COVID, people had to fill in for people in shops where a lot of people were sick, then they had to actually use user accounts of people that work in shop B. If you were employed in shop A, you could not work in shop B without borrowing somebody else's user ID and password. Which is really bad. We haven't been able to work around that and Okta Workforce Identity does not have a solution for it. We are now piloting their identity governance solution. Obviously, it's easy to give somebody access, give them an account, and give them roles, but it's hard to maintain that. For example, if you moved from, say working in a shop to working in a warehouse. But why do you still have all this shop access? The solution has until now not had anything to really support the process of taking away access. But now we are in a better release program of Okta's identity governance solution. Although it's very basic, the solution has started on a journey, but identity governance is something that Okta Workforce Identity really needs to improve. The ability or the options in the solution for changing the look and feel are not good enough because in our partner portal, essentially what they have is an ugly admin interface. The admin interface is good enough for us technical people because that's all we need. We work with the product and we're able to see the data but when it comes to presenting the service portal, Okta Workforce Identity does not have any capabilities really for making it look pretty. To add branding and different graphical user interface elements than Okta basic for essentially delegated admin for the business-to-business portal is horrifying because you're essentially using the tech admin. The only option we had and used, was to take the tech admin console and strip it. so that a vendor that has some goods that are sold in the shops, when they want to add a user on their side, say a driver or a packer on their side who should know how much they've packed in a truck to come to our warehouse, then the user interface that this vendor is using, these functional people will then have to use an extremely basic user interface.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Duo Security compare with Microsoft Authenticator?
We switched to Duo Security for identity verification. We’d been using a competitor but got the chance to evaluate Duo for 30 days, and we could not be happier. Duo Security is easy to configure a...
What do you like most about Azure Active Directory?
It is very simple. The Active Directory functions are very easy for us. Its integration with anything is very easy. We can easily do third-party multifactor authentication.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory?
Our experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Microsoft Entra ID involves leveraging Microsoft 365 E5 licensing, so it's included. Being included in Microsoft licensing makes it mu...
What do you like most about Okta Workforce Identity?
Okta has introduced the Universal Directory. It has custom attribute capability and user permissions to read/write on their profiles or hide them. Profile sources and identity profile sourcing are ...
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?
I believe that if we integrate the workflows section into the main Okta Workforce Identity dashboard, it can be very useful.
 

Also Known As

Azure AD, Azure Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Authenticator
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Entre ID is trusted by companies of all sizes and industries including Walmart, Zscaler, Uniper, Amtrak, monday.com, and more.
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 Microsoft Entra ID vs. Okta Workforce Identity and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.