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AWS Secrets Manager vs CyberArk Privileged Access Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 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 Secrets Manager
Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Secrets Management Tools (3rd)
CyberArk Privileged Access ...
Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
229
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (1st), Mainframe Security (2nd), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Enterprise Password Managers category, the mindshare of AWS Secrets Manager is 16.2%, down from 20.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is 6.9%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Password Managers Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
AWS Secrets Manager16.2%
CyberArk Privileged Access Manager6.9%
Other76.9%
Enterprise Password Managers
 

Featured Reviews

Mahadev Metre - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at Paydoh
Consistent security and efficiency improvements optimize IT infrastructure with effective management
When creating AWS Secrets Manager, it should be automated using tools such as Terraform, Puppet, or Ansible. With Terraform code, you specify the encryption key, secret name, rotation policy, and secret replication. Human error occurs when feeding secret values manually, especially with large amounts of secrets to input. Secrets should never be protected only by IAM. They should be protected by multiple layers, such as IAM and one or two KMS keys. Additional security measures could be beneficial if necessary. The rotation policy is crucial because some secrets may become obsolete, require updates, or get compromised. With a weekly rotation policy, if unauthorized access occurs, the exposure is limited to seven days. The rotation policy can be customized according to needs.
SI
Senior PAM Consultant at iC Consult GmbH
Makes privileged access management easy with automation and granular control
Many people underestimate the value of these tools because they treat them as simple automated password management. Once you realize the volume of passwords in your organization and factor in nonhuman passwords, you realize its value. Last year, CyberArk Impact cited 45 nonhuman passwords for every human password. If you have 10,000 employees, you can imagine the number of passwords. There are also many other operations. For example, you have a Qualys scanner that needs to reach out and touch all your endpoints and scan them for vulnerabilities. They use an API call to CyberArk to pull out a Privileged credential that allows them to log in to that target. This is an automated machine call. It is tapping into CyberArk to get that credential. There can be hundreds of thousands of those operations a day. You do not want to manage those passwords by hand. Some people marginalize the significance of such a solution by saying that it is just a fancy password changer. It goes well beyond that, especially with API calls and automation. Its importance extends beyond merely changing passwords; it involves automation, API calls, and process integration, crucial in agile environments for standing up new Amazon servers or other processes needing privileged credentials. CyberArk can automate these tasks into their build processes. Another critical feature is the proxy service via Privileged Session Manager (PSM), providing not only a proxy between your user and the target servers, protecting against malware but also offering session recording. Many companies I have worked with implemented a PAM product as a knee-jerk reaction to SOX audit requirements. They discovered they needed session recording and retention for regulatory compliance. This has become a major factor for clients instituting CyberArk, so PSM is a big deal in addition to regular password rotation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"All our workloads are running on AWS, so integration with our workload is much easier on AWS Secrets Manager than going with another solution such as Thycotic."
"The most valuable feature of AWS Secrets Manager is the ability to keep data secret and assign access permissions to people to grant or restrict access."
"Secrets Manager helps in retrieving the enrollment variables used by the code."
"AWS Secrets Manager plays a significant role in optimizing IT infrastructure security and efficiency."
"The product is easy to use and is inexpensive."
"The solution is very scalable."
"The most valuable feature is the management of credentials."
"The most valuable feature is security."
"Technical support is very helpful whenever we have any questions."
"CyberArk Privileged Access Manager has positively impacted my organization, showing significant improvement since all sessions are monitored and isolated using isolated RDP sessions, which are created temporarily and expire if not used."
"The automatic rotation of credentials is probably the most useful feature."
"It has a lot of good tools, including everything we need."
"It has helped from an auditing perspective identify who has access to privileged accounts."
"It has helped us with our adoption with other teams, and it has also helped us to integrate it at the ground level."
"The integrations are the most valuable aspect of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager. The software offers pre-built integrations, and our team can also create custom connectors. This flexibility allows us to integrate with systems that we previously didn't consider integrating with, making it a significant advantage for us."
"The ability of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager to safeguard the financial services infrastructure by protecting credentials is extremely important, as every activity in a financial organization needs to be recorded for accountability in auditing."
 

