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AWS Control Tower vs AWS Trusted Advisor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 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

AWS Control Tower
Ranking in Cloud Management
23rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AWS Trusted Advisor
Ranking in Cloud Management
30th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of AWS Control Tower is 1.4%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Trusted Advisor is 1.3%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AWS Control Tower1.4%
AWS Trusted Advisor1.3%
Other97.3%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Sharkrit Impat - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Platform Engineering at Ascend Group Co., Ltd.
Streamlines governance and security management but requires effort in managing hidden costs
I believe AWS Control Tower could be improved. I compare it with Huawei Cloud's enterprise project, which is a similar concept but different implementation. In Huawei Cloud, you partition in one single account, but in AWS, you have to separate many accounts. You end up with maybe 20 or 30 accounts if you try to separate. It has limitations; you pay a fixed amount for 15 accounts, but if you exceed that, you have to pay more. It could be useful for implementing a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE) for multiple organizations, but for one organization, I would advise against it; it is too much overhead and adds hidden costs. There are limitations on the Landing Zone feature as well. If we implement AWS Control Tower, we need to implement Landing Zone and the security policy, guardrails, and Account Factory; it is not one single product. Using another cloud's enterprise project, you can just create the project and manage it already. It requires some learning curve to get hands-on. For pricing and licensing of AWS Control Tower, it has hidden costs. The Control Tower itself does not cost much, but the child accounts created from AWS Control Tower add costs for checking all configurations, logging, and metrics.
MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group
Optimizes cloud strategies with security and cost insights
Trusted Advisor offers features that provide inside information for the entire account, including identifying security gaps and offering cost optimization insights. The key features include security recommendations, cost optimization, and various packages to choose from, depending on the size of the company. It is especially beneficial for larger companies, as the tool provides a comprehensive view of account security, open ports, buckets, and offers recommendations for protection.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"AWS Control Tower provides tremendous value by simplifying multi-account governance and reducing operational complexity."
"With Control Tower, there are ready-to-use automated templates available, simplifying the implementation of a centralized management solution."
"I would rate the solution a 10 out of 10."
"It is incredibly user-friendly and functions seamlessly."
"Compliance is the most valuable feature."
"The most intriguing feature is the automatic generation of user accounts. Leveraging Active Directory and global company settings, AWS Cloud Tower enables the creation of AWS user accounts based on job descriptions in Active Directory. This establishes a direct correlation between the user's name, job definition, and the corresponding rules applied to each account."
"There are two features in Control Tower which are the most valuable. One is the guardrails because it has preventive and detective guardrails."
"It aligns well with the customer's needs and it ultimately fosters a strong customer-company relationship."
"Trusted Advisor has helped our organisation gain insights into best practices across a number of important domains for us, and it has helped me maintain a holistic view of our AWS platform and guided me to improve areas needing it."
"The cost optimization features are valuable."
"Trusted Advisor offers features that provide inside information for the entire account, including identifying security gaps and offering cost optimization insights."
"I strongly recommend using Trusted Advisor due to its role in cybersecurity, providing cost-effective solutions compared to external companies."
"The Security Advisor is the most valuable feature. It instantly informs you about any system misconfigurations, and the best part is, it's completely free."
"AWS Trusted Advisor is a tool that we can use to optimize the AWS infrastructure cost."
"It is very stable."
"The recommendation feature is really good."
 

Cons

"AWS should provide more resources, examples, and tutorials."
"It would be beneficial if AWS offered the capability to seamlessly deploy your infrastructure to another region to ensure continuous availability and redundancy."
"The solution's stability could be improved."
"There aren't any additional features that I feel are missing. However, it's worth noting that Control Tower seems to function as a layer utilizing standard AWS products in the background. Occasionally, the interface may appear less streamlined, with changes in layout based on the underlying products being used. While this doesn't impact functionality, having a more standardized user interface, irrespective of the background products, could enhance the user experience."
"The sole drawback is its restriction to enable only one Control Tower."
"The integration with other AWS functions has room for improvement."
"There is a sync issue within the organization. It is important that the system syncs automatically instead of requiring me to manually choose sync options."
"For ROI, I do not see it yet. At that time, it felt excessive because when we create a new project, it should be something small and go to market fast, or an MVP product."
"Cost is a significant factor that needs improvement. Reducing the cost would make it more beneficial for all users."
"Trusted Advisor currently scans the whole system, including development, staging, and QA environments, which increases costs. It would be better if it could selectively scan only production systems."
"The integration between Trusted Advisor and Security Hub sometimes lacks, and I need a way to ensure things come through there."
"For EC2 instances, we need to install the AWS CloudWatch agent to get the memory metric because we don't have a by-default memory utilization graph on cost optimization."
"Maybe if Trusted Advisor could also help us with IP address issues and the status of our VPCs, it would be beneficial."
"I'd like the solution to support clouds beyond AWS."
"Maybe adding more security rules would be great."
"The tenancy must be free for all metrics."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the pricing an eight."
"The cost is reasonable, but there are opportunities for improvement in terms of pricing for larger enterprises."
"The product's affordability depends on the value it brings to specific organizations."
"AWS Control Tower is not really that expensive."
"The pricing is efficient, not overly expensive but also not very cheap."
"It is expensive but it is an investment in my opinion."
"The pricing structure is closely intertwined with the specifics of your environment and the billing strategy you employ."
"I believe it's free of charge or comes at a very low cost. It's an additional feature. Even if there is a fee, it's minimal. AWS seems to assist customers in gaining a comprehensive view of their security setups within AWS. Using Control Tower is highly recommended, especially as your company grows and involves Active Directory, various departments, and different architectural aspects. It becomes more advisable to leverage Control Tower rather than managing these aspects manually, especially for larger organizations."
"Trusted Advisor offers various packages, with the most comprehensive costing $15,000 per month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Construction Company
12%
Retailer
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Performing Arts
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Control Tower?
Control Tower within the AWS Organization does not have a charge. It is free and does not incur additional charges.
What needs improvement with AWS Control Tower?
I would like to see greater customization and flexibility for the landing zone, easier integration with existing enterprise environments, more advanced reporting and governance dashboards, and expa...
What is your primary use case for AWS Control Tower?
My primary use case for AWS Control Tower is multi-account governance, as it provides a standardized landing zone that allows us to provision accounts consistently, enforce security guardrails, cen...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Trusted Advisor?
The cost of Trusted Advisor is reasonable, though it can be further economized by allowing selective scanning, focusing only on production systems, to avoid unnecessary costs associated with develo...
What needs improvement with AWS Trusted Advisor?
Trusted Advisor currently scans the whole system, including development, staging, and QA environments, which increases costs. It would be better if it could selectively scan only production systems...
What is your primary use case for AWS Trusted Advisor?
We have been using Amazon Inspector and Amazon Trusted Advisor for monitoring. These tools are especially useful for preventing cyberattacks on our systems. Trusted Advisor scans the complete infra...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Control Tower vs. AWS Trusted Advisor and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.