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Amazon Cognito vs Okta Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 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

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
Okta Platform
Ranking in Access Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (2nd), Authentication Systems (3rd), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (3rd), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (1st), AI IT Support (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Cognito is 3.0%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Okta Platform is 11.1%, up from 10.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Access Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Okta Platform11.1%
Amazon Cognito3.0%
Other85.9%
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.
SN
Identity and Access Management Specialist at a university with 10,001+ employees
Automated lifecycle management has cut onboarding times and now drives secure, clean access
Although I am a fan of Okta Platform overall, there are areas where it could improve security outcomes and reduce admin friction. My top improvement areas include the system log and analytics upgrade, which are great for point troubleshooting, but trending and root cause analysis across large tenants still require exporting to SIEM. Verbose queries and long-range retention costs can add up. Additionally, while certificate rotations are better than most, the process is still manual for busy portfolios, especially concerning multi-SP SAML certificate rotations and app metadata drift. Two more buckets of potential improvements for Okta Platform involve user experience and security. There is the issue of push fatigue and prompt sprawl, where users receive multiple prompts across different apps and sessions. I arrived at the rating of eight because the core controls are strong and reliable, but a few operational UX and UI gaps prevent it from being rated higher. The reasons for not giving it a nine or ten include ongoing issues concerning safety and change safety, the complexity of group rules and mappings, and the lack of robustness in policy management. Additionally, there remains a need for more manual involvement than necessary, especially for large portfolios and dual certificate rotation, along with proactive SP data metadata validation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would recommend Cognito for users who are already AWS customers."
"I rate Amazon Cognito nine out of ten."
"The features most valuable to us are the ability to integrate with various IDPs and the capability to sync with multiple applications."
"What I find most valuable about Amazon Cognito is the single sign-on feature that provides a token for accessing protected APIs."
"One of the key benefits of this software is its ease of integration with a wide range of applications, including mobile apps and web applications. This simplifies the process of integration, and it can be seamlessly incorporated with Azure, Kubernetes, and other software systems."
"They offer a permission tool to help us manage multi-factor authentication."
"The multi-factor authentication setup has room for improvement."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its swift authentication."
"We can automate the process of adding users to Okta if they are activated in Active Directory, or if they are added to the database of applications or Active Directory in the last couple of days."
"My first application was supported by this architecture, and studying Okta Platform helped me develop that architecture because my previous architecture was not effective."
"The initial setup is easy."
"Okta Platform has positively impacted my organization with easy single sign-on, as we need single sign-on multifactor authentication for various things and Okta Platform is very secure."
"One of the best features of Okta Workforce Identity is its integration with different SaaS applications, which makes it a better product than the competitors."
"The main benefits Okta Customer Identity provides to users include single point of login for all applications and single authentication, which saves time and reduces frustration."
"This solution has a lot of capabilities and features."
"Okta Platform is the gold standard when it comes to identity providers and the single sign-on experience."
 

Cons

"I would rate its scalability as five out of ten. Moving users between different pools or accounts creates new identities, which means IDs stored in our database must also be changed."
"Amazon Cognito could improve by simplifying the configuration."
"The MFA related to the solution's side is nonexistent."
"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."
"I think Amazon Cognito provides less flexibility to customize at the moment."
"The secure authentication of Amazon Cognito has benefited our company. We were previously using legacy signup systems."
"The setup and configuration can be complex, especially for advanced use cases."
"Amazon Cognito’s UI needs improvement while onboarding new users."
"Okta doesn't have a partial push. It pushes down the full profile schema for lifecycle management or provisioning."
"Okta Customer Identity analytics and reporting tools do not help much to improve customer engagement strategies."
"Its pricing needs improvement."
"I would consider the scalability of Okta Platform to be a six."
"Another area for improvement is pricing; it becomes complex and expensive when you add features."
"A room for improvement in Okta Workforce Identity is its price. It could be cheaper."
"The product must be provided for free."
"The solution's user interface needs to be improved and made easy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of this solution is good compared to other solutions on the market."
"We pay $600 monthly per user for licences and there are no other additional costs."
"The product is relatively inexpensive compared to other tools."
"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."
"The price of Amazon Cognito is expensive. We are on an annual subscription."
"The pricing is bad so I rate it a two out of ten."
"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 pricing is reasonable."
"I believe it competes well. The pricing is pretty competitive. I know that Microsoft also provides something similar with its MFA and identity services."
"Workforce Identity is well-priced."
"Though I don't know about the licensing model of the product, I wouldn't be surprised if Okta offers a per user license subscription model."
"Okta has fairly competitive pricing."
"Pricing might be high, but it comes down when the number of people using the product goes up."
"The price of this product could be lower."
"The price of Okta Workforce Identity is competitively priced. We pay annually for the use of the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

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 Business50
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise61
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Okta Workforce Identity?
Pricing for Okta is reasonably not that much, however, I don't have access to the commercial aspect.
What needs improvement with Okta Workforce Identity?
Currently, in Okta Workforce Identity we get the two-digit authentication code. Instead of getting the two-digit authentication code, if we had an option to do fingerprint verification, that would ...
What is your primary use case for Okta Workforce Identity?
I don't have many details about Okta Workforce Identity. I use the tool just to sign in to different applications that we have. We basically set up Okta Workforce Identity in our mobile phone. We d...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Okta Customer Identity, Workforce Identity
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
FedEx, Zoom, Takeda, Lululemon Athletica, GrunHub, jetBlue, McKensson, Bain & Company, Engie, Peloton, Sonos, T-Mobile, Hewlett Packard, MGM Resorts, Ally Financial, Priceline, Albertsons, Itercom, Classy, FICO, Kensho, Live Nation, Drata, Rotary, and others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Cognito vs. Okta Platform and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.