Same-subcategory comparison
Compare buyer fit, pricing, capability depth, and purchase constraints within one buying category. A higher score is not a universal winner.
Comparison summary
These conclusions apply to this subcategory and the buyer conditions shown here. They do not make one product universally better.
| Dimension | Amazon Cognito | Microsoft Entra External ID |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing and trial |
Pay for usage without minimum fees or upfront commitments. Ordinary AWS fees are billed monthly. Lite direct/social users have volume bands, Essentials costs USD 0.015 per MAU above its allowance, and Plus direct/social users cost USD 0.02 per MAU. Enterprise SAML/OIDC federation is USD 0.015 per MAU above 50. SMS, email and supporting AWS services incur separate charges. M2M requests, higher API quotas, Lite ASF and multi-Region replication add charges. Within a month, each user is assigned to the highest tier used during their activity. Full profile |
Basic charges for usage above 50,000 MAUs. Linked tenants share the monthly active-user count. Premium add-ons have no free tier: SMS is USD 0.03/0.07/0.15/0.35 per attempt by country tier, M2M USD 0.001 per token and Go-Local USD 0.02 per MAU/month. Workforce-only guest Governance is USD 0.75 per MAU/month and GSA USD 2.50 per MAU/month through Entra Private Access. These East US USD estimates depend on the Azure agreement. Production billing requires a linked Azure subscription; customer and guest configurations have different entitlements. Full profile |
| Best for |
|
|
| Not for |
|
|
| Source check | 94/100 | 96/100 |
| Key features |
|
|
| Cons |
|
|
| Category buying score | 85Higher category-fit score | 83 |
| Rank | #1 | #3 |
| Context | Security & Privacy / Customer Identity and Access Management Software | Security & Privacy / Customer Identity and Access Management Software |
| Customer authentication experience | 88User pools support managed sign-up, sign-in, and federation; Essentials and Plus add managed login and passwordless options, while Lite remains password-based. Buyers should select the tier that matches their required sign-in and recovery flows. | 87Branded registration and sign-in plus OIDC, OAuth 2.0 and SAML federation cover the documented customer authentication paths; teams using SMS should pair it with another primary factor because SMS is limited to MFA. |
| Customer auth policy security | 86Authenticator and SMS MFA are described across tiers, with email MFA in higher tiers; Plus adds risk-based adaptive authentication, compromised-credential detection, and event logs, so buyers should confirm whether those Plus controls justify its per-MAU pricing for their sign-in mix. | 88Conditional Access and multifactor authentication support customer access policies, while SMS is an add-on for MFA rather than a first factor; buyers should select controls that match their sign-in policy. |
| Customer profile and identity control | 84User pools store customer profiles, while identity pools broker temporary AWS credentials and do not store profiles; this clear component boundary helps teams choose the right directory for each application workflow. | 76Customer registration and REST authentication extensions support identity workflows that call application-defined business logic, while teams should map their profile and account-linking needs to the application design. |
| Consent and privacy readiness | 78AWS's supplied Cognito security documentation states that user-pool and identity-pool data is encrypted at rest and describes security as a shared responsibility; AWS's agreement allows customers to specify storage Regions, so teams should confirm their own content controls and consent or privacy-choice requirements. | 78Go-Local offers exclusive data storage in Australia or Japan for external tenants, with the region fixed at tenant creation; buyers should settle residency needs before provisioning and confirm their consent obligations. |
| Scale and developer fit | 84AWS describes its managed directory as scaling to millions of users, and Cognito provides SDK/API and Lambda extension points with optional regional replication; higher API quotas require approval and add-on usage can cost extra, so buyers should validate capacity and regional needs against their deployment. | 82REST authentication extensions and listed Azure App Service and Visual Studio Code integrations provide defined application connection paths, while linked tenants share MAU counts for billing; teams should validate capacity and usage forecasts against their deployment design. |
| Full profile | Full profile | Full profile |
Comparison summary
These are the stored dimension rationales returned with each score. They explain the buyer conditions behind the gap without speculating about hidden model reasoning.
Research basis
This page uses stored product facts, official evidence, and category scoring rationales. It is not an account-based hands-on test, and third-party user ratings are not folded into the category buying score.
More tools
Add more tools from the same subcategory to this comparison. The page keeps up to 6 tools.
Amazon Cognito is AWS's customer identity and access management service for user registration, authentication, federation, user pools, branded sign-in, and application access control.
PingOne for Customers is Ping Identity's cloud CIAM product combining customer authentication, user management, orchestration, MFA, profile management, and privacy-aware identity experiences.
Microsoft Entra External ID is Microsoft's CIAM product for customer and external identity registration, authentication, authorization, access, and application sign-in experiences.
SAP Customer Identity and Access Management is SAP's cloud CIAM product for customer identity, authentication, adaptive access, profile data, consent, and privacy management.
Authgear is an authentication and identity product for customer, extended-workforce, and B2B application identities, with login, MFA, SSO, roles, profiles, and identity flows.
Frontegg is a customer identity platform for B2B and B2C authentication, user and tenant management, enterprise connections, authorization, and embedded identity experiences.
FusionAuth is an authentication and user management product for customer-facing applications, providing registration, login, SSO, MFA, identity storage, and authorization.
More comparisons
Compare the first tool against top-ranked and nearby tools in the same subcategory.
View VS
View VS
View VS
View VS
View VS
View VS