Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
Amazon Cognito vs Okta: What are the differences?
Amazon Cognito and Okta are both identity management solutions. Amazon Cognito is tightly integrated with AWS and provides user management for AWS-hosted applications. Okta is a standalone platform with versatile IAM capabilities, supporting multi-cloud environments and extensive third-party integrations. Here are the key differences between Amazon Cognito and Okta:
Integration with AWS Services: Amazon Cognito is tightly integrated with the AWS ecosystem, making it a suitable choice for applications hosted on the AWS cloud platform. It provides seamless integration with other AWS services like AWS Lambda, API Gateway, and Amazon S3. On the other hand, Okta is a standalone identity management platform that can integrate with various cloud providers, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.
User Management and Authentication: Both Amazon Cognito and Okta offer user management and authentication capabilities. However, Amazon Cognito provides user directories that allow you to create and manage user accounts directly within the service. It also supports various authentication methods, including username/password, social login, and multi-factor authentication. Okta, on the other hand, is focused on providing a comprehensive identity and access management (IAM) solution. It offers advanced features like user lifecycle management, role-based access control, and identity federation.
Scalability and Pricing: Amazon Cognito is designed to scale automatically to handle millions of users and requests. It offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where you only pay for the active users and authentication requests. Okta, being a dedicated identity management platform, also offers scalability but follows a subscription-based pricing model.
Developer Experience and Customization: Amazon Cognito provides a range of SDKs and libraries for various programming languages, making it easy for developers to integrate authentication and user management into their applications. It also offers pre-built UI components for common authentication flows. Okta provides extensive developer documentation, APIs, and SDKs, allowing developers to customize the user experience and integrate Okta's capabilities into their applications.
In summary, Amazon Cognito is tightly integrated with the AWS ecosystem and provides user management and authentication features suitable for AWS-hosted applications. Okta, on the other hand, is a standalone identity management platform that offers more versatility in multi-cloud or hybrid environments, with advanced IAM features and extensive integrations with third-party services.
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.
Pros of Amazon Cognito
- Backed by Amazon14
- Manage Unique Identities7
- Work Offline4
- MFA3
- Store and Sync2
- Free for first 50000 users1
- It works1
- Integrate with Google, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, SAML1
- SDKs and code samples1
Pros of Okta
- REST API14
- SAML9
- OIDC OpenID Connect5
- Protect B2E, B2B, B2C apps5
- User Provisioning5
- Easy LDAP integration5
- Universal Directory4
- Tons of Identity Management features4
- SSO, MFA for cloud, on-prem, custom apps4
- API Access Management - oAuth2 as a service4
- Easy Active Directory integration3
- SWA applications Integration2
- SOC21
- Test0
Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions
Cons of Amazon Cognito
- Massive Pain to get working4
- Documentation often out of date3
- Login-UI sparsely customizable (e.g. no translation)2
- Docs are vast but mostly useless1
- MFA: there is no "forget device" function1
- Difficult to customize (basic-pack is more than humble)1
- Lacks many basic features1
- There is no "Logout" method in the API1
- Different Language SDKs not compatible1
- No recovery codes for MFA1
- Hard to find expiration times for tokens/codes1
- Only paid support1
Cons of Okta
- Pricing is too high5
- Okta verify (Multi-factor Authentication)1
Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions
What is Amazon Cognito?
What is Okta?
Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
What companies use Amazon Cognito?
What companies use Okta?
Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions
What tools integrate with Amazon Cognito?
What tools integrate with Okta?
Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions
Blog Posts
+17
+25