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Amazon Cognito vs AWS Key Management Service

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Amazon Cognito
478
739
+ 1
33
AWS Key Management Service
208
148
+ 1
13
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Amazon Cognito vs AWS Key Management Service: 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 Key Management Service is detailed as "Easily create and control the encryption keys used to encrypt your data". AWS Key Management Service (KMS) is a managed service that makes it easy for you to create and control the encryption keys used to encrypt your data, and uses Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) to protect the security of your keys. AWS Key Management Service is integrated with other AWS services including Amazon EBS, Amazon S3, and Amazon Redshift. AWS Key Management Service is also integrated with AWS CloudTrail to provide you with logs of all key usage to help meet your regulatory and compliance needs.

Amazon Cognito can be classified as a tool in the "User Management and Authentication" category, while AWS Key Management Service is grouped under "Data Security Services".

Some of the features offered by Amazon Cognito are:

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

On the other hand, AWS Key Management Service provides the following key features:

  • Centralized Key Management
  • Integrated with AWS services
  • Encryption for all your applications

"Backed by Amazon" is the top reason why over 11 developers like Amazon Cognito, while over 3 developers mention "Integrated with AWS CloudTrail" as the leading cause for choosing AWS Key Management Service.

According to the StackShare community, Amazon Cognito has a broader approval, being mentioned in 41 company stacks & 13 developers stacks; compared to AWS Key Management Service, which is listed in 27 company stacks and 5 developer stacks.

Decisions about Amazon Cognito and AWS Key Management Service
Brent Maxwell
CTO at Style Arcade · | 4 upvotes · 147.1K views
Migrated
from
Amazon CognitoAmazon Cognito
to
Auth0Auth0

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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Pros of Amazon Cognito
Pros of AWS Key Management Service
  • 14
    Backed by Amazon
  • 7
    Manage Unique Identities
  • 3
    Work Offline
  • 3
    MFA
  • 2
    Store and Sync
  • 1
    It works
  • 1
    Integrate with Google, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, SAML
  • 1
    SDKs and code samples
  • 1
    Free for first 50000 users
  • 5
    Integrated with AWS CloudTrail
  • 4
    Backed by Amazon
  • 4
    KMS

Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

Cons of Amazon Cognito
Cons of AWS Key Management Service
  • 3
    Massive Pain to get working
  • 2
    Login-UI sparsely customizable (e.g. no translation)
  • 2
    Documentation often out of date
  • 1
    MFA: there is no "forget device" function
  • 1
    Hard to find expiration times for tokens/codes
  • 1
    Lacks many basic features
  • 1
    There is no "Logout" method in the API
  • 1
    No recovery codes for MFA
  • 1
    Difficult to customize (basic-pack is more than humble)
  • 1
    Only paid support
  • 1
    Docs are vast but mostly useless
    Be the first to leave a con

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    What is Amazon Cognito?

    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.

    What is AWS Key Management Service?

    AWS Key Management Service (KMS) is a managed service that makes it easy for you to create and control the encryption keys used to encrypt your data, and uses Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) to protect the security of your keys. AWS Key Management Service is integrated with other AWS services including Amazon EBS, Amazon S3, and Amazon Redshift. AWS Key Management Service is also integrated with AWS CloudTrail to provide you with logs of all key usage to help meet your regulatory and compliance needs.

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

    What companies use Amazon Cognito?
    What companies use AWS Key Management Service?
    See which teams inside your own company are using Amazon Cognito or AWS Key Management Service.
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    Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions

    What tools integrate with Amazon Cognito?
    What tools integrate with AWS Key Management Service?

    Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions

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    What are some alternatives to Amazon Cognito and AWS Key Management Service?
    Auth0
    A set of unified APIs and tools that instantly enables Single Sign On and user management to all your applications.
    Okta
    Connect all your apps in days, not months, with instant access to thousands of pre-built integrations - even add apps to the network yourself. Integrations are easy to set up, constantly monitored, proactively repaired and handle authentication and provisioning.
    Firebase
    Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications. Simply add the Firebase library to your application to gain access to a shared data structure; any changes you make to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds.
    AWS IAM
    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.
    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.
    See all alternatives

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