AWS IAM Identity Center

Overview

AWS IAM Identity Center, formerly AWS Single Sign-On, is Amazon's service for centrally managing workforce access to AWS accounts and to business applications. It federates to external identity providers and provides SSO across an AWS organization.

What it is good at

For AWS-centric organizations it is the natural, no-extra-cost way to give employees single sign-on across many AWS accounts and roles, with permission sets, an integrated application portal, and federation to Entra, Okta, or others as the identity source. It is deeply integrated with AWS Organizations.

What it falls short

It is AWS-focused: it centralizes access to AWS and connected apps rather than serving as a full workforce IAM for the entire application estate, and it typically pairs with a primary IdP rather than replacing one.

Pricing

Free to use as an AWS service.

Best for, and who should look elsewhere

Choose IAM Identity Center to centralize workforce access across AWS. Look elsewhere for a full standalone IAM across all apps (see Okta or Microsoft Entra).

Bottom line

The native, free way to centralize workforce SSO across AWS accounts, best paired with a primary identity provider.