Cons

"It would be good if the AWS Secrets Manager were more customizable."
"The sidecar feature has room for improvement."
"If you don't have enterprise support, then you will not be able to get through to them to get the help. It is not only applicable to AWS Secrets Manager. It is also applicable to any service on AWS."
"The solution's initial setup process is complicated."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing model."
"The price of the solution could improve."
"There is room for improvement in terms of integrating with certain other platforms."
"There is a potential improvement in connecting AWS Secrets Manager to Jenkins CI/CD pipeline to automatically reflect changes in production."
"Sometimes critical issues require follow-ups, as the support team doesn't always recognize the urgency of a critical ticket immediately."
"The scalability, sometimes, is lacking. It works really well for more static environments... But for an environment where you're constantly spinning up new infrastructure or new endpoints, sometimes it has a hard time keeping up."
"I would love them to improve their UI customizing features."
"The product could be easier to use. More work needs to be done on this aspect; it is not good enough yet. It also takes up a lot of server space. Sometimes we need to use up to seven servers."
"If you are an administrator or architect, then the solution is kind of complicated, as it is mostly focused on the end user. So, they need to also focus on the people who are implementing it."
"They are taking two to three days for resolution are too slow. Customers, including myself, do not want to wait this long for solutions."
"When they took it to the cloud, they started cutting things out."
"One thing that could be improved is to create of a better alternative for fixing group policy fees. We currently use Microsoft, but they have introduced new policies that may not be compatible."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We've observed that AWS Secrets Manager pricing is based on a per-secret-per-month model. As a result, we prefer to divide our secrets into individual pieces to increase security and grant specific access permissions to certain secrets, systems, or individuals. However, this approach results in higher costs. Therefore, we have been exploring ways to combine our secrets into groups to reduce expenses and simplify management. Nonetheless, we acknowledge that this issue may not be related to the secret manager's functionality."
"The cost is somewhat high."
"The solution is expensive."
"I don't believe there is a license cost for the solution."
"We purchase a monthly license for the product."
"The solution is cost-effective for the features."
"The cost is high compared to other products."
"The solution is available at a high price"
"The pricing for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager is quite expensive, and the pricing varies from region to region. In APAC, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager can be obtained for less than in North America, according to my understanding."
"It's an affordable platform."
"I would rate the cost of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager seven out of ten with ten being the most expensive."
"I do not have any opinions to add about the pricing of the product."
"CyberArk is good at what they do, and the price reflects that. You have to pay the price for the same."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise173
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Azure Key Vault or AWS Secrets Manager?
Azure Key Vault is a SaaS solution. You can easily store passwords and secrets securely and encrypt them. Azure Key Vault is a great solution to ensure you are compliant with security and governanc...
Which is better - HashiCorp Vault or AWS Secrets Manager?
HashiCorp Vault was designed with your needs in mind. One of the features that makes this evident is its ability to work as both a cloud-agnostic and a multi-cloud solution. As a cloud-agnostic sol...
What do you like most about AWS Secrets Manager?
The most valuable feature of AWS Secrets Manager is its seamless integration with various AWS services.
How does Sailpoint IdentityIQ compare with CyberArk PAM?
We evaluated Sailpoint IdentityIQ before ultimately choosing CyberArk. Sailpoint Identity Platform is a solution to manage risks in cloud enterprise environments. It automates and streamlines the m...
What do you like most about CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
The most valuable features of the solution are control and analytics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
My thoughts on the pricing of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager depend entirely on the vendors' requirements. If they want their things to be secure, they have to spend accordingly. We have four t...
 

Also Known As

No data available
CyberArk Privileged Access Security, CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Autodesk, Clevy, Stackery
Rockwell Automation
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Secrets Manager vs. CyberArk Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.