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Change Auditor for Active Directory vs One Identity Active Roles comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 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

Change Auditor for Active D...
Ranking in Active Directory Management
7th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
One Identity Active Roles
Ranking in Active Directory Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
User Provisioning Software (3rd), Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Active Directory Management category, the mindshare of Change Auditor for Active Directory is 7.1%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of One Identity Active Roles is 12.2%, up from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Active Directory Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
One Identity Active Roles12.2%
Change Auditor for Active Directory7.1%
Other80.7%
Active Directory Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2794194 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Mgr Cyber Defense at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Auditing changes has become faster and now uncovers misconfigurations within minutes
The best features Change Auditor for Active Directory offers are that it's lightweight and easy to understand. You don't have to memorize event IDs since it's in English. What makes Change Auditor for Active Directory lightweight and easy to understand in my experience is that it doesn't require the events to record to the domain controllers. Therefore, I can focus just on the event types without having to turn up detailed logging on my DCs. Change Auditor for Active Directory has positively impacted my organization by helping us respond to audits very quickly to show that we had evidence of who was making the changes and match them up to the ticket request and who approved it. After implementing Change Auditor for Active Directory, it has allowed us to answer questions literally in minutes, whereas it would have taken us half a day to a day before.
SN
Identity and Access Management Specialist at a university with 10,001+ employees
Governed access has transformed user management and now reduces internal attack surface
The crown jewels of One Identity Active Roles that make my life as an architect easier are Access Templates, Virtual Attributes, Workflow and Approval Engine, and Managed Units, which allowed us to structure our directory into a policy-driven asset rather than constantly firefighting manual errors. Access Templates and Managed Units are the real secret sauce of One Identity Active Roles for us. Access Templates standardize permission settings, reducing security drift and allowing for the creation of modular permission bundles such as those I created for the Tier 1 help desk. Managed Units help me stay organized without rewriting the physical structure of the directory, saving me hours of cleanup. A critical feature that I found essential for a clean environment is Dynamic Group management, which prevents permission creep by using rule-defined group memberships rather than manual additions. One Identity Active Roles automatically manages group membership based on rules tied to the HR records. One Identity Active Roles has had a transformative impact on my organization, moving from controlled chaos to governed operations. The biggest win has been a reduction in the internal attack surface, achieving over a 40% reduction in unauthorized or accidental access attempts.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are the ability to protect Active Directory accounts and groups, and the real-time notifications that help manage Active Directory more effectively."
"Change Auditor for Active Directory has positively impacted my organization by helping us respond to audits very quickly to show that we had evidence of who was making the changes and match them up to the ticket request and who approved it."
"Another good feature is the change history. It's centralized in a single place and allows us to manage people's Active Directory domains from a central location. We can also drill down into individual objects in a troubleshooting or even an auditing situation. We can show evidence to auditors by drilling down into the individual history. It gives you all the history of what happened around an individual object. That is something that would be almost impossible to do in Active Directory, or extremely complicated."
"In comparison to native Active Directory tools, using Active Roles for delegation is so much better. It uses an access template and that makes it easy to see who can access what. In fact, you can do that for many objects as well."
"One Identity Active Roles absolutely helps reduce identity-based breaches, making it very seamless for our user base to ensure that folks in specific positions have the least privileged access possible across our for-profit healthcare conglomerate with thirty states and over fifty community hospitals under a single Active Directory domain."
"Because of Active Roles, we're able to synchronize on an even more regular basis. It enables us to provide even more information to the Active Directory, which helped us to group our users in a more consistent manner."
"One Identity Active Roles has positively impacted the organization by significantly improving efficiency through automating repetitive tasks and saving time for the IT team."
"With this solution, they are skipping all the domain administrators and keeping the normal users, which is fantastic for them because some of the personnel are basic IT technicians without the knowledge of AD advanced features."
"The AD and AAD management features of this solution are really good... They offer added value by showing more fields such as password age and the statuses of some things that we normally wouldn't see."
"It's valuable to us in that it resembles the native tools that most people have grown accustomed to... Active Roles resembles traditional tools, such as from Microsoft. That is really good because it eases the way people interact with the tool."
 

Cons

"Change Auditor for Active Directory could be improved if the client were more flexible when installed, so if I upgrade the server, I wouldn't have to replace the clients at the same time."
"Areas that could be improved include having more management capabilities with command-line scripts and more flexibility in general."
"The possibility to request group membership, similar to the past, was disabled and moved to Identity Manager."
"Integration capabilities are somewhere in the middle; it is not easy to integrate, but it is not the hardest thing out there."
"The initial setup was quite easy, but it was time-consuming. It took about three months."
"I know they have increased support for Entra ID and mentioned providing support for AWS. A way to connect to various directories and integrate with cloud directories would be beneficial."
"It also has workflows and those are really powerful, but there are no built-in workflows."
"For the AAD management feature, it needs to improve the objects that we can manage and the security."
"For mid-sized to small companies, I do not know if it would be that useful, considering the tool's purpose."
"The way you can search groups could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It's expensive."
"The licensing model is a simple user-based model, not that much complicated."
"The pricing for Active Roles is expensive but not as expensive as other solutions like Okta."
"The price is reasonable. It costs us about 1 million Danish kroner annually, and we also spend about half as much on consultants."
"The pricing is on the higher end."
"It's fairly priced."
"The pricing is high. I have not been involved with the renewal or cost aspect, but I know it is not cheap by any means. However, it is very useful for our environment."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Insurance Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Quest Change Auditor for Active Directory?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was pretty straightforward. Actually, we bundled it with some other services offered from Quest to get a volume discount.
What needs improvement with Quest Change Auditor for Active Directory?
Change Auditor for Active Directory could be improved if the client were more flexible when installed, so if I upgrade the server, I wouldn't have to replace the clients at the same time. I think g...
What is your primary use case for Quest Change Auditor for Active Directory?
My main use case for Change Auditor for Active Directory is auditing changes, finding changes to undo, and break-fix solving issues. For example, I could give you a quick specific example of how I'...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for One Identity Active Roles?
I am aware of the pricing; it is on the expensive side, though pricing is not my department.
What needs improvement with One Identity Active Roles?
One Identity Active Roles can be improved by simplifying the setup process since a small team in a small business requires implementation without extensive IT support. Additionally, the pricing cou...
What is your primary use case for One Identity Active Roles?
One Identity Active Roles is used primarily to simplify and automate Active Directory user and permission management. The solution automates routine tasks such as account creation, password reset, ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Quest Active Roles
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

American Airlines, Bank of America, BARCLAYS, ebay, Ford, intel, MARS, MERCK, Microsoft, UBER, VISA
City of Frankfurt, Moore Public Schools, George Washington University, Transavia Airlines, Howard County, MD. See all stories at OneIdentity.com/casestudies
Find out what your peers are saying about Change Auditor for Active Directory vs. One Identity Active Roles and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,728 professionals have used our research since 2012.