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CyberArk Privileged Access Manager vs StrongDM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

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

CyberArk Privileged Access ...
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
229
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Enterprise Password Managers (2nd), Mainframe Security (1st), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
StrongDM
Ranking in Privileged Access Management (PAM)
17th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Access Management (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Privileged Access Management (PAM) category, the mindshare of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is 11.4%, down from 19.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StrongDM is 2.6%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
CyberArk Privileged Access Manager11.4%
StrongDM2.6%
Other86.0%
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

Featured Reviews

Atul-Gujar - PeerSpot reviewer
CyberArk manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Secures critical infrastructures with essential user session audit records
A potential area for improvement is enhancing support for cluster environments and distributed Vaults. Clients in multiple countries that need central access have different challenges that require better solutions from CyberArk. For financial services, CyberArk can improve incident response by ensuring fast support for critical priority tickets to meet compliance requirements. Providing more documentation on CyberArk is recommended for new team members to enhance their troubleshooting capabilities. I understand it's up to the client, but 99% fail to change the demo key, so it's crucial for CyberArk to emphasize changing the key and documenting it as part of the installation process.
reviewer2804475 - PeerSpot reviewer
Iam Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Access management has improved privileged logins while still needing fewer crashes and less upkeep
The best features in StrongDM are the password rotation capabilities, which I think are pretty cool, and also how you can literally log in to any of the privileged servers through a single platform. You just copy-paste the IP and the port number and log in over there through RDP, so I think that's pretty cool. I have used CyberArk before, but I think StrongDM as a product has pretty good potential. My impression of the credential-less access control is that it's pretty good because it reduces the attack surface. Basically, if you cannot see the password and everything, even the privileged users cannot see the password. It's a password-less system where you just log in to the servers without knowing your password, and even if you know your password, it's probably going to be rotated after a while. So, I think that's a pretty good use case for reducing the attack surface and maintaining zero trust throughout an identity perimeter. StrongDM helps with runtime features in a twenty-four-seven dynamic environment. Whenever I try to access at maybe two a.m. or three a.m. at night and I have a production issue on a server located in a different continent, I can access it right at that moment. I think the application works pretty much like a charm. It's readily available, and I think the runtime feature is pretty cool, although the application sometimes crashes when it's downloaded locally on your machine. Regarding pricing, I find StrongDM to be definitely cost-efficient. We used to use CyberArk before, but StrongDM is more cost-effective, which is why we are using it. Our director is a board member at StrongDM, allowing us to utilize the product and the flexibility it provides, which tailor-suits our needs based on the organization and is something we do not get from other PAM products.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I appreciate the ease of use for support analysts."
"All access to our servers by both staff and vendors is monitored and recorded."
"The access control feature and privilege and role-based assignment are outstanding."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is the best solution for safeguarding sensitive patient data in healthcare, providing visibility and traceability that enhance compliance."
"We also use CyberArk’s Secrets Manager. Because AWS is the biggest area for us, we have accounts in AWS that are being rotated by CyberArk. We also have a manual process for the most sensitive of our AWS accounts, like root accounts. We've used Secrets Manager on those and that has resulted in a significant risk reduction, as well."
"The interface is very simple to use."
"We've written over a hundred custom connectors ourselves that allow us to do all types of privileged session management for various applications. On top of that, the rest of the API-based central credential providers allow us to get away from credentials that may be hard-coded in the script or some application."
"Because we now have the ability to grant access to management utilities like DNS Manager, Sequel Studio, and MMC, in a secure fashion, without system admins being required to continually reenter various passwords that are stored who knows where, it has really made the system admin's job much easier. It has made the PSM's job much easier. It has made the auditor's job and the security team's job and the access manager's job significantly easier, because we're able to move much more quickly toward a role-based access management system, and that is really streamlining the whole onboarding/offboarding management process."
"We primarily used StrongDM for access to resources on private networks like EC2 machines, Kubernetes clusters, and various databases."
"All of the logging is handled for us, including for auditing purposes. Looking through the audit logs is not a painful experience."
"The best features in StrongDM are the password rotation capabilities, which I think are pretty cool, and also how you can literally log in to any of the privileged servers through a single platform."
"StrongDM replaced the puzzle of different solutions with one single product, which made managing resources more efficient."
 

Cons

"The reporting should be improved. There should be more customization."
"We require IAM (identify and access management) capability at the administrator level because we need more identification."
"There is room for improvement in the availability of custom connectors on the marketplace for this solution. Additionally, their services for the CICD pipeline and ease of integration could be improved."
"CyberArk could enhance its usability by simplifying its architecture and design."
"The graphical user interface could be simplified and harmonized for better usability. It should be consistent. Its GUI is very confusing."
"it manages creds based on Organizational Units. That is, a "safe" is limited to specific OUs. That makes for very elaborate OU structure, or you risk exposing too many devices by putting most of them in fewer OUs."
"The solution's architecture could be improved. It requires installation on four to five different servers. Each server has a purpose, but when you need to troubleshoot, it can be difficult because you need to access each of them. Reducing the number of servers would be helpful."
"The support services could act faster when people reach out to resolve issues."
"It would be beneficial to have better control and alignment between frequent updates and improved communication regarding possible negative effects on existing customer bases."
"We've had a few issues with the stability of this product in the past."
"It would be beneficial to have better control and alignment between frequent updates and improved communication regarding possible negative effects on existing customer bases."
"I think the stability of StrongDM is about four to five due to the occasional crashes that I mentioned."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is cost-effective for the features."
"Network and security licenses are currently being managed by other outsource vendors, so they are facing some type of problems in the digital aspect."
"The price of this solution is quite reasonable."
"I'm aware that the organization had purchased licensing for almost all of CyberArk's solutions including licensing for PTA, EPM, and the Application Identity Manager. But when it comes to PSM, this is one of the components where there's an additional charge for any extra PSMs that you want to deploy. I believe that there's some rider where the vendor has a bit of leeway to, at times, charge a premium on whatever additional services you may require above the board."
"There are no additional costs other than the standard licensing fees."
"The pricing for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is quite expensive, and the pricing varies from region to region. In APAC, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager can be obtained for less than in North America, according to my understanding."
"The solution is costly but we get what we pay for."
"The price of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is expensive. There are no other fees other than the standard licensing fees."
"The licensing is per user per month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Leisure / Travel Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise41
Large Enterprise173
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

How does Sailpoint IdentityIQ compare with CyberArk PAM?
We evaluated Sailpoint IdentityIQ before ultimately choosing CyberArk. Sailpoint Identity Platform is a solution to manage risks in cloud enterprise environments. It automates and streamlines the m...
What do you like most about CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
The most valuable features of the solution are control and analytics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
My thoughts on the pricing of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager depend entirely on the vendors' requirements. If they want their things to be secure, they have to spend accordingly. We have four t...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StrongDM?
The leadership chose StrongDM after comparative research, which suggests economic benefits. It was mentioned that while the product is rapidly gaining features, it might become cost-prohibitive for...
What needs improvement with StrongDM?
It would be beneficial to have better control and alignment between frequent updates and improved communication regarding possible negative effects on existing customer bases. Also, documentation s...
What is your primary use case for StrongDM?
I was part of the team managing the infrastructure for a small startup company. We used StrongDM to provide access to cloud private networks, control user access to databases, hosts through SSH, an...
 

Also Known As

CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rockwell Automation
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about CyberArk Privileged Access Manager vs. StrongDM and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
883,089 professionals have used our research since 2012.