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AWS Secrets Manager vs Idira Privileged Access Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 2, 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

AWS Secrets Manager
Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Secrets Management Tools (3rd)
Idira Privileged Access Man...
Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
230
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (1st), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (1st), Mainframe Security (1st), Operational Technology (OT) Security (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Enterprise Password Managers category, the mindshare of AWS Secrets Manager is 14.3%, down from 18.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Idira Privileged Access Manager is 6.5%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Password Managers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AWS Secrets Manager14.3%
CyberArk Privileged Access Manager6.5%
Other79.2%
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.
Atul-Gujar - PeerSpot reviewer
CyberArk manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Secures critical infrastructures with essential user session audit records
A potential area for improvement is enhancing support for cluster environments and distributed Vaults. Clients in multiple countries that need central access have different challenges that require better solutions from CyberArk. For financial services, CyberArk can improve incident response by ensuring fast support for critical priority tickets to meet compliance requirements. Providing more documentation on CyberArk is recommended for new team members to enhance their troubleshooting capabilities. I understand it's up to the client, but 99% fail to change the demo key, so it's crucial for CyberArk to emphasize changing the key and documenting it as part of the installation process.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"AWS Secrets Manager has impacted my organization positively through security improvements because on that basis, I can rotate my keys and passwords at a certain time."
"The most valuable feature is usability, as it is quite user-friendly."
"Overall, this is a good product, we are satisfied with the support, and I recommend it."
"Integrating with other services was straightforward, especially within the AWS environment."
"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."
"AWS Secrets Manager plays a significant role in optimizing IT infrastructure security and efficiency."
"It's highly scalable, so I'd rate it a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature is the management of credentials."
"The most important feature is managing the credentials and implementing those policies which rotate the credentials. Session Manager is also key in not letting the users have access to those credentials. Instead, CyberArk actually manages everything by itself."
"The most valuable feature is the special management. It records the activity and the actions that we use for auditing."
"The feature that I like the most is the Privileged Session Manager. It offers session recordings, logging, and tracking of user workstreams."
"The automatic rotation of credentials is probably the most useful feature."
"Enterprise Password Vault, Privilege Session Manager, and Application Identity Management have been very useful for our client environment."
"Auditing and control are the most valuable, as you can control password management almost to the max, giving you, your users and your auditors great flexibility without compromising security."
"It is a great product when it comes to security, and from the security point of view, I would advise a new user to use this tool and deploy it in your environment since the security is unbeatable."
"I would rate CyberArk Privileged Access Manager nine out of ten."
 

Cons

"We occasionally have problems with rate limits, although that is a problem more generally with AWS."
"An area for improvement in AWS Secrets Manager could be expanding integration options beyond AWS services."
"There is a need for better environmental implementation, such as having a security fund as a solution."
"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."
"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 sidecar feature has room for improvement."
"If you add one more layer of security to AWS Secrets Manager, even the programmer will not be able to see the secrets."
"More than the product itself, there is room for improvement in the documentation."
"We do see performance issues with PSM which gets very busy, and we just keep scaling the number of PSMs."
"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."
"The initial setup is pretty difficult and it takes a while to put into place."
"When something comes out, it's generally airtight and works as advertised. However, sometimes they are a little bit slow to keep up with what's coming out. In 2017, for example, they released support for Windows Server 2016, which had been out for a year or so."
"I would like to see more integration with more tools, for more APIs."
"Sometimes, when we install their product, the BFN (Bridge to Future Networks) to the component manager, we have issues."
"More additional features as far as the REST is concerned, because we have something which was the predecessor to REST. A lot of the features which were in the predecessor have not necessarily been ported over to REST yet."
 

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."
"I don't believe there is a license cost for the solution."
"The cost is somewhat high."
"The solution is expensive."
"We purchase a monthly license for the product."
"My company always complains about the cost of CyberArk Privileged Access Manager because it's too high."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault's pricing is reasonable."
"I would rate CyberArk's pricing a nine out of ten, with one being cheap and ten being expensive. It's one of the most expensive solutions in the market, but it's worth it."
"The pricing for CyberArk is on the higher side compared to other Privileged Access Management products. Something should be done regarding enterprise licensing for long-standing customers."
"Compared to other solutions, it is costly."
"CyberArk has been Gartner's number-one pick for the past ten years, so you can infer that their pricing is higher than everyone else. When you are the best, you will charge appropriately for it."
"From a client perspective, CyberArk's pricing is fair but there is a significant increase each year. They should limit the price increase because this could potentially drive customers to other partners. Price changes should be at defined intervals. There should not be sudden jumps."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business59
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise174
 

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 needs improvement with AWS Secrets Manager?
AWS Secrets Manager could not be better because there has been no frustration with the product.
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 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...
What needs improvement with CyberArk Privileged Access Manager?
I believe account discovery and rolling support need to be improved. Account discovery is important when integrating with other systems, as other PAM solutions can perform account discovery and onb...
 

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. Idira Privileged Access Manager and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
896,942 professionals have used our research since 2012.