Privileged Access Management: 6 PAM Tools Compared [2026]

BeyondTrust shipped an AI agent control module on October 21, 2026, one of several 2026 changes reshaping the privileged access management market alongside Palo Alto Networks' acquisition of CyberArk, now sold as Idira, and Delinea's purchase of StrongDM. A six-tool comparison published October 30, 2026 cites BeyondTrust's Phantom Labs observing 1.28 million shell commands requested from roughly 132,000 prompts over four weeks, with 85 percent of observed coding-agent users invoking at least one MCP server, averaging 4.35 servers per connected user and as many as 36. Okta survey data cited in the comparison found 80 percent of government-worker respondents cannot fully account for AI agents accessing their systems, only 16 percent were confident they hold a complete inventory of those agents, and only 9 percent were confident they know what the agents do.

Privileged access management decides who can touch your domain controllers, cloud consoles and production databases, and the market reshuffled hard in 2026. Palo Alto Networks took over CyberArk and now sells it as Idira, Delinea bought StrongDM, and BeyondTrust shipped an AI agent control module on October 21. Both Delinea and BeyondTrust also say Gartner named them Leaders in its 2026 Magic Quadrant for Privileged Access Management, each for the eighth straight edition, according to BeyondTrust’s announcement https://www.kxan.com/business/press-releases/globenewswire/9852333/beyondtrust-named-a-leader-in-2026-gartner-magic-quadrant-for-privileged-access-management-for-eighth-consecutive-report-positioned-highest-for-ability-to-execute . This comparison puts six PAM solutions side by side as of October 30, 2026: Idira formerly CyberArk , Delinea, BeyondTrust, Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management, Okta Privileged Access and ManageEngine PAM360. The tools differ less on raw features than on how you buy them, what they require you to already own, and how they handle the newest privileged identity in your estate, the AI agent. Pricing is the weak spot of this category. Three vendors publish nothing you can budget from, one ties its price to a Microsoft license tier, and only two put real numbers on a page. BeyondTrust also drew attention this month through reported exploitation of a Remote Support flaw, which sits alongside the Ivanti and BeyondTrust zero-days https://shattered.io/ivanti-beyondtrust-zero-days-kev-oct-13-16-edge-access-2026/ that security teams were already patching. Every figure below comes from vendor pages, vendor press releases or dated third-party reviews, and each claim is labeled that way. Don't miss new tech stories on Google Add Shattered once in the Google app and our stories show up in your news suggestions. Add now https://www.google.com/preferences/source?hl=en&q=https%3A%2F%2Fshattered.io%2F What PAM Solutions Actually Do in 2026 A privileged access management platform controls the accounts that can change things: domain admins, root, cloud owners, database administrators, service accounts and, increasingly, software agents acting on someone’s behalf. The core jobs have stayed stable for years. The tool stores or rotates credentials in a vault, brokers and records sessions, hands out elevated rights for a limited time, and logs who did what. Four capability families matter when you compare PAM solutions. Vaulting and rotation covers shared and service credentials. Session management proxies, records and sometimes terminates admin sessions. Endpoint privilege management strips local admin rights from workstations and servers while still letting approved tasks run. Just-in-time access, often paired with zero standing privilege, grants a role for minutes or hours and then removes it. Vendors now add a fifth family, governance for non-human and AI identities. That fifth family explains most of the 2026 product news. BeyondTrust’s Phantom Labs reported observing 1.28 million shell commands requested from roughly 132,000 prompts over four weeks, close to ten commands per prompt, and found that 85 percent of observed coding-agent users had at least one MCP server invoked, averaging 4.35 servers per connected user with as many as 36. Those are shell commands running under someone’s privileges. A PAM tool that only watches human admins misses a growing share of the activity. Okta’s own survey material points the same way. In its government-worker survey, 80 percent of respondents said they cannot fully account for AI agents accessing their systems, only 16 percent felt confident they hold a complete inventory of those agents, and only 9 percent felt confident they know what the agents actually do. Whatever you pick, plan for agents in the privileged inventory from day one. One more framing point before the vendor detail. The six products here are not equivalent shapes. Idira, Delinea and BeyondTrust are dedicated PAM platforms sold through sales teams. Entra PIM is a feature inside Microsoft’s identity stack. Okta Privileged Access is an add-on to an identity suite. PAM360 is a mid-market product with published entry pricing. A fair comparison asks what each one costs you in total, including the licenses it drags in. Specs Table: 6 Privileged Access Management Platforms Side by Side The table below holds only facts the vendors or dated reviews published as of October 30, 2026. Where a vendor published nothing, the cell says so rather than guessing. Cells marked vendor-reported come from the vendor’s own announcement and have no independent confirmation in the sources checked. | Attribute | Idira ex-CyberArk | Delinea | BeyondTrust | Microsoft Entra PIM | Okta Privileged Access | ManageEngine PAM360 | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | Product