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Amazon Cognito vs Microsoft Entra ID comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 2024

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
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Entra ID
Ranking in Access Management
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
273
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (1st), Authentication Systems (1st), Identity Management (IM) (2nd), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Cognito is 4.1%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 15.1%, down from 27.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Access Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Entra ID15.1%
Amazon Cognito4.1%
Other80.8%
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.
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

"Amazon Cognito was particularly helpful and clear to use."
"What I find most valuable about Amazon Cognito is the single sign-on feature that provides a token for accessing protected APIs."
"Cognito speeds up our development and saves us time."
"The features most valuable to us are the ability to integrate with various IDPs and the capability to sync with multiple applications."
"I appreciate Amazon Cognito's ability to scale with demand and its seamless user verification features."
"The most valuable features of Amazon Cognito are OTP validation and email validation."
"I rate Amazon Cognito nine out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its swift authentication."
"The cloud security part is very valuable. Security is the most important thing in today's world. With Azure Active Directory, there are some features that tell you how you need to improve your security level. It informs you if you set up certain policies, e.g., this is where my users sign in. It tends to let you know if your organization has been breached with this security set up. Therefore, it is easier to know when you have been breached, especially if you set up a Conditional Access policy for your organization."
"I would assess the stability and reliability of Microsoft Entra ID as very satisfactory, as I am very happy with that. It covers our expectations and meets our requirements."
"The two-step authentication is the most valuable."
"The most important things of Azure Active Directory are the security and the facility to manage all the services and users. It is very easy to manage users and assign roles, permissions, and access. At the same time, it is a very secure environment. Microsoft takes security very seriously. They take care of all the security and all the factors to prevent any kind of data or information compromise."
"We have about 80 users in the Azure Active Directory right now, however, we know that if it was necessary to scale it for hundreds or thousands of users, it wouldn't be a problem."
"I primarily use this solution for hybrid deployment, security, securing resources and for integration purposes. In terms of security, we have been using the B2B/B2C hybrid integration with the certificate authentication."
"Let's say we decide that our users need to have MFA, multi-factor authentication. It is very easy to implement that with Azure Active Directory."
"The implementation of Microsoft Entra ID has hardened our approach to defending against token theft and nation-state attacks."
 

Cons

"The setup and configuration can be complex, especially for advanced use cases."
"You need to evaluate the export users. The multifactor authentication, much less this room for improving the configuration setup of that."
"The ease and simplicity of integration could be improved when using this solution. When using Okta, scope is a single endpoint with a parameter as a scope. In the Cognito for each scope, there is a separate endpoint."
"The MFA related to the solution's side is nonexistent."
"There is room for improvement in Amazon Cognito."
"I think Amazon Cognito provides less flexibility to customize at the moment."
"Cognito triggers can improve by providing more direct use cases rather than giving a white paper. A white paper is not at all interesting, it has too many details. It would be a benefit to provide a smaller document that is summarized. The smaller version would bring microdata, macro data is not helpful."
"I believe this product could improve by enriching user profiles."
"When implementing for one client, where they had ADFS turned on, we could not ID enough ADFS and when there was no internet connection. This was a Catch-22 for us, and very frustrating."
"Microsoft's technical support has shortcomings where improvements are required."
"We have experienced some downtime because of the use of the data centers."
"The area that needs improvement is integrating IDs between multiple environments and forests. In our case, it's hard to get the identities from multiple forests into one location. This is probably our biggest challenge."
"I would like to dive into some of the things that we saw today around the workflows at this Microsoft event. I cannot say that they need to make it better because I do not have much experience with it, but something that is always applicable to Microsoft is that they need to be able to integrate with their competitors. If you look at IDP, they do not integrate with Okta."
"I would rate my customer service and technical support as about a five right now, as we just got in contact with our Microsoft rep, so it is improving."
"On-premise capabilities for information and identity management need improvement."
"Better user sign-in logging is needed. We work with Okta, and the two of them do not always work well together. We can have more insight into some of the user information and how it interacts."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is bad so I rate it a two out of ten."
"The pricing of this solution is good compared to other solutions on the market."
"The product is relatively inexpensive compared to other tools."
"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."
"The price of the solution depends on the number of users using it."
"The price of Amazon Cognito is low. The pricing model is based on the users."
"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."
"Microsoft Azure AD has P1 or P2 licensing options, and it depends on the customer's needs. To use Conditional Access, you need to have the P1 license, and to use the PIN features, you need the P2 license."
"Entra's pricing is somewhat higher compared to AWS."
"The price is fine. It's a good value for the money compared with other solutions."
"We don't really have a choice. It's the one shop in town. If you want this, you have to pay for it."
"I think the pricing is efficient, but the licensing is overly complicated and difficult to understand. There are many tricks in the licensing that weigh against us."
"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."
"Be sure: You know your userbase, e.g., how many users you have. You choose the right license and model that suit your business requirements."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
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 Business88
Midsize Enterprise39
Large Enterprise159
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Cognito?
The most valuable feature of the solution is its swift authentication.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Cognito?
The basic functionality is reasonably priced, but the extended functionalities, especially the extended security, are quite expensive. There is a significant jump from the basic to the extended fun...
What needs improvement with Amazon Cognito?
Branding could be improved. When you use the Amazon Cognito domain and have a panel to login the user, I would add more customization options, such as icons or customization to the modal window whi...
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 the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Microsoft Entra ID is that it is decent.
What needs improvement with Azure Active Directory?
I think Microsoft Entra ID could be improved by assigning permissions to nested groups in the next release.
 

Also Known As

No data available
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 Amazon Cognito vs. Microsoft Entra ID and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.