Best Privileged Access Management Solutions (2026): Top 9 Compared

PAM360 is ManageEngine's privileged access platform. The product page describes a single console covering privileged account and session management, privilege elevation and delegation management, cloud infrastructure entitlements management, endpoint privilege management, privileged account governance, secrets management, privileged user behaviour analytics, and encryption key and certificate lifecycle management for SSH keys and SSL/TLS certificates. The vendor states the platform is employed by over 5,000 organisations and government agencies.

The pricing page is the differentiator in this comparison, because it publishes complete figures rather than a starting point. The subscription model is billed annually and priced by administrators and keys, with no limit stated on users or resources. Seven bands are listed: $7,995 per year for 10 administrators and 25 keys, $12,995 for 20 and 50, $14,995 for 25 and 100, $24,995 for 50 and 200, $36,995 for 100 and 300, $44,995 for 150 and 500, and $49,995 for 200 administrators and 1,000 keys. A multilingual edition is priced higher at each band, from $9,595 to $59,995. Annual maintenance and support are included in the subscription fee.

A perpetual model runs in parallel for buyers who prefer a capital purchase. The same bands cost $19,995 to $124,995 as a one-time licence, with annual maintenance and support charged separately from $3,999 to $24,999. The page states the perpetual licence costs three times the annual subscription price, with 20 percent annual maintenance from the second year.

Three licence types are documented: a 30-day fully functional trial supporting up to five administrators, a free edition permanently limited to one administrator and 10 resources, and the registered enterprise version. One application gateway is bundled with each licence; additional gateways require a sales conversation. Onboarding, implementation and training are separately priced, from $995 for four hours of online training to $9,999 for a five-day onsite engagement. The documented fit is a buyer that wants to budget against a list before entering procurement.

The privileged access management product long sold as CyberArk Privileged Access Manager now appears on cyberark.com under the Idira name and the Palo Alto Networks brand. Both the product page and the pricing URL resolve to Idira material, while the cyberark.com homepage still describes the CyberArk identity security platform covering single sign-on, adaptive multi-factor authentication, lifecycle management, directory services and user behaviour analytics. Buyers reading older analyst coverage or procurement documents should expect the naming to differ from what the live pages say.

The product page frames the category problem as fragmentation. It argues that traditional privileged access management protects a small set of administrators while attackers compromise ordinary accounts and move laterally through the seams between identity management, privileged access management and endpoint controls. Standing access is described as a permanent attack surface, third-party vendors as a blind spot accounting for close to 29 percent of identity breaches, and unmanaged root and local administrator accounts as a persistent foothold.

Five capability areas are documented. Zero standing privilege creates ephemeral privileges when a task starts and destroys them when it ends. Secure infrastructure and cloud access provides agentless, brokered entry to AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and Kubernetes, supporting native command line and console workflows with just-in-time entitlements in place of static, long-lived cloud roles. Workforce endpoint privilege security removes standing local administrator rights on Windows, macOS and Linux and replaces them with on-demand application elevation. Session control isolates and records sensitive sessions across infrastructure and software as a service, with generated summaries surfacing anomalous commands. Third-party access is delivered browser-based and scoped to a task with full recording.

No pricing is published. The pricing URL leads to the platform overview, which cites a 2026 identity security study reporting that 96 percent of human users hold access beyond what is required and that machine identities outnumber human ones by 109 to 1. Every commercial term therefore has to be established through a quote.

Password Safe is the BeyondTrust product for managing privileged passwords, accounts, keys, secrets and sessions. The product page states that the scope covers people, machines and AI agents, and that the same product also secures non-privileged employee passwords for business applications through the Workforce Passwords capability. That second scope is unusual in this comparison: most vendors treat workforce password management as a separate product line.

Three use cases are documented. Credential, key and secrets management automatically discovers, onboards, vaults and rotates credentials, keys and secrets, including those used by AI agents, bots and automation scripts, with just-in-time access intended to eliminate static secrets. Real-time session management logs and monitors privileged credential activity and sessions, retaining session metadata for compliance and forensic review. Advanced auditing and forensics applies privilege and credential analytics to compliance reporting and benchmark tracking.

The core feature list adds detail. Automated discovery scans, identifies and profiles applications and assets, including SSH keys, and auto-onboards privileged, shared and service accounts. Credential and password management secures access to privileged passwords, DevOps secrets and SSH keys and automates rotation. Secrets management covers DevOps tools, workflows and continuous integration pipelines in an auditable environment. Application password management controls scripts, files, code and embedded keys, and defines automated access through REST APIs so credentials do not have to be hard-coded. An extensible API is documented for orchestrating privileged access management across enterprise tooling, and privileged session management records account and session activity for review.

Commercial terms are not published. The pricing page is a contact form inviting a custom quote and a technical inquiry about deployment requirements, stating only that BeyondTrust is trusted by more than 20,000 companies. Buyers should expect a scoped quote, and should confirm during that conversation which of the capabilities above are inside the Password Safe licence and which require an adjacent BeyondTrust product.

