What's the Difference Between AWS IAM and AWS IAM Identity Center?

Compare AWS IAM and AWS IAM Identity Center side by side — features, pricing, and ideal use cases to help you choose the right product.

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Compare side-by-side

Comparisons	AWS IAM	AWS IAM Identity Center
Category	Security, Identity & access	Security, SSO
Description	Management of identities and access to AWS services and resources	Centrally manage workforce access to multiple AWS accounts and business applications.
Best for	Access control Identity federation Least privilege Cross-account access Service control	Single sign-on Multi-account access SAML federation Permission management
Key features	Policies Roles MFA Identity Center Access Analyzer	SSO portal Permission sets SCIM provisioning SAML 2.0 Multi-account permissions
Pricing model	No additional charge	No additional charge
Free tier	Yes	Yes
Expert take	“Start with zero permissions and add only what is needed. Use IAM Access Analyzer to identify unused permissions, and service control policies in Organizations to set guardrails that no individual account can override. Avoid long-lived access keys; prefer IAM roles with temporary credentials.” — Riku Kobayashi, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]	“IAM Identity Center (SSO) provides single sign-on access to all your AWS accounts and business applications from one portal. It supports SAML, SCIM, and built-in user management.” — Giovanni Lauria, re:Post Top Contributor [profile]
Product page	Learn more about AWS IAM »	Learn more about AWS IAM Identity Center »

When to use AWS IAM or AWS IAM Identity Center

Use AWS IAM when:

Access control
Identity federation
Least privilege
Cross-account access
Service control

Learn more about AWS IAM »

Use AWS IAM Identity Center when:

Single sign-on
Multi-account access
SAML federation
Permission management

Learn more about AWS IAM Identity Center »

Next steps with AWS for Security

Create a free account

Start building with AWS IAM and AWS IAM Identity Center on the AWS Free Tier.

Get started with AWS IAM

Management of identities and access to AWS services and resources

Get started with AWS IAM Identity Center

Centrally manage workforce access to multiple AWS accounts and business applications.

Go to AWS IAM Identity Center

AWS service comparisons

What's the difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS?

Both are fully managed relational database services on AWS, but Aurora is a cloud-native engine built for higher performance and availability, while RDS gives you familiar open-source and commercial engines with less operational overhead than self-managed.

What's the difference between Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon RDS?

DynamoDB is a serverless NoSQL database for applications with well-defined access patterns that need consistent single-digit millisecond performance. RDS is a managed relational database for applications that need SQL, joins, and transactional integrity across multiple engines.

What's the difference between Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon Keyspaces?

Both are fully managed, serverless-capable NoSQL databases on AWS. DynamoDB is AWS-native with its own API and data model; Keyspaces is Apache Cassandra-compatible, letting you use existing Cassandra drivers, tools, and expertise.

What are the differences between Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon DocumentDB?

Both are fully managed NoSQL databases on AWS, but they serve different data models. DynamoDB is a key-value store optimized for known access patterns at massive scale; DocumentDB is a document database for flexible JSON schemas with MongoDB compatibility.

What's the difference between Amazon DocumentDB and Amazon Neptune?

Both handle semi-structured data, but they're optimized for different query patterns. DocumentDB stores and queries JSON documents; Neptune stores and traverses relationships between entities.

What's the difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon DynamoDB?

Both are fully managed AWS database services, but they serve fundamentally different data models and access patterns. Aurora is a relational database for structured data with relationships; DynamoDB is a NoSQL key-value store built for single-digit millisecond performance at any scale.

What's the difference between Amazon RDS and Amazon Redshift?

Both run SQL queries, but they're optimized for fundamentally different workloads. RDS handles transactional operations (inserts, updates, lookups) for your application. Redshift handles analytical queries (aggregations, scans, joins across billions of rows) for your data team.

What's the difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon Neptune?

Both are purpose-built, fully managed AWS databases, but they solve fundamentally different problems. Aurora handles structured relational data with SQL; Neptune handles highly connected data where relationships between entities are the primary query pattern.

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