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Amazon Cognito vs Cisco Duo comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
9th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cisco Duo
Ranking in Access Management
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
163
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (5th), Authentication Systems (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st), AI Data Analysis (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Cognito is 2.6%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Duo is 3.1%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Access Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Duo3.1%
Amazon Cognito2.6%
Other94.3%
Access Management
 

Featured Reviews

BM
Staff Software Engineer at Visa
Custom authentication has enabled secure multi-factor logins and unified access across apps
The features or capabilities of Amazon Cognito that I have found the most valuable so far include its seamless operation and the requirement of fewer integrations from the client side. All the features are there, enabling us to create the users, manage the groups, and manage access. Mostly, the access management is very good in Amazon Cognito, I would say. The benefits and positive impacts that Amazon Cognito has had in my experience include the fact that earlier we needed to implement so many things on behalf of the product itself. Now, the go-to-market strategy requires less than a week to complete integrations of the user flow, specifically mentioning that a basic authentication flow could be completed in a week itself. We don't have to care about how we manage the passwords, how we manage groups, and how we manage access management because all those things are there. It's handy, the documentation is very good, and it is easy to integrate. That's the reason I would say that the impact AWS is building on the product is great.
Charles Slaustas - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Contractor at Insight global
Supports seamless authentication for users across multiple organizations and personal portals
The features I use in Cisco Duo include Duo Pushes to confirm my identity to the device, and eventually as MFA security was increased, I actually had to use exchange passcodes. Sometimes, I have to go into the site and get into Cisco Duo to retrieve the passcode, and many of them have been two-factor, where the sites send a passcode that I have to enter into Cisco Duo. It has been more of the latter. I have not seen issues with lagging or crashing on Cisco Duo's end; it was usually on the client end, often because someone set up a bad upgrade or there were connection issues with the Cisco Duo cloud through the administrative site.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"What is quite valuable is that we can outsource storage of the credentials to AWS, and they manage it quite securely."
"The most valuable features of Amazon Cognito are OTP validation and email validation."
"Cognito speeds up our development and saves us time."
"Amazon Cognito was particularly helpful and clear to use."
"I appreciate Amazon Cognito's ability to scale with demand and its seamless user verification features."
"This is a scalable solution. If our app or general usage increases, this solution can support it."
"Cisco Duo has improved my operational efficiency and reduced costs in areas such as authentication, IT support, and security operations because many times it ends up coming down to the ease of use, especially for the third-party contractors we have."
"What I most appreciate about Cisco Duo is the ease of use."
"The Verified Duo Push feature is valuable. It gives an extra level of security beyond just the regular push."
"The features of Cisco Duo that I like the most are the simplicity, and the benefits of these features to my organization include security components and security authentication components."
"It provides single-pane-of-glass management, which is pretty easy and straightforward. Because we manage multiple access tiers, it allows us to essentially manage everything from one viewpoint and not have many viewpoints for the same product. This is important because it is a time and resource saver. It also saves us money."
"Cisco Duo seems very scalable; in my experience, I started with a small-medium business, and in my last contracting position, it was a large one for a major worldwide airline that had hundreds of thousands of devices that could use Cisco Duo, and it scaled very well."
"The decision to choose Cisco Duo is based on the many features it offers that we did not find in other applications, and since we were already using Cisco for our other needs, it made sense not to switch to a competitor."
"It was a simple way of providing two-factor authentication for remote access when we hit the COVID pandemic. It was very easy and quick to get it going."
 

Cons

"The MFA related to the solution's side is nonexistent."
"There is room for improvement in Amazon Cognito."
"Amazon Cognito’s UI needs improvement while onboarding new users."
"What I found generally lacking in AWS is privileged access management (PAM)."
"Cognito has the possibility to render the login screen and all the customer flows related to managing the account. Still, it's useless in an international setup. They are unable to localize these screens, so we had to write our own screens and just use the Cognito API."
"Amazon Cognito could improve by simplifying the configuration."
"The secure authentication of Amazon Cognito has benefited our company. We were previously using legacy signup systems."
"Amazon Cognito could be improved by making it easier for us to add more data to the token, allowing customization of JWT. It requires a complex program to customize the token currently, however, the UI could support this configuration better."
"I think Cisco Duo can be improved by integrating it more with developer tools; there is not a lot in terms of developer tooling with respect to authenticating to command line toolsets."
"It is not easy to maintain network connectivity."
"Conversational AI in Cisco Duo is limited in its current application."
"Cisco Duo can be improved by exploring a way to make it a more seamless integration and by deploying an in-house server."
"I think Cisco Duo could improve the dashboard to make logging in and credential management more visible."
"The deployment experience was more difficult than we expected because we had some problems with the version of the OS that we have in our servers."
"Cisco Duo could be improved with more interesting rules or correlation rules between all the data sources such as Windows and Azure."
"The only time I really had some negative feedback for them was about the UI of their mobile app, but they improved it in the last version. It is good on the functionality side, but their pricing model is a little bit weird. Currently, there is no price advantage in signing up for yearly contracts. If you are on a monthly term or a yearly contract, you basically pay the same price, and that is very unusual. Normally, there is a discount when someone signs up for the 12-month system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of this solution is good compared to other solutions on the market."
"The pricing is bad so I rate it a two out of ten."
"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."
"We pay $600 monthly per user for licences and there are no other additional costs."
"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."
"The price of Amazon Cognito is low. The pricing model is based on the users."
"The product is relatively inexpensive compared to other tools."
"It's very simple. Its price is fair. We use the hardware tokens as well. You get what you pay for. In terms of licensing, Cisco has very complicated products, but Duo Security was surprisingly easy."
"Overall, the pricing is fair. Customers can wrap it into their Enterprise Agreement, making it easier for them to solve their issues."
"From a business perspective, it is a little bit costly. The licensing is on a per-user basis."
"I haven't seen any information on the pricing in four years, so I can't comment on that."
"The cost was reasonable. Licensing was pretty straightforward for a change."
"During testing we are allowed a certain number of licenses for free."
"Their pricing model is a little bit weird. Currently, there is no price advantage in signing up for yearly contracts. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing costs."
"It's a bit confusing because we're on a three-year plan with a certain number of licenses, and we've gone over that number. They told us that when we renew, they will add all these licenses. We've expanded quickly, so everyone's kind of scared because no one knows what the bill is with the long pricing cycle."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business64
Midsize Enterprise28
Large Enterprise82
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Cognito?
I am aware that the pricing of Amazon Cognito is not managed by me directly but is managed by some other teams, specifically the DevOps teams. As far as I know, it is based on how many users we hav...
What needs improvement with Amazon Cognito?
I think Amazon Cognito provides less flexibility to customize at the moment. It is very tightly coupled with its own services, so it does not provide customization according to what the client need...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Cognito?
The usual use cases for Amazon Cognito that I have been working with mostly involve working for TLG Apps for three and a half years, where TLG Apps is a FinTech company in the UK. We were working f...
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 Duo Security?
Regarding the pricing, what actually happened was that we got the product purchased through our HQ, so the costing aspect and all those things sit with our HQ. I do not have much information in ter...
What needs improvement with Duo Security?
I do not have a straight answer for how Cisco Duo can be improved at this time. With the implementation that we are going through right now, I was asking a question about how we can use Cisco Duo o...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Duo Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Cognito vs. Cisco Duo and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.