AWS IAM vs Amazon Cognito

Overview

AWS IAM

Stacks1.2K

Followers819

Votes26

Amazon Cognito

Stacks616

Followers917

Votes34

AWS IAM vs Amazon Cognito: What are the differences?

AWS IAM (Identity and Access Management) and Amazon Cognito, both services are offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and provide different functionalities for managing user identities and access to resources. Let's discuss the key differences between the two:

Scalability and User Management: AWS IAM is primarily designed for managing access to AWS resources within an organization. It allows administrators to control user identities, their permissions, and access to various AWS services. On the other hand, Amazon Cognito is a fully managed authentication service that provides scalable user management capabilities for web and mobile applications. It offers features like user sign-up and sign-in, social identity providers integration, and multi-factor authentication.
Federated Identity and User Pools: AWS IAM supports federated identity through its Identity Providers feature. This allows users to log in to AWS services using their existing identities from external providers like Active Directory or Facebook. Amazon Cognito, on the other hand, provides user pools which are user directories that enable sign-up and sign-in functionality for applications. User pools also support social identity providers integration and can be used as federated identity providers for AWS services.
Temporary Credentials and Access Control: AWS IAM allows users to generate temporary credentials to access AWS resources for a limited duration. These credentials can be used by applications or services to access resources securely without storing permanent credentials. Amazon Cognito, however, provides a different approach to access control using identity pools. Identity pools allow applications to exchange user authentication for temporary, limited-privilege AWS credentials. This enables fine-grained access control based on user attributes and roles.
Single Sign-On (SSO) and Identity Federation: AWS IAM supports Single Sign-On (SSO) through the use of SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) or OpenID Connect identity providers. This enables users to sign in to the AWS Management Console and access multiple AWS accounts or applications without separate authentication. Amazon Cognito also supports SSO but focuses more on decentralizing authentication for applications using user pools or social identity providers.
Pricing Model: AWS IAM is mainly included in the overall pricing of AWS services and is not charged separately. However, some additional features like IAM roles for EC2 instances may have associated costs. Amazon Cognito, on the other hand, has its own pricing model based on the number of monthly active users and the amount of data stored. It offers different pricing tiers based on the specific needs of applications and the desired level of scalability.
Integration and Use Cases: While AWS IAM is tightly integrated with AWS services and is commonly used within organizations for managing access to AWS resources, Amazon Cognito is more suitable for web and mobile applications that require user authentication and authorization capabilities. It provides out-of-the-box integration with mobile SDKs and web frameworks, making it easier to implement user management functionality in applications.

In summary, AWS IAM focuses on managing access to AWS resources within an organization, while Amazon Cognito provides scalable user management for web and mobile applications with features like user sign-up, sign-in, federated identity, and single sign-on capabilities.

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Advice on AWS IAM, Amazon Cognito

Brent

CEO at DEFY Labs

Mar 7, 2020

Decided

I started our team on Amazon Cognito because I was a Solutions Architect at AWS and found it really easy to follow the tutorials and get a basic app up and running with it.

When our team started working with it, they very quickly became frustrated because of the poor documentation. After 4 days of trying to get all the basic passwordless auth working, our lead engineer made the decision to abandon it and try Auth0... and managed to get everything implemented in 4 hours.

The consensus was that Cognito just isn't mature enough or well-documented, and that the implementation does not cater for real world use cases the way that it should. I believe Amplify has made some of this simpler, but I would still recommend Auth0 as it's been bulletproof for us, and is a sensible price.

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Detailed Comparison

AWS IAM	Amazon Cognito
It enables you to manage access to AWS services and resources securely. Using IAM, you can create and manage AWS users and groups, and use permissions to allow and deny their access to AWS resources.	You can create unique identities for your users through a number of public login providers (Amazon, Facebook, and Google) and also support unauthenticated guests. You can save app data locally on users’ devices allowing your applications to work even when the devices are offline.
Manage IAM users and their access - You can create users in IAM, assign them individual security credentials (i.e., access keys, passwords, and Multi-Factor Authentication devices) or request temporary security credentials to provide users access to AWS services and resources.;Manage IAM roles and their permissions - You can create roles in IAM, and manage permissions to control which operations can be performed by the entity, or AWS service, that assumes the role. You can also define which entity is allowed to assume the role.;Manage federated users and their permissions - You can enable identity federation to allow existing identities (e.g. users) from your corporate directory or from a 3rd party such as Login with Amazon, Facebook, and Google to access the AWS Management Console, to call AWS APIs, and to access resources, without the need to create an IAM user for each identity.	Manage Unique Identities;Work Offline;Store and Sync across Devices;Seamless Guest Access;Safeguard AWS Credentials;Control Access to AWS Resources
Statistics
Stacks 1.2K	Stacks 616
Followers 819	Followers 917
Votes 26	Votes 34
Pros & Cons
Pros 23 Centralized powerful permissions based access 3 Straightforward SSO integration Cons 1 No equivalent for on-premise networks, must adapt to AD 1 Cloud auth limited to resources, no apps or services	Pros 14 Backed by Amazon 7 Manage Unique Identities 4 Work Offline 3 MFA 2 Store and Sync Cons 4 Massive Pain to get working 3 Documentation often out of date 2 Login-UI sparsely customizable (e.g. no translation) 1 Difficult to customize (basic-pack is more than humble) 1 MFA: there is no "forget device" function

