No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager offers cost savings, quick ROI, and enhances security by ensuring crucial access and reducing costs.
Sentiment score
5.1
Okta improves security, reduces IT workloads and costs, enhances compliance, and centralizes identity management, boosting efficiency and ROI.
Employee onboarding used to be a major pain point, but the automation Okta Platform provides for creating user accounts across various apps or SaaS tools has made our life much easier.
Technical Lead at CloudBolt Software
First, it improves the security authentication and authorization processes across the organization, securing applications with single sign-on and MFA.
Practice Director - PAM, IGA, IAM & ZeroTrust at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
We have our dashboard to log in via Okta Workforce Identity.
Lead Admin Systems at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
F5 BIG-IP APM customer service receives mixed reviews, with some praising responsiveness and others citing delays and communication issues.
Sentiment score
6.9
Okta Platform's customer service is praised for responsiveness, effective issue resolution, and access to knowledgeable support, especially for premium users.
Even if they respond, they don't update me with the process or what's going on.
Professional Services Specialist at a security firm with 51-200 employees
Most of the technical support is managed in-house due to our extensive experience with F5 products.
Business Development Manager at Pylones
F5 technical support is responsive and helpful.
Solutions Manager at Macroview Telecom Limited
By offering a system to set varying priority levels on support tickets, urgent issues could receive quicker attention, benefiting business continuity and customer satisfaction.
IT Lead at a outsourcing company with 51-200 employees
For Okta Platform, the customer service is seamless, and I am very satisfied with their assistance compared to other channels such as Microsoft's, which usually takes longer to resolve issues.
Iam & Security Engineer at zeb consulting
They are very supportive; they just open a ticket, and they support us very professionally.
Staff Infrastructure & Security Engineer at Mozn Systems
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
F5 BIG-IP APM scales for diverse deployments, offering flexibility and effective tools, though hardware limitations might challenge scalability.
Sentiment score
7.0
Okta Platform scales efficiently with stability and reliability, praised for security features and ease in managing identities and applications.
The product's flexibility and company culture contribute to resolving these challenges.
Business Development Manager at Pylones
I would rate the scalability of F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) between seven and eight.
Solutions Manager at Macroview Telecom Limited
The scalability of Okta Platform is impressive, but its effectiveness relies on how integrations are designed, rate limits are handled, and day-to-day operations are managed.
Identity and Access Management Specialist at a university with 10,001+ employees
It is secure, providing needed scalability without impacting performance.
IT Lead at a outsourcing company with 51-200 employees
Clients can scale their API access requests beyond default limits, which is adaptable according to requirements without impacting performance or deployment.
Senior Analyst at Toll Holdings Limited
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
F5 BIG-IP APM is praised for reliability, performance, and minimal bugs, with minor suggestions for log clarity improvement.
Sentiment score
7.9
The Okta Platform is stable, reliable, and scalable, offering diverse verification options and minimal connectivity or performance issues.
On a scale from one to ten for stability, I would rate F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) a ten.
Solutions Manager at Macroview Telecom Limited
Sometimes, the logs are not quite informational or easy to understand.
Professional Services Specialist at a security firm with 51-200 employees
This ensures immediate action upon changes applied within Okta Platform, stabilizing operations in managing user accounts, identities, logins, and user profiles.
IT Lead at a outsourcing company with 51-200 employees
Okta Workforce Identity is a stable product.
Business Intelligence Developer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
There are no doubts regarding the stability of Okta Customer Identity.
Senior Quality Analyst at YASH Technologies
 

