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AWS IAM Identity Center vs Microsoft Entra ID comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 2, 2024

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
7.9
AWS IAM Identity Center boosts ROI by enhancing efficiency, security, cost management, and user experience through improved access control and auditing.
Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Entra ID offers cost-efficiency, enhanced security, and scalability, reducing IT workload and optimizing resources for companies.
The return on investment includes operational efficiency gains, security risk reduction, compliance with regulations, improved user experience, productivity benefits, reduced overhead, and better security posture.
We have achieved significant time efficiencies with AWS IAM Identity Center.
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
7.3
AWS IAM Identity Center offers effective, prompt support with comprehensive documentation, though a live chat option is desired.
Sentiment score
6.8
Microsoft Entra ID support is mixed; premier praised, non-premium slow, reliant on scripts, but documentation is helpful.
AWS provides immediate solutions and assistance whenever needed, especially if issues arise that cannot be handled internally.
They are prompt, keep you updated, and provide excellent assistance.
AWS offers better assistance plans for their services.
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.
It's not timely or professional.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
AWS IAM Identity Center efficiently manages large user bases and permissions, supporting organizational growth and integrating with AWS Organizations.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Entra ID offers scalable, cloud-based user management for businesses, adapting to diverse sizes and configurations globally.
AWS Identity Center successfully supports scalable deployments, allowing additional resources as the company grows.
The scalability of AWS IAM Identity Center is excellent.
It can handle both a small number of users and a bigger number of users efficiently.
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
8.7
AWS IAM Identity Center is praised for its reliability and efficiency, with consistent performance and 99.96% uptime.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Entra ID is praised for its reliability, minimal downtime, and quick issue resolution despite occasional minor outages.
There can be issues if there is an outage on AWS's side, which could prevent logging in because your region might be down, affecting the Identity Center's availability.
It offers 99.96% uptime.
Stability-wise, it is functioning well without any outages or crashes.
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.
 

Room For Improvement

AWS IAM Identity Center needs enhancements in user interface, integration, flexibility, security, automation, and comprehensive documentation.
Microsoft Entra ID needs better integration, improved user management, clearer communication, and enhancements in stability, documentation, and support.
Having a lot of users on one instance is hard to configure, so I hope for more flexibility and ease in configuration.
Enhancements could include automation tools or a centralized dashboard for managing roles and policies across multiple accounts, simplifying the process.
When configuring it with third-party tools, like Active Directory, the naming convention of permission sets requires careful attention, which can be confusing.
A recent incident we dealt with took four months to resolve with a seven-day deadline, which was quite frustrating.
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.
The frequent changes in branding cause confusion among customers who struggle to keep track of product names and functions.
 

Setup Cost

AWS IAM Identity Center is cost-effective, offering free basic features, while advanced features may require budget planning.
Microsoft Entra ID provides flexible, scalable pricing with various tiers and offers discounts for nonprofits, despite complex cost structures.
AWS IAM Identity Center is available as a free service by default.
It is not that expensive, rated at three out of ten for costs.
Pricing for AWS IAM Identity Center is very affordable, rated at two out of ten with one being cheap.
We are getting our money's worth.
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.
Compared to other Microsoft products, the cost is not too expensive.
 

Valuable Features

AWS IAM Identity Center offers centralized access control, enhanced security, and automated role management for efficient and secure cloud operations.
Microsoft Entra ID provides advanced security features, seamless integration, and centralized management for enhanced identity protection and access governance.
It provides the least privilege-based access control, which limits users to only the operations they need to perform without interfering with unrelated configurations.
These features allow for excellent micro-level control over resources, ensuring specific permissions are granted.
Its valuable features include granular access control, allowing precise control over who can access specific AWS resources and under what conditions using JSON-based policies.
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.
 

Categories and Ranking

AWS IAM Identity Center
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
8th
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
7th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Entra ID
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
1st
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
219
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (1st), Identity Management (IM) (1st), Access Management (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of AWS IAM Identity Center is 1.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 27.5%, up from 26.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

Featured Reviews

Khaled Saidi - PeerSpot reviewer
Manage cloud security with granular access control and enhanced authentication
Managing IAM in complex environments can be challenging, and there are several areas for improvement. First, incorporating automation tools or a centralized dashboard for managing roles and policies across multiple accounts would simplify administration, especially for large organizations. Additionally, policy debugging and validation could be more streamlined, as troubleshooting misconfigurations can be time-consuming and prone to errors. A more robust error messaging system or a dedicated debugging tool would be beneficial. Another area for improvement is temporary access credentials. AWS documentation should offer more detailed guidance on edge cases and exceptions, along with clearer examples of how to handle various scenarios. Lastly, enhanced session-level policies that are more context-sensitive and based on specific conditions (such as IP address, device, or time) would greatly increase flexibility and allow for more granular control over user sessions.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Educational Organization
33%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS IAM Identity Center?
The product is easy for beginners to learn and use.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS IAM Identity Center?
AWS provides the lowest pricing among other service providers like Azure, Google, Oracle. It is cost-effective, and they use a pay-as-you-go model.
What needs improvement with AWS IAM Identity Center?
There are new AI features coming to AWS that are easy and simple to use. However, focusing on further allowing customization and flexibility in developing solutions as a solution architect or devel...
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

AWS Single Sign On, AWS SSO
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 AWS IAM Identity Center vs. Microsoft Entra ID and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.