What are some alternatives to AWS IAM, Amazon Cognito?

Auth0

A set of unified APIs and tools that instantly enables Single Sign On and user management to all your applications.

Stormpath

Stormpath is an authentication and user management service that helps development teams quickly and securely build web and mobile applications and services.

Keycloak

It is an Open Source Identity and Access Management For Modern Applications and Services. It adds authentication to applications and secure services with minimum fuss. No need to deal with storing users or authenticating users. It's all available out of the box.

Devise

Devise is a flexible authentication solution for Rails based on Warden

Firebase Authentication

It provides backend services, easy-to-use SDKs, and ready-made UI libraries to authenticate users to your app. It supports authentication using passwords, phone numbers, popular federated identity providers like Google,

WorkOS

Start selling to enterprise customers with just a few lines of code.

OAuth.io

OAuth is a protocol that aimed to provide a single secure recipe to manage authorizations. It is now used by almost every web application. However, 30+ different implementations coexist. OAuth.io fixes this massive problem by acting as a universal adapter, thanks to a robust API. With OAuth.io integrating OAuth takes minutes instead of hours or days.

OmniAuth

OmniAuth is a Ruby authentication framework aimed to abstract away the difficulties of working with various types of authentication providers. It is meant to be hooked up to just about any system, from social networks to enterprise systems to simple username and password authentication.

ORY Hydra

It is a self-managed server that secures access to your applications and APIs with OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect. It is OpenID Connect Certified and optimized for latency, high throughput, and low resource consumption.

Kinde

Simple, powerful authentication that you can integrate in minutes. Free your users from passwords with secure and frictionless one click sign up and sign in. Built from the ground up using the best in class security protocols available today.

Related Comparisons

AWS IAM vs Amazon Cognito: What are the differences?

Scalability and User Management: AWS IAM is primarily designed for managing access to AWS resources within an organization. It allows administrators to control user identities, their permissions, and access to various AWS services. On the other hand, Amazon Cognito is a fully managed authentication service that provides scalable user management capabilities for web and mobile applications. It offers features like user sign-up and sign-in, social identity providers integration, and multi-factor authentication.
Federated Identity and User Pools: AWS IAM supports federated identity through its Identity Providers feature. This allows users to log in to AWS services using their existing identities from external providers like Active Directory or Facebook. Amazon Cognito, on the other hand, provides user pools which are user directories that enable sign-up and sign-in functionality for applications. User pools also support social identity providers integration and can be used as federated identity providers for AWS services.
Temporary Credentials and Access Control: AWS IAM allows users to generate temporary credentials to access AWS resources for a limited duration. These credentials can be used by applications or services to access resources securely without storing permanent credentials. Amazon Cognito, however, provides a different approach to access control using identity pools. Identity pools allow applications to exchange user authentication for temporary, limited-privilege AWS credentials. This enables fine-grained access control based on user attributes and roles.
Single Sign-On (SSO) and Identity Federation: AWS IAM supports Single Sign-On (SSO) through the use of SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) or OpenID Connect identity providers. This enables users to sign in to the AWS Management Console and access multiple AWS accounts or applications without separate authentication. Amazon Cognito also supports SSO but focuses more on decentralizing authentication for applications using user pools or social identity providers.
Pricing Model: AWS IAM is mainly included in the overall pricing of AWS services and is not charged separately. However, some additional features like IAM roles for EC2 instances may have associated costs. Amazon Cognito, on the other hand, has its own pricing model based on the number of monthly active users and the amount of data stored. It offers different pricing tiers based on the specific needs of applications and the desired level of scalability.
Integration and Use Cases: While AWS IAM is tightly integrated with AWS services and is commonly used within organizations for managing access to AWS resources, Amazon Cognito is more suitable for web and mobile applications that require user authentication and authorization capabilities. It provides out-of-the-box integration with mobile SDKs and web frameworks, making it easier to implement user management functionality in applications.

AWS IAM vs Amazon Cognito

Overview