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Amazon Cognito vs Ping Identity Platform comparison

 

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
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Ping Identity Platform
Ranking in Access Management
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (6th), Authentication Systems (7th), Data Governance (11th), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (5th), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (3rd), Directory Servers (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 Ping Identity Platform is 5.5%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Access Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Ping Identity Platform5.5%
Amazon Cognito3.0%
Other91.5%
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.
AmitRathod - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Analyst at Toll Holdings Limited
Single sign-on has simplified access while adaptive authentication protects complex user journeys
Regarding areas for improvement in Ping Identity Platform, there is not much. In terms of licensing and implementation costs, it has premium pricing, and it has a very complex implementation. It provides greater feasibility, but it takes a very long time in terms of complete building. There is a very limited number of legacy support, which can pose potential difficulties in integrating with certain older or legacy systems. Additionally, issue troubleshooting can be difficult at times. Sometimes issues can be difficult to diagnose and require extensive technical expertise. There is also a very steep learning curve for administrative purposes and potential difficulties with offline authentication scenarios.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This is a scalable solution. If our app or general usage increases, this solution can support it."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its swift authentication."
"The federation is one of the most efficient features as the pricing is competitive."
"They offer a permission tool to help us manage multi-factor authentication."
"Cognito speeds up our development and saves us time."
"The most valuable features of Amazon Cognito are OTP validation and email validation."
"The solution is proto connective and integrates well with other AWS services."
"What is quite valuable is that we can outsource storage of the credentials to AWS, and they manage it quite securely."
"I work on the application onboarding process because we have multiple customers and get data from different sources."
"PingFederate is very flexible. We can do many customizations, and it also provides an SDK to tailor it to our specific requirements. There are also numerous plugins available. I've worked with tools like ForgeRock and Okta, but I find PingFederate to be the most customizable."
"The solution is stable. We haven't experienced any bugs or glitches."
"This is a user-friendly solution."
"The most valuable feature is multifactor authentication."
"It is a very stable solution."
"Setting up the infrastructure with Ping Identity Platform is very easy compared to other IAM products."
"PingFederate gives you granular control over the settings. There are many options for fine-tuning policies."
 

Cons

"The setup and configuration can be complex, especially for advanced use cases."
"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."
"In a future release, we would like to have different methods to validate the characteristic of a user. For example, we would like to use biometric data to analyze the behavior of users."
"I think Amazon Cognito provides less flexibility to customize at the moment."
"I believe this product could improve by enriching user profiles."
"Amazon Cognito’s UI needs improvement while onboarding new users."
"You need to evaluate the export users. The multifactor authentication, much less this room for improving the configuration setup of that."
"PingID's device management portal should be more easily accessible via a link. They provide no link to the portal like they do for the service. The passwordless functionality could be more comprehensive. You can't filter based on hardware devices. Having that filtering option would be great. Device authentication would be a great feature."
"If the solution is going to compete with Microsoft, they need to offer more unique functionality to keep their current user base."
"We have encountered instances where it is not easy to do authentication."
"I have contacted the technical support team at PingFederate. I would rate their help as two out of ten."
"They should promote more buyer's authentification, like a fingerprint or face recognition, something that's more convenient."
"PingID classifies the type of environment into internal and external, which is an area for improvement because you need to take additional steps to trust internal and external users."
"It requires some expertise to set up and manage."
"PingAccess can only have one token provider, and you cannot enable two different token providers simultaneously."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is relatively inexpensive compared to other tools."
"The price of Amazon Cognito is expensive. We are on an annual subscription."
"The price of Amazon Cognito is low. The pricing model is based on the users."
"The price of the solution depends on the number of users using it."
"We pay $600 monthly per user for licences and there are no other additional costs."
"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 of this solution is good compared to other solutions on the market."
"PingID pricing is a ten out of ten because it's a little bit cheaper than other tools, such as Okta and ForgeRock, and supports multiple tools."
"Ping Identity Platform is not an expensive solution."
"The product is costly."
"The platform's value justifies the pricing, especially considering its security features and scalability."
"Ping offers flexible pricing that's not standardized."
"The pricing is neither too expensive nor too cheap."
"Compared to some SaaS-based solutions, the platform is relatively cost-effective."
"The tool is quite affordable."
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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
21%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing 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 Business12
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise22
 

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 PingFederate?
Regarding pricing for Ping Identity Platform, I would rate it eight out of ten.
What needs improvement with PingAccess?
The areas where I think PingFederate needs room for improvement include that the most significant area I would recommend is that things such as redirects still do not have majority of the applicati...
What is your primary use case for PingAccess?
The main use case for PingFederate is that we are maintaining the centralized single sign-on with DuroSengel and Carabras as the two main instances to review. If any application is hosted outside o...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Ping Identity (ID), PingFederate, PingAccess, PingOne, PingDataGovernance, PingDirectory, OpenDJ
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Equinix, Land O'Lakes, CDPHP, Box, International SOS, Opower, VSP, Chevron, Truist, Academy of Art University, Northern Air Cargo, Repsol
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Cognito vs. Ping Identity Platform and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.