Amazon Cognito Reviews

Name: Amazon Cognito
Brand: Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Rating: 3.8 (13 reviews)

3.8 out of 5

13 reviews
76% willing to recommend

What is Amazon Cognito?

Amazon Cognito is a simple user identity and data synchronization service that helps you securely manage and synchronize app data for your users across their mobile devices. You can create unique identities for your users through a number of public login providers (Amazon, Facebook, and Google) and also support unauthenticated guests. You can save app data locally on users’ devices allowing your applications to work even when the devices are offline. With Amazon Cognito, you can save any kind of data in the AWS Cloud, such as app preferences or game state, without writing any backend code or managing any infrastructure. This means you can focus on creating great app experiences instead of having to worry about building and managing a backend solution to handle identity management, network state, storage, and sync.

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Amazon Cognito is the #6 ranked solution in top Access Management solutions. PeerSpot users give Amazon Cognito an average rating of 7.6 out of 10. Amazon Cognito is most commonly compared to Microsoft Entra ID: Amazon Cognito vs Microsoft Entra ID. Amazon Cognito is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 56% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a computer software company, accounting for 17% of all views.

Helped 838,640 peers since 2012

Featured reviews

Erik Aceiro

Solutions Architect III at Raizen

The developer experience for mobile apps is terrible. Documentation is very poor and it is difficult to read the documents available to put things into practice. Our team has issues finding information related to using the solution. SDK and libraries available for mobile apps are terrible. For example, if you use MFA to migrate one user from your database to the pool, you need to use Lambda functions or other methods in AWS to get the solution enabled. It is extremely difficult to put a very, very scalable project into practice. Our team doesn't think you can use the solution for B2C on a large scale. We thought the solution would provide an agile experience but it does not. The solution needs to keep a history of passwords. For example, you should be able to check if customers used the same password in the past when connecting to a company by username and password. This type of feature is a must for our project. The MFA related to the solution's side is nonexistent. MFA should occur on the Facebook or Google side and also on the solution's side. This is a big problem because we have wallets, credit cards, and sensitive data stored for each customer. One layer of security is totally missing.

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Subrata Mukherjee

Senior Technical Architect; Head of Platform at Blenheim Chalcot IT Services India

With Cognito, user authentication is more secure, and we no longer have to build and scale our own authentication model. It has benefited us by eliminating the need to incorporate security pointers manually. Furthermore, with Cognito's advanced features, we now achieve improved integration capability with other federated IDPs, enhancing our security and user management.

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Arif Azim

Senior Engineering Manager at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

We use Terraform for the deployment and it takes approximately 15 to 30 minutes for a typical deployment. There are a lot of different steps that need to be taken for the implementation, there are other dependencies. At the beginning levels, it takes anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. In a more complex environment, it takes more than an hour to two hours if you try to have a one-nightly build and everything bypassing through automated test assets and the different syntax. If you have many different elements involved it takes longer than two hours. I rate the initial setup of Amazon Cognito a seven out of ten.

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Amazon Cognito mindshare

As of February 2025, the mindshare of Amazon Cognito in the Access Management category stands at 6.4%, up from 6.2% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Access Management

PeerAnalyst reports

Type	Title	Date
Category	Access Management	Feb 21, 2025	Download
Product	Reviews, tips, and advice from real users	Feb 21, 2025	Download
Comparison	Amazon Cognito vs Microsoft Entra ID	Feb 21, 2025	Download
Comparison	Amazon Cognito vs Auth0	Feb 21, 2025	Download
Comparison	Amazon Cognito vs Okta Workforce Identity	Feb 21, 2025	Download

Title	Rating	Mindshare	Recommending
Microsoft Entra ID	4.3	27.3%	94%	218 interviews Add to research
Cloudflare One	4.4	3.4%	100%	20 interviews Add to research

Valuable Features

Amazon Cognito's most valuable features include seamless integration with AWS services, efficient user management, and competitive pricing. Its flexibility enables integration with multiple applications, IDPs, and systems like Azure and Kubernetes. The pre and post-token generation, OTP, email validation, and swift authentication enhance usability. The built-in user management module saves time, while single sign-on efficiently manages access. Cognito's scalability and simple group management make it essential for various projects.

