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Amazon Cognito vs Microsoft Entra ID comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 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

Amazon Cognito
Ranking in Access Management
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Entra ID
Ranking in Access Management
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
218
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (1st), Authentication Systems (1st), Identity Management (IM) (1st), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Cognito is 7.6%, up from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 29.9%, up from 26.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Access Management
 

Featured Reviews

Erik Aceiro - PeerSpot reviewer
Good integration with AWS services but not feasible for B2C because MFAs are nonexistent
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.
Aaron Liang - PeerSpot reviewer
Has significantly improved secure access to applications and resources in our environment
Microsoft Entra ID has helped by simplifying our management of permissions for APIs. We are not directly exposing credentials, as we use tokens instead. It has made management easier and more secure, especially in a multi-user environment. The implementation of Microsoft Entra ID significantly improved secure access to applications and resources in our environment, primarily through the widespread use of single-sign-on. Managing API permissions became much easier, as application registration often involves calling an API to utilize services without directly exposing credentials, relying instead on token-based authentication. This streamlined approach benefits end-users by simplifying access while remaining transparent to them. Ultimately, my role focuses on ensuring a smooth and user-friendly experience, even if the underlying technology remains unseen by the end-users. Our company strongly emphasizes passwordless authentication, primarily through device-bound passkeys in Microsoft Authenticator. While administrators with high-privileged accounts utilize YubiKeys and passwords for tasks like accessing Microsoft Graph, we are actively transitioning all other users towards passwordless methods such as Windows Hello biometrics. This approach streamlines authentication and enhances security. Though initial deployment in 2022 presented challenges due to hardware limitations and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the technology has significantly improved and provides a simple and effective user experience.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I appreciate Amazon Cognito's ability to scale with demand and its seamless user verification features."
"One of the key benefits of this software is its ease of integration with a wide range of applications, including mobile apps and web applications. This simplifies the process of integration, and it can be seamlessly incorporated with Azure, Kubernetes, and other software systems."
"The federation is one of the most efficient features as the pricing is competitive."
"The features most valuable to us are the ability to integrate with various IDPs and the capability to sync with multiple applications."
"The solution is proto connective and integrates well with other AWS services."
"The most valuable features of Amazon Cognito are the pre and post-token generation, and the different Cognito triggers. It has lots of functionality and flexibility."
"The most valuable features of Amazon Cognito are OTP validation and email validation."
"Cognito speeds up our development and saves us time."
"Azure Active Directory has many automation capabilities, and you can apply policies on top. You can do a lot of things with these combinations and integrate other tools like PingFederate."
"Azure Active Directory has been very useful for our company, it is not difficult to use."
"Our most valuable features are conditional access and Azure application proxy."
"The security features, such as attack surface rules and conditional access rules, are the most valuable aspects of Azure AD."
"It's very user-friendly for users."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is that is easy to use."
"Microsoft Entra ID has helped us defend against token theft and nation-state attacks."
"Microsoft Entra ID, integrated with Microsoft Teams, has enhanced the security of access to applications and resources within our environment."
 

Cons

"The MFA related to the solution's side is nonexistent."
"The secure authentication of Amazon Cognito has benefited our company. We were previously using legacy signup systems."
"There is room for improvement in Amazon Cognito."
"Amazon Cognito could improve by simplifying the configuration."
"I believe this product could improve by enriching user profiles."
"The setup and configuration can be complex, especially for advanced use cases."
"What I found generally lacking in AWS is privileged access management (PAM)."
"In a future release, we would like to have different methods to validate the characteristic of a user. For example, we would like to use biometric data to analyze the behavior of users."
"From an admin perspective, I would like to see improvement in the Microsoft Graph API."
"The cost is one area that needs improvement."
"Customers want to know exactly where they are spending their money, allowing them to assess and potentially save money in those specific areas."
"Microsoft has so many different requirements and priorities that sometimes they don't invest all their energy into the products that you have expectations to investigate."
"There are issues using it with ADFS."
"Whatever business requirements we needed in the past three years, users were created, with the name of the user and they were not connected with the Active Directory. We were trying to in house in three years and with directory, but we were not able to achieve it."
"We have a custom solution now running to tie all those Azure ADs together. We use the B2B functionality for that. Improvements are already on the roadmap for Azure AD in that area. I think they will make it easier to work together between two different tenants in Azure AD, because normally one tenant is a security boundary. For example, company one has a tenant and company two has a tenant, and then you can do B2B collaboration between those, but it is still quite limited. For our use case, it is enough currently. However, if we want to extend the collaboration even further, then we need an easier way to collaborate between two tenants, but I think that is already on the roadmap of Azure AD anyway."
"The scalability of the solution is good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is bad so I rate it a two out of ten."
"The product is relatively inexpensive compared to other tools."
"The price of Amazon Cognito is low. The pricing model is based on the users."
"We pay $600 monthly per user for licences and there are no other additional costs."
"The pricing of this solution is good compared to other solutions on the market."
"The price of the solution depends on the number of users using it."
"The price of Amazon Cognito is expensive. We are on an annual subscription."
"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."
"Azure AD's pricing is comprehensive and affordable. The prices are easy to understand, and the licenses include a variety of security monitoring and additional features."
"The price of the solution was reasonable."
"Entra has P1 and P2 licenses that are bundled with lots of applications."
"I give the cost a three out of ten."
"The E5 plan we are using contains the premium plans for Azure Active Directory. We are not paying only for the Azure Active Directory Premium licenses. We have it already included within our E5 plan."
"Entra ID is not too bad, but Microsoft licensing generally is insane. Most customers normally buy a bundle license with Microsoft 365, E3, or E5. Out of our 2,000 customers, for 99.9% of our customers, the Entra ID license that they are getting through the part of that would be sufficient. There are some more advanced ones that give you a bit more functionality, but we probably have not had a customer for that. We do not even internally use that ourselves. When you buy the Entra ID license on its own, it is probably three or four pounds. You just get it included in the license."
"The basic tier of Azure Active Directory is free, so many users use the service for free. For a small company having the security and compliance that Azure offers is a great benefit. For small companies that are using the basic services, not having to pay for Azure Active Directory is the main asset because they can manage their users and have authentications tools and security."
"Make sure that you get the most out of your Office 365 licenses for Azure AD. If you have additional concerns for users who don't have an Office 365 license, consider Azure AD Premium P1 and P2. Be aware that you have to evaluate your license usage beforehand."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
Educational Organization
5%
Educational Organization
32%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Cognito?
The most valuable feature of the solution is its swift authentication.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Cognito?
Pricing is considered expensive for smaller organizations. Cognito's pricing was rated seven out of ten due to its cost.
What needs improvement with Amazon Cognito?
The setup and configuration can be complex, especially for advanced use cases. A dedicated documentation portal with comprehensive information would be helpful. The user interface could be more int...
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?
We are an enterprise customer with an enterprise agreement in place with many of our partner companies, so there are no special questions or issues about pricing, setup cost, or licensing.
 

Also Known As

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

Interactive Demo

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Microsoft Entre ID is trusted by companies of all sizes and industries including Walmart, Zscaler, Uniper, Amtrak, monday.com, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Cognito vs. Microsoft Entra ID and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.