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IBM Cloud Identity Service vs Microsoft Entra ID comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 2, 2024

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

IBM Cloud Identity Service
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
31st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Entra ID
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
278
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (2nd), Authentication Systems (1st), Identity Management (IM) (2nd), Access Management (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) category, the mindshare of IBM Cloud Identity Service is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 16.4%, down from 23.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Entra ID16.4%
IBM Cloud Identity Service0.9%
Other82.7%
Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1054431 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Excellent support, beneficial integration, and low maintenance
I have found IBM Cloud Identity Service to be highly scalable. It can handle thousands of users. IBM solutions are truly enterprise-grade. You don't find a lot of use cases for small businesses, or even sometimes medium businesses, the price point does not fit smaller businesses. The implementation effort, it's hard to find that cost-benefit.
Stafin Jacob - PeerSpot reviewer
Microsoft 365 Security & Compliance Practice Lead at Invoke
Identity has become our central gatekeeper and has provided secure single sign-on for all users
Microsoft Entra ID can improve by focusing more on new passwordless methods and becoming a primary adopter. One feature we would like to see is the ability to have security questions for password resets. I know the current capability is phasing out, so we do not have an alternative method yet. Customers who already use security questions require a smoother transition for that capability to be available. My experience with the deployment has had some challenges, particularly around the Microsoft MFA campaigns. The hardest part is moving users from a different MFA provider to the Microsoft MFA provider, as it ultimately depends on user activity. In large enterprises with numerous users across various geographies, this transition takes time. If there are ways to exert more control around that process, it would improve the situation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is multiple identity and access management, so all of the applications are valuable. It's also part of the automated process."
"IBM Cloud Identity Service is highly stable."
"It is stable. We can automate many of our daily operations with it, and we don't have to manage many things manually."
"One of the most valuable features of IBM Cloud Identity Service is that it delivers integrations with the commercial SaaS software that's available."
"Conditional Access is a helpful feature because it allows us to provide better security for our users."
"Microsoft Entra ID works well for scalability in my organization, as we have grown from 150 employees to 700 employees."
"If a company has hundreds of users that already exist in the cloud, and it now wants to enable those same users to be present in third-party applications that their business uses, like Atlassian or GoToMeeting, the provisioning technology can assist in achieving that."
"I like the way it communicates to the cloud."
"The implementations of Microsoft Entra ID have controlled all of our access into a single platform, which has been great."
"Azure AD makes our work a lot easier."
"The two-step authentication is the most valuable."
"It also has features that help improve security posture. The most important of these features include multifactor authentication, which is very useful for connecting to the organization, especially from outside the boundaries of the organization. That is very helpful when it comes to user security."
 

Cons

"The initial setup is complex, it's not straightforward. It takes months because it's not straightforward."
"You don't find a lot of use cases for small businesses, or even sometimes medium businesses, the price point does not fit smaller businesses."
"IBM Cloud Identity Service is going in the right direction with the product. They need to keep building out the integrations and having the library is very critical."
"Everything can be more stable and secure. There could also be more account features. I would like to be able to do more things through it to manage users' accounts."
"Microsoft services and most familiar third-party applications are currently supported, but we can't find many other platforms that integrate with Office 365 or Azure Active Directory. Microsoft should develop connectors for different applications and collaborate more with other vendors to cover a broader range of applications."
"The subscription costs are quite high, so that area needs consideration."
"There are no specific areas where improvement is needed at the moment. Everything has been good so far."
"Some systems do not integrate very well with Azure AD. We thought of going for Okta, but later on we were able to achieve it, but not the way we wanted. It was not as easy as we thought it would be. The integration was not very seamless."
"My understanding is, in the future, they will be able to bring everything into one single platform and they are not there yet."
"Usually when people talk about Azure, they talk about cost. I think Microsoft Entra ID is not as expensive as AWS, but cost is usually the main concern."
"We have a custom solution now running to tie all those Azure ADs together. We use the B2B functionality for that. Improvements are already on the roadmap for Azure AD in that area. I think they will make it easier to work together between two different tenants in Azure AD, because normally one tenant is a security boundary. For example, company one has a tenant and company two has a tenant, and then you can do B2B collaboration between those, but it is still quite limited. For our use case, it is enough currently. However, if we want to extend the collaboration even further, then we need an easier way to collaborate between two tenants, but I think that is already on the roadmap of Azure AD anyway."
"When it comes to identity and access life cycle management for applications that are run on-premises, as well as access governance, if those kinds of capabilities could be built into Azure Active Directory, that would be good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is expensive for non-enterprise companies. IBM's always going to be a little more expensive, you're going to be paying a premium. However, depending on the organization's needs, there's probably a benefit there to do even with the price being the way it is."
"The licensing is really not clear unless you are a premium client."
"The pricing depends on the use case and can be negotiated based on volume."
"I don't pay for it. Going by how I feel, I see the prices for any MFA solution going down because the more different alternatives there are, the cheaper things should be. Microsoft Authenticator app would be the preferred application, but there are too many ways to implement MFA. I don't know how much it cost, but the price should go down."
"This product is sold as part of the enterprise package and our licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"The process for buying licenses from Microsoft is somewhat messy and really hard to do. We have to talk to someone because it's hard to find out how many licenses we need. If I'm applying for 2,000 users, how many Windows licenses do we need? They could also charge less for support."
"Azure AD comes with Office 365, so we are just paying for the Office 365 license."
"The price is fair. It's not very expensive given what they offer."
"Its price is per user. It is also based on the type of user that you're synchronizing up there."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business91
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise162
 

Questions from the Community

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How does Duo Security compare with Microsoft Authenticator?
We switched to Duo Security for identity verification. We’d been using a competitor but got the chance to evaluate Duo for 30 days, and we could not be happier. Duo Security is easy to configure a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory?
I primarily use Microsoft Entra ID's free tier, so I have not faced any issues with pricing; I hope this free tier remains available for some time.
What needs improvement with Azure Active Directory?
To improve Microsoft Entra ID, I believe it should be openable with third-party applications to use Microsoft Authenticator, which is currently tied to Entra. There should definitely be a way to re...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Azure AD, Azure Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Authenticator
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Baxter Healthcare, 
Microsoft Entre ID is trusted by companies of all sizes and industries including Walmart, Zscaler, Uniper, Amtrak, monday.com, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cloud Identity Service vs. Microsoft Entra ID and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.