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Google Cloud Identity vs Microsoft Entra ID comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 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

Google Cloud Identity
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (11th), Cloud Resource Access Management (5th)
Microsoft Entra ID
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
276
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (1st), Authentication Systems (1st), Identity Management (IM) (1st), Access Management (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) category, the mindshare of Google Cloud Identity is 9.3%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 16.8%, down from 28.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Entra ID16.8%
Google Cloud Identity9.3%
Other73.9%
Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
 

Q&A Highlights

ID
Owner at Brains
May 12, 2020
 

Featured Reviews

BL
Head - Work Transformation at Econz
User lifecycle management becomes streamlined with unified access and context-aware policies
If applications support SAML protocols, integration is always an easy task. However, there are difficulties with form-based applications or LDAP-based applications, particularly traditional applications. We need more flexibility not only with SAML but also with LDAP-based and form-based applications. Context-aware access currently only works with SAML-based applications. If other application integrations could support context-aware access, that would be helpful, as companies are in a transition mode with various traditional, form-based, and LDAP-based applications. Mobile device management could be improved. Through Google Cloud Identity, we can manage Android applications and have control over iOS devices, but container functionality is missing. This is particularly important for BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) scenarios, especially in India where the market is now split equally between iOS and Android users. Improvements in this area and integration capabilities would be beneficial.
Stafin Jacob - PeerSpot reviewer
Microsoft 365 Security & Compliance Practice Lead at Invoke
Identity has become our central gatekeeper and has provided secure single sign-on for all users
Microsoft Entra ID can improve by focusing more on new passwordless methods and becoming a primary adopter. One feature we would like to see is the ability to have security questions for password resets. I know the current capability is phasing out, so we do not have an alternative method yet. Customers who already use security questions require a smoother transition for that capability to be available. My experience with the deployment has had some challenges, particularly around the Microsoft MFA campaigns. The hardest part is moving users from a different MFA provider to the Microsoft MFA provider, as it ultimately depends on user activity. In large enterprises with numerous users across various geographies, this transition takes time. If there are ways to exert more control around that process, it would improve the situation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The main control page and the ability to manage all our users from a web-based portal are the most valuable aspects of the solution."
"The most valuable feature of Google Cloud Identity is its stability."
"The main control page and the ability to manage all our users from a web-based portal are the most valuable aspects of the solution. That's particularly useful because we're a heterogeneous network."
"It is a very stable solution. I would rate it a ten out of ten."
"Although we have not looked at the whole product and explored it completely, we find that all the authentication features that we are using now are valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the performance."
"I used it as an administrator without implementing it myself. As for valuable aspects or benefits, the significant point is that it's a straightforward, single solution that just works."
"Although we have not looked at the whole product and explored it completely, we find that all the authentication features that we are using now are valuable."
"Microsoft Entra ID's integration capabilities influence our Zero Trust model by allowing us to enforce our Zero Trust model."
"Microsoft Entra ID Protection and Microsoft Sentinel are both excellent monitoring features for Microsoft Entra ID."
"We have a complex scenario with several applications, and we're trying to achieve SSO for most of our applications, but some of our legacy applications don't support SSO or modern protocols. Our core applications are ready for SSO or to be federated. We've centralized our authentication process using Entra ID, so we can collect sign-offs from the users and filter using conditional access."
"The implementation of Microsoft Entra ID has had a high impact and a good impact on our secure access to the apps or resources in our environment."
"It has been very instrumental towards a lot of services we run, especially on the single sign-on side. For example, we have 160 countries that all run their own IT but we still are able to provide users with a single sign-on experience towards global applications. So, they have a certain set of accounts that they get from their local IT department, then they use exactly the same account and credentials to sign into global services. For the user, it has been quite instrumental in that space. It is about efficiency, but also about users not having to remember multiple accounts and passwords since it is all single sign-on. Therefore, the single sign-on experience for us has been the most instrumental for the end user experience."
"Azure Active Directory is a good platform for us; we rely heavily on providing our users a good system and interface that we seldom have issues with."
"The two-factor authentication provides an additional layer of security for our organizational data, so Microsoft Authenticator plays a crucial role in making our confidential data more secure."
"The single sign-on across multiple platforms is really the true advantage here. That gives you one ID and password for access to all your systems. You don't need to manage a plethora of different user IDs and passwords to all the systems that you're going to access."
 