Room For Improvement

F5 BIG-IP APM requires improvements in pricing, cloud integration, user interface, documentation, support, and additional features for enhanced performance.
Okta faces downtime, high pricing, integration issues, and seeks improvements in support, UI, compliance, and affordability for users.
If I could copy and paste objects instead of picking and configuring them from scratch each time, it would be great.
Professional Services Specialist at a security firm with 51-200 employees
The main improvement needed for F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) is to integrate into the cloud-delivered services from F5.
Business Development Manager at Pylones
The ability to run the Anycast feature would be valuable, as the current solution only operates on-premises.
Senior Cyber Security Consultant at KoçSistem
If there was a fingerprint option, then only the person who has already added their fingerprint on their mobile phone could access it.
Lead Admin Systems at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
If someone is a beginner with Okta Platform, the UI should be simplified, and the language used should make it easier for them to understand the concepts and what they are trying to do.
Software Engineer at aeTech Digital Hub
While they have a vast range of integrations out of the box available, if their PAM and IGA capabilities were more mature, then Okta Platform could be the single solution for everything, covering access management, privilege access management, and governance of identity.
Practice Director - PAM, IGA, IAM & ZeroTrust at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

F5 BIG-IP APM is costly but valued for high performance, with unpredictable cloud pricing and additional fees for features.
Okta's pricing is high but justified by features; costs decrease with user count and multi-year commitments.
F5 products are more expensive than other solutions but are valued for their quality and reliability.
Business Development Manager at Pylones
Despite the cost, it's cheaper than the potential financial loss from a security breach.
IT Manager at Clear Channel
It is certainly not cheap, but the features that you get, the functionality that you get, and whatever use cases that you have, it definitely satisfies those.
Principle Cloud Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The pricing per-user list drops when user counts rise and with multi-year commitments.
Identity and Access Management Specialist at a university with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

F5 BIG-IP APM offers secure remote access with SSL VPN, multi-factor authentication, and comprehensive integration and security features.
Okta Platform streamlines security with SSO, MFA, easy integration, and scalable identity management, enhancing efficiency and reducing IT workload.
APM is quite flexible for customers to use, providing secure remote access through various host-checking conditions for both machines and users.
Solutions Manager at Macroview Telecom Limited
It provides robust security and offers integration with multi-factor authentication systems, which is crucial for an organization's security policy.
Business Development Manager at Pylones
A lot of features are useful to me, including mostly the authentication, SAML, or SSO, with no sign-on.
Professional Services Specialist at a security firm with 51-200 employees
One of its most valuable features is its easy integration with various applications through its extensive application directory, offering hundreds or thousands of applications ready to configure.
IT Manager at Clear Channel
It offers around eight thousand five hundred out-of-the-box connectors, providing an edge over other tools.
Managing Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
For the end user, it is beneficial as they do not have to remember a password or keep the password on a post-it for different applications; they just authenticate once to access several services and service providers.
Technical Team Lead at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Man...
Ranking in Access Management
15th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (20th), Network Access Control (NAC) (11th), SSL VPN (7th), Remote Access (19th)
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 F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) is 2.4%, up from 1.7% 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%
F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)2.4%
Other86.5%
Access Management
 

Featured Reviews

Senior Cyber Security Consultant at KoçSistem
Has provided reliable policy controls and secure web access for large enterprises
I consider Cloudflare when evaluating centralized access control features; Cloudflare utilizes multi-factor authentication and full API support, while F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) needs to enhance its API support. I recommend F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) for large companies such as Tüpraş and Ford. Tüpraş is one of the biggest companies in Turkey, along with other customers such as Tofaş, Euroko, Koç Holding, and more. For on-premises deployment, I would rate it a 10. For cloud deployment, I would rate it a seven. I primarily use it on-premises. I rate F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) eight out of ten.
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.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Access Management solutions are best for your needs.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
Construction Company
6%
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 Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise61
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?
F5 products are more expensive than other solutions but are valued for their quality and reliability, akin to purchasing a Bentley as opposed to an Audi.
What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?
F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) is not user-friendly and operates slowly. Additional features for architecture such as Anycast would be beneficial. The ability to run the Anycast feature woul...
What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?
I am using F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) along with Bot Management, API Gateway, API Security, and F5 Cloud. I am using F5 Advanced WAF, but I switch between ZTNA solutions such as FortiSAS...
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

F5 Access Policy Manager
Okta Customer Identity, Workforce Identity
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
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 F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) vs. Okta Platform and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.