Secret Server is Delinea's enterprise password vault and the stated foundation of the wider Delinea Platform. The product page describes identifying, securing, managing, monitoring and auditing privileged accounts across AI, machine, service, application, administrator and root identities, with built-in automation for discovery, password rotation and session monitoring. Documented capabilities include an encrypted vault with enforced password controls, comprehensive discovery and inventory of privileged accounts, automated credential management with check-in and check-out, role-based access control and approval workflows, session recording with audit trails and customisable reports, and a Resilient Secrets capability that replicates credentials for continuity.

The most useful public artefact is the documentation feature matrix for Secret Server On-Premises, which splits the product into Vault, Professional and Platinum editions and marks each capability as included, absent or an add-on. Vault covers 25 users; Professional and Platinum are licensed by user. Secrets are unlimited at every edition. Command line tools, the software development kit and the web services API begin at Professional. Several capabilities that buyers often assume are core appear as Professional add-ons and are included only at Platinum: SSH key management and authentication, allowed and blocked command lists, request access and checkout with one-time passwords, discovery rules, extensible script-based discovery, PowerShell password changing and dependency handling, and native ticket-system integration. Automatic password changing for network accounts, heartbeat, custom reports, dual control, FIPS compliance and scheduled reports start at Professional.

The deployment note in the documentation matters for new buyers: on-premises deployment of the Vault edition is described as available for current customers, with cloud the route for new customers.

No prices are published. The quote request page groups the portfolio into enterprise vault, DevOps vault, service account lifecycle, threat detection and remediation, remote administrator access, browser-based sessions without a virtual private network, server and workstation privilege elevation, and cloud entitlements, and asks buyers to request pricing. A 30-day free trial is offered.

Safeguard is One Identity's privileged access platform, positioned as three integrated capabilities inside one product: privileged password vaulting, session management and behavioural analytics, with just-in-time access described as the core model. The documented scope covers human administrators, service accounts, machine workloads and AI agents.

The privileged passwords component handles discovery and onboarding, credential vaulting and rotation, service accounts, SSH keys and API keys, DevOps secrets and cloud credentials, an automated workflow engine, just-in-time access controls and role-based access management. The dedicated Safeguard for Privileged Passwords page adds an Activity Center for building custom queries and audit reports, a workflow engine supporting time restrictions, multiple approvers and emergency access, an Approval Anywhere capability that routes access approvals through the One Identity cloud platform, host, directory and network discovery, Personal Vaults for generating and storing passwords for all employees including non-federated accounts, and a distributed architecture with load balancing.

The privileged sessions component is the part most likely to decide a shortlist. It provides full session audit, recording and replay, real-time alerting and blocking, protocol-level proxy enforcement, full-text search with optical character recognition, continuous session authentication, and a transparent mode that requires no change to existing administrator workflows. The documentation states it operates standalone or alongside any vault, which makes it a candidate for organisations that have already bought a vault elsewhere and want session control without replacing it.

Privileged analytics applies behavioural anomaly detection, keystroke and mouse-movement biometrics, screen content and command analysis, risk-ranked alert prioritisation, automated session termination and security information and event management integration, using machine learning rather than predefined rules. Coverage extends through adjacent products for privilege elevation on Windows, endpoint control, remote access and workforce password management. No commercial terms are published for the platform or for any module, so scope and price both require a quote.

KeeperPAM is Keeper Security's privileged access product, built on the company's existing enterprise password vault. The product page describes a cloud-native, zero-knowledge platform combining enterprise password management, secrets management, connection management, zero-trust network access and remote browser isolation in a single interface, and states that the platform is certified at FedRAMP High.

Discovery runs through the Keeper Gateway, which catalogues machines, databases, directories, accounts and credentials across local infrastructure, AWS and Azure and imports them into the vault as managed resources. Session handling is a documented strength: Keeper's engineers are described as the original creators of Apache Guacamole, and the product covers browser-based remote sessions over SSH, RDP, VNC, HTTPS, MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQL Server through a zero-trust gateway that requires no firewall or ingress changes. Just-in-time access is delivered without exposing credentials, with time-limited access, automatic rotation after revocation, ephemeral account provisioning and dynamic role or group elevation. A monitoring layer analyses privileged session activity and can terminate sessions on suspicious behaviour.

The licensing model is the distinguishing commercial feature. Documentation states that privileged access requires either a KeeperPAM licence or a Business or Enterprise licence plus the Privileged Access Manager add-on, and that the add-on is counted only for users who need privileged features. The worked example in the documentation is an organisation with 100 enterprise users buying 100 enterprise licences and 10 add-ons. The add-on includes secrets management, password rotation, privileged sessions and connections, tunnels, remote browser isolation, session recording and playback, discovery, the self-hosted Keeper Connection Manager, and privileged access auditing and reporting. Existing secrets manager and connection manager add-ons upgrade into it.

The pricing page lists Business Starter, Business and Enterprise password manager tiers sold per user per month billed annually, with the Enterprise tier routed to a quote. It states plainly that the privileged access product is available through sales only, with pricing tailored to organisation size, infrastructure and privileged access needs. A free trial is offered.

