What is the difference between Amazon IAM and Amazon Cognito ?

June 23, 2020 / Nirav Shah

Amazon Cognito vs AWS IAM: Key Differences, Features & Pricing

What Is Amazon Cognito? User Authentication Service Overview

• As per AWS
• Amazon Cognito lets you add user sign-up, sign-in, and access control to your web and mobile apps quickly and easily. Amazon Cognito scales to millions of users and supports sign-in with social identity providers, such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon, and enterprise identity providers via SAML 2.0

Key Features of Amazon Cognito

• Secure and scalable user directory
• Social and enterprise identity federation
• Standards-based authentication
• Security for your apps and users
• Access control for AWS resources
• Easy integration with your app

What Is AWS IAM (Identity and Access Management)? Overview

• As per AWS
• AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) 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.
• IAM is a feature of your AWS account offered at no additional charge. You will be charged only for use of other AWS services by your users.

Key Features of AWS IAM

• Fine-grained access control to AWS resources
• Multi-factor authentication for highly privileged users
• Analyze access
• Integrate with your corporate directory

Amazon Cognito vs AWS IAM: What Are the Differences?

• Developers describe Amazon Cognito as “Securely manage and synchronize app data for your users across their mobile devices”. 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. On the other hand, AWS IAM is detailed as “Securely control access to AWS services and resources for your users”. AWS Identity and Access Management.
• Amazon Cognito and AWS IAM are primarily classified as “User Management and Authentication” and “Cloud Access Management” tools respectively.

Some of the features offered by Amazon Cognito are..

• Manage Unique Identities
• Work Offline
• Store and Sync across Devices

On the other hand, AWS IAM provides the following key features

• 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.

Amazon Cognito Pricing: How Much Does It Cost?

• With Amazon Cognito, you pay only for what you use. There are no minimum fees and no upfront commitments. Amazon Cognito charges for identity management and data synchronization, and the pricing for these features are shown below.

AWS IAM Pricing: Is It Free?

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Also Read:

1. How to create an IAM User from AWS Console?

2. AWS cognito – Your User management Companion