"What I find most valuable about Amazon Cognito is the single sign-on feature that provides a token for accessing protected APIs."
"What I find most valuable about Amazon Cognito is the single sign-on feature that provides a token for accessing protected APIs."
"The features most valuable to us are the ability to integrate with various IDPs and the capability to sync with multiple applications."

Room for Improvement

Amazon Cognito faces challenges with integration simplicity, poor documentation, and a complex setup, hindering developer experience. Users struggle with MFA configurations, lack of password history, and costly scaling, impacting security for sensitive data. Configuration difficulties exist, including for JWT customization, and the user interface needs improvements. Triggers, privileged access management, and tracking should be enhanced, along with enriched user profiles. Detailed, accessible documents would improve comprehension, and the onboarding is seen as cumbersome. Pricing concerns persist for smaller enterprises.

"Amazon Cognito could be improved by making it easier for us to add more data to the token, allowing customization of JWT. It requires a complex program to customize the token currently, however, the UI could support this configuration better."
"Amazon Cognito could be improved by making it easier for us to add more data to the token, allowing customization of JWT."
"The setup and configuration can be complex, especially for advanced use cases."

ROI

Users consistently noted high ROI from Amazon Cognito, citing its cost-effectiveness and ease of integration. They experienced significant reductions in development time due to pre-built authentication features. Enhanced security protocols also provided peace of mind, reducing potential liabilities. Scalability allowed businesses to grow without additional costs, further maximizing returns. User feedback emphasized Amazon Cognito’s ability to handle large user bases efficiently, enhancing overall satisfaction and perceived value.

Pricing

Amazon Cognito pricing varies, with some users finding it affordable due to its pay-as-you-go model and scalability, while others consider it expensive, especially for smaller organizations. Monthly licensing can reach $600 per user, with some opting for an annual subscription. User-based pricing is common, and the cost is seen as reasonable by some when compared to alternatives. Pricing ratings range from two to seven out of ten.

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten."
"The product is relatively inexpensive compared to other tools."
"The price of the solution depends on the number of users using it."

Popular Use Cases

Organizations primarily use Amazon Cognito for user authentication and authorization in both web and mobile applications. It enables single sign-on, multifactor authentication, and integration with various identity providers. Cognito manages user data, assigns permissions, and facilitates secure onboarding. Companies appreciate its plug-and-play functionality and support for features like email verification and OTP. It's often used alongside platforms like Okta due to its affordability and user-friendly management features.

Service and Support

Premium customers of Amazon Web Services receive efficient support. The technical assistance is rated between five and nine out of ten for its response time, communication through voice, calls, and emails. Some users have not engaged directly with support for Amazon Cognito, yet generally rate Amazon's customer service positively despite minor difficulties in accessing their contact number.

Deployment

Amazon Cognito's initial setup is described as straightforward and relatively easy, but complexities arise with production and more advanced environments. Many users emphasize the importance of studying documentation and note the time for deployment varies, often taking 15 to 30 minutes, though integration with additional services increases complexity. Terraform is mentioned as a helpful tool. Users have indicated a desire for standard templates to streamline the process and highlighted the challenges of working with multiple features.

Scalability

Amazon Cognito is generally seen as highly scalable, catering to thousands of users and supporting anticipated usage growth. Positive assessments highlight its ability to meet growing demands, though concerns exist regarding backend scalability and cost implications with extensive scaling. Some users have not yet explored its scalability potential while others have rated it highly. Overall, experiences vary with many appreciating the platform's scalability for a large number of end users.

Stability

Amazon Cognito shows mixed stability reports. Some note smooth performance without breakdowns, rating stability high, with scores like nine and ten. However, others face challenges during integration, particularly with API tokens, leading to lower stability ratings of seven or eight. There are also differences in behavior between native and iOS apps. Some users find no major issues, enjoying consistent performance without downtime or bugs, while others see room for improvement.

These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.

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