Netwrix Privilege Secure, previously sold as SBPAM, approaches the category from the opposite direction to a vault. Rather than storing standing privileged credentials and rotating them, it creates privilege when a task is approved and removes it when the session ends. The product page contrasts this with vault-only tools, which it describes as defaulting to credential vaulting and rotation with standing-privilege removal available as an add-on, and cites a 2026 Netwrix survey finding that 66 percent of organisations still leave standing, always-on access in place for some or most privileged roles.

Four capabilities anchor the product. Zero standing privilege eliminates permanent accounts by creating access only for a task. Agentless discovery scans endpoints to find hidden accounts without deploying software to them. Granular privilege control grants only the rights a task requires. Session monitoring records privileged activity with logs for audit evidence. A post-session cleanup step is documented that removes Kerberos tickets and disables remote desktop access after each session, which addresses credential residue that a vault-centred design does not.

The product ships in three parts. Privilege Secure for Discovery continuously scans to uncover hidden privileged accounts and remove standing access. Privilege Secure for Access Management replaces permanent administrator accounts with just-in-time sessions. Endpoint Privilege Manager removes local administrator rights on Windows and macOS and grants task-specific permissions. A privileged task automation capability runs sensitive administrative work such as software updates, password resets and log collection without exposing credentials or leaving access in place. A bring-your-own-vault option lets existing vault investments remain, with Netwrix acting as the session broker.

Licensing is documented on the product page: the total number of users who need to log in to the product, with the licence including all features, unlimited platforms, unlimited managed accounts, unlimited managed resources, full API access and redundant deployment options. No figure is published; the pricing page routes privileged access management to a quote request. The vendor states initial deployment takes under 20 minutes and full deployment under one day.

StrongDM sells a runtime just-in-time authorisation layer rather than a credential vault. The pricing page frames the model as the product's main commercial argument: a single stock-keeping unit, priced per user, that includes every feature. The page contrasts this with competitors that charge by protocol, resource type and usage, arguing that such models make budgeting difficult and total spend hard to predict. No rate is published, so the shape of the model is visible while the amount is not.

The documented scope covers developers, infrastructure teams, service accounts and AI agents. Six capabilities are listed. Native tool integration provides a desktop client so engineers keep their existing workflow. Just-in-time access supports human-in-the-loop approvals through Slack or Microsoft Teams, or automatic approvals through an IT service management system. Runtime authorisation applies adaptive, policy-based decisions with real-time visibility. Granular audit trails and session recording log access, activity and policy approvals for compliance and forensics. Agentic AI access extends the same authorisation, auditing and policy enforcement to AI agents and automated workflows. Existing vault support integrates with Delinea Secret Server and other vaults.

That last point defines where the product fits. StrongDM is positioned to complement existing security investments rather than require a replacement, which makes it a candidate for a team that already runs a vault and wants a consistent access and approval layer across databases, servers, Kubernetes clusters and internal applications. A buyer without a vault should confirm how credentials are stored before treating it as a complete privileged access programme.

The vendor also publishes a substantial explanatory guide to the category covering privileged account types, privilege creep and the distinction between identity and access management and privileged access management, last updated in March 2026. Basic support is included for all customers, with premium service packages available separately for more complex deployments.

Teleport secures access to servers, Kubernetes clusters, databases, internal applications and Windows desktops using short-lived certificates, detailed audit logging and role-based access control tied to an existing single sign-on provider such as Okta, Entra ID, GitHub or Google Workspace. The homepage describes the result as vault-free privileged access: because access is granted by cryptographic identity rather than a stored password or key, there is no shared secret to vault, rotate or leak. Identity is anchored in a hardware root of trust through hardware security modules, trusted platform modules and biometrics, and privileges are ephemeral so no standing access persists between sessions. Recent positioning extends the same identity layer to AI agents and Model Context Protocol tooling.

Documented capabilities include session recording and playback, session sharing and moderation, dual authorisation requiring a moderator for privileged sessions, identity-based audit events, structured audit export to Splunk, Datadog, Panther and Elastic, passwordless authentication, and a virtual network capability that reaches internal TCP and SSH resources without a virtual private network. Infrastructure as code management runs through Terraform, Helm and a Kubernetes operator, and the documentation covers high availability, multi-region clusters and securing key material with cloud key management or hardware security modules.

Three editions are documented. Community Edition is free and open source and includes core SSH, Kubernetes, database and application access, positioned for hobbyists, home labs and small teams. Enterprise Cloud is managed by the vendor, which handles infrastructure, upgrades and certificates, and gives each customer a dedicated subdomain. Enterprise Self-Hosted is a paid plan for organisations with strict compliance requirements, adds capabilities such as FIPS support, and requires a valid licence obtained through the vendor.

No figures are published for either paid edition; the pricing page is a request form. The free edition makes this the cheapest entry point in the comparison for a team willing to self-host, and the practical evaluation question is whether a certificate-based model fits existing administrator workflows.