Cons

"The solution needs to better integrate with Mac's OS."
"The pricing for this solution is a little bit higher than AWS and others, which is something that should be improved."
"We cannot manage the attributes of SSPR."
"One area where Cloud Identity has room for improvement is monitoring and alerts. If you want to set up some alerts, you don't have much control over the configuration."
"In the next release, I would like to see integration with different systems, mainly wireless SIEMS and other analytical systems that we want to introduce."
"Overall, I would give a zero out of 10 for Google's support. There is no easy way to navigate issues without paid consultation, making it quite frustrating."
"The pricing for this solution is a little bit higher than AWS and others, which is something that should be improved."
"I would like to see more integration in future releases."
"I think sometimes Microsoft Entra ID provides a bit too much information from the start."
"It doesn't function the same way as an Active Directory inside of an infrastructure, that is, a physical infrastructure. In the cloud, it is all flat. That's one of the disadvantages."
"Microsoft Entra ID could benefit from more fine-tuned rights. It is necessary to prevent granting an application or user broad access rights."
"I would like to see some additional attributes for user objects in Microsoft Entra, especially for tasks such as users and account validation, including guest users and guest accounts."
"Microsoft Entra ID should improve workload identities. It should set conditional access."
"On a scale from one being the worst and ten being the best, I would rate my customer service and technical support from Microsoft a three."
"One challenge with Entra ID is its complexity, stemming from integrating many components into a single solution."
"Generally, everything works pretty well, but sometimes, Azure Active Directory has outages on the Microsoft side of things. These outages really have a very big impact on the users, applications, and everything else because they are closely tied to the Azure AD ecosystem."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When I worked on Cloud Identity, they offered a free or enterprise version. You can synchronize and create up to 100 user identities in the free version. After that, you have to purchase a business or enterprise license. In that model, you'll be charged based on the number of users."
"The pricing is a bit expensive."
"The licensing cost depends on the partners and the relationship between the company and the partners."
"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"The product is billed on a monthly basis depending on the number of users."
"The solution is not expensive."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"We probably spend about $50,000 a year on licensing."
"Microsoft has a free version of Azure AD. So, if you don't do a lot of advanced features, then you can use the free version, which is no cost at all because it is underpinning Office 365. Because Microsoft gives it to you as a SaaS, so there are no infrastructure costs whatsoever that you need to incur. If you use the free version, then it is free. If you use the advanced features (that we use), it is a license fee per user."
"The licensing cost is a bit prohibitive."
"It is good. We have Office 365 E3, and then that is tied in with Azure Active Directory. I believe that we only have to pay for our technician-level access or IT department access for Azure Active Directory Premium, which I am sure they call Entra Premium P2 licensing, so it is not a very large cost. We just adopted that, and that gives us a lot of insights into user security that we would not otherwise have."
"We pay a yearly license. Licenses are very expensive."
"I'd recommend Azure Active Directory if you are a big company. For small or medium companies, it's probably not the best idea in the world because of the pricing. If you are a small company, you can probably deploy your own solutions because you're not handling a website with tons of traffic. If you are not like Adidas, Nike, or Walmart, you can do it in a way that is more localized than handling everything through a big price solution. However, Azure tends to provide you with solutions that are easier to use. If it was cheaper, I'd definitely recommend going for it."
"It's relatively inexpensive in comparison with third-party solutions. It's highly available and supported by Microsoft Azure in our enterprise agreements. With the addition of their B2C tenants, it's hard to beat from a cost perspective now."
"If you are dealing with one supplier with an out-of-the-box solution, which provides you end-to-end capabilities, then it is naturally cheaper and less of a headache to manage and operate."
"Azure AD has four licensing options- Free, Office 365 apps, Premium P1, and Premium P2. The free option has a limited number of identities and features, and the Office 365 version comes included in several Office 365 subscriptions. With the P1 and P2 licenses, we get all the freeware features plus additional security features, but these come at a higher price. The base price for P1 and P2 is $6 and $9 per user per month, respectively."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business89
Midsize Enterprise39
Large Enterprise160
 

Questions from the Community

How does Google Cloud Identity compare with Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also access to both Microsoft’s user community as well as around-the-clock customer s...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Cloud Identity?
It's crucial to monitor costs carefully, as there can be unexpected charges. I have been charged even when there was supposed to be free credit.
What needs improvement with Google Cloud Identity?
If you are asking about room for improvement with Google Cloud Identity, whatever is there already, cost is the only problem. If you are comparing with GCP, OCI, the cost will be a little bit highe...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that going through and being able to use these things is always part of delivering an M365 bundle, so I don't think the experience is great ...
What needs improvement with Azure Active Directory?
I believe Microsoft Entra ID can be improved, and I think it's already on the roadmap. We value the selective sync where Microsoft Entra ID is actually the authoritative source and then will provis...
 

Also Known As

Cloud Identity, Cloud Identity Premium
Azure AD, Azure Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Authenticator
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ExtraHop Networks, HealthChannels
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 Google Cloud Identity vs. Microsoft Entra ID and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
886,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.