name, Oct 2026 | Idira PAM Self-Hosted , Idira Privilege Cloud | Delinea Platform with Secret Server, powered by Iris AI | Pathfinder Platform Password Safe, Privileged Remote Access, Endpoint Privilege Management | Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management | Okta Privileged Access add-on | ManageEngine PAM360 | | Biggest 2026 change | CyberArk branding moved to Idira under Palo Alto Networks | StrongDM acquisition completed March 5, 2026 | AI Agent Security generally available October 21, 2026 | Beta PIM APIs retired, move to the newer API iteration | PAM added to the nonprofit free tier | Cloud edition reported in beta | | Pricing model | No public list price found | Quote-based | Quote-based | Part of Entra ID P2 or ID Governance | Add-on to Okta suites | Published price plus free edition | | Entry price signal | None published | None published | None published | $10 per user per month Entra ID P2, reported | No standalone PAM price | $7,995 per year for 10 administrators and 25 keys reported | | License prerequisite | Sales contract | Sales contract | Sales contract | Entra ID P2 or Entra ID Governance | An Okta suite | None beyond the PAM360 license | | Free option or trial | Not found | Not found | Not found | License trial works until it expires | Free tier for qualifying nonprofits | Free edition 1 admin, 10 resources , 30-day trial | | Gartner PAM 2026 status | Report offered on vendor site, rank not confirmed | Leader vendor page | Leader, eighth straight vendor-reported | No placement in sources | No placement in sources | No placement in sources | | Other analyst signal | Forrester Wave PIM Q3 2025 listed as a resource | Frost Radar PAM 2026 and KuppingerCole Leadership Compass 2026 listed | Not itemized in sources | None in sources | Gartner Access Management 2025 not PAM | KuppingerCole Leadership Compass 2026, Everest Group PAM Voice of the Customer 2026 | | AI-agent controls | Platform-level positioning only | Just-in-time runtime authorization for AI agents | AI Agent Security module, Windows and macOS endpoints | No PIM-specific agent control confirmed | Broader Okta agent push, no PAM change confirmed | Not confirmed | | Deployment | Self-hosted and cloud editions | Platform plus Secret Server | Modular platform | Cloud service inside Entra ID | Cloud add-on | On-premises, cloud in beta | | Licensing metric | Contract | Contract | Contract | Per user per month | Per user, resource units | Administrators and keys | | Best fit | Large estates already near Palo Alto | DevOps and enterprise PAM | Endpoint and remote access | Microsoft-centered shops | Okta-centered shops | Budget-bound mid-market | | Main watch-out | Brand and portal transition in progress | Price needs a quote | Price needs a quote, October vulnerability reports | P1 alone does not cover PIM | No separate price page | Cloud edition not yet GA | One thing jumps out: the AI-agent row is uneven. Delinea and BeyondTrust describe concrete agent controls, while the other four describe direction rather than a shipped module. Treat the Gartner row with care. A Leader label in a Magic Quadrant describes vendor completeness of vision and ability to execute across a market. It does not measure how well a product blocks an attacker, how long a rollout takes or how painful an upgrade feels. Analyst sources get a closer look further down, including what they can and cannot tell a buyer. Idira, the New Name for CyberArk Under Palo Alto Networks CyberArk spent 2026 turning into Idira. Coverage of Palo Alto Networks’ fiscal 2026 results, such as this report on the finalized CyberArk acquisition https://kalkinemedia.com/us/news/announcements/palo-alto-networks-reports-1148b-revenue-for-fiscal-2026-finalizes-cyberark-acquisition , confirms the deal closed. One filing-based account dates the completion to February 11, 2026, though sources differ on how they describe the timing, so treat that date as reported rather than settled. The new brand began rolling out from May 31, 2026, and the vendor’s own site now reads Idira by Palo Alto Networks. For a buyer, the rename matters more than it sounds. Public documentation and status pages now use names such as Idira PAM Self-Hosted , Idira Privilege Cloud and Idira Identity. Self-hosted products picked up the new branding through software releases scheduled across May, June and July. Search habits, procurement records and old runbooks that say CyberArk will keep working for a while, but the support structure is changing underneath them. According to the vendor’s transition notice, the Support, Learning and Community resources are moving to new platforms, and the old partner portal is being retired. The same notice says existing contracts continue to be maintained during the transition. If you run Idira or CyberArk today, make sure your admins have access to the new portals before the cutover. On the product side, the vendor’s status page lists Idira Identity Cloud 26.16, with a 26.16.201 service hotfix dated October 29 and scheduled maintenance for October 31. The vendor also reportedly published security bulletins CA26-39 through CA26-44 on September 3, though the available record does not say which products they affect or how severe they are. Pull those bulletins before your next patch window rather than relying on a summary. Pricing stays opaque. No public list price appeared for the main PAM products in any source checked, including a full vault, session management and discovery package. Expect a quoted contract with support tiers on top. The vendor’s site lists analyst material it holds, among them a 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Privileged Access Management, a Forrester Wave on Privileged Identity Management from Q3 2025 and a 2025 IDC MarketScape on identity security. Listing a report is not the same as winning it, so ask the sales team which placement they claim and read the report yourself. Who should look at Idira first? Large enterprises that already run Palo Alto https://shattered.io/cisa-kev-palo-alto-cisco-ahsay-four-flaws-october-2026/ firewalls, Cortex or Prisma will see the logic of one vendor relationship. Everyone else should ask what the integration roadmap actually delivers and how the brand change affects their support entitlements. Delinea: Secret Server, StrongDM and the Iris Platform Delinea made the clearest strategic move of the year. It announced the StrongDM acquisition on January 15, 2026 and completed it on March 5, 2026, without disclosing financial terms. StrongDM brought just-in-time runtime authorization for engineering, DevOps and AI-driven environments, and Delinea now describes its offering as the Delinea Platform, powered by Delinea Iris AI. Secret Server remains the core PAM product name. Delinea also claims a 99.995 percent monthly availability SLA across its global regions, a number worth testing in contract language because an SLA only helps if the credit terms and exclusions are clear. The company says it was named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Privileged Access Management on October 21, its eighth consecutive appearance in the Leaders quadrant. Its vendor page shows a 4.6 out of 5 rating from 1,607 Gartner Peer Insights reviews, a sizeable peer sample that makes the average more meaningful than most review scores. Other 2026 items come from Delinea announcements and carry vendor-only sourcing. Secret Server reportedly reached FedRAMP High authorization on July 8, available to federal agencies through the FedRAMP Marketplace via UberEther. Delinea also said it joined Anthropic’s Project Glasswing on September 17 to test a Claude model for defensive work, starting with its own privileged-credential code. Timothy Regan became CFO on September 23, and Art Gilliland remains CEO. Delinea does not publish PAM prices. A dated third-party review from October 10 describes pricing as quote-based and calls Secret Server and the listed modules active. Old Secret Server edition prices still float around the web. Ignore them, because editions and modules have been repackaged around the platform. Delinea suits teams that want a mature vault and want the same vendor to cover developer and AI-agent access. The StrongDM piece is also the most direct answer in this group to the question of how engineers reach databases and servers without standing credentials. The trade-off is the usual one for a consolidating platform: more product surface, a quote for every module and an integration story that is still two years young. BeyondTrust: Pathfinder Platform and AI Agent Security BeyondTrust now organizes everything under the Pathfinder Platform, which covers human, machine, non-human and AI-agent identities. Its established names, Password Safe, Privileged Remote Access and Endpoint Privilege Management, still exist, and the vendor pricing page confirms quote-based sales. Janine Seebeck is listed as CEO and Marc Maiffret as CTO. The headline release is AI Agent Security, which became generally available on October 21, 2026 for Windows and macOS endpoints. BeyondTrust announced it as a module that decides what AI coworkers and autonomous agents may do on an endpoint before they act. General availability followed in fall as planned. This is the most concrete shipped agent control among the six products, and it builds on the endpoint privilege roots that BeyondTrust has held for years. Integrations arrived in a steady stream, according to the company’s announcements. BeyondTrust tied Pathfinder intelligence into CrowdStrike Falcon Next-Gen SIEM, announced a Forcepoint partnership on October 8 that can revoke risky service-account or agent access, and added a ServiceNow integration for Entitle just-in-time workflows on October 20. Identity Security Insights also gained AWS IAM Account Access Manager support on October 14. The documentation index lists monthly releases of Identity Security Insights from 26.04 through 26.10.1, which signals a fast cadence. The bad news this month concerns security of the vendor itself. A third-party result reported on October 19 that BeyondTrust disclosed a critical Remote Support vulnerability, allegedly exploited as a zero-day by a China-nexus espionage actor. The available sources do not confirm every detail, so read the vendor advisory directly and check whether your Remote Support instances are patched. A PAM vendor is a high-value target by definition, and how fast it patches deserves a place in your scorecard. The vendor says it was named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Privileged Access Management, announced October 26, for the eighth consecutive edition, and positioned highest for ability to execute. It also describes itself as independent, with more than 20,000 customers as of its August Inc. 5000 announcement. BeyondTrust fits shops that care about endpoint least privilege, vendor remote access and a vendor that is not part of a larger platform acquirer. Microsoft Entra PIM: The Low-Friction Path for Microsoft Shops Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management manages privileged access for Entra roles, Azure resources and groups. It is not a vault and not a session recorder. It does one thing very well for Microsoft estates, which is turning permanent administrator rights into time-limited, approved and audited activations. The licensing rule is the catch. PIM needs a valid Entra ID P2 or Entra ID Governance license, and Entra ID P1 alone does not cover full PIM. A dated third-party pricing review put Entra ID P2 at $10 per user per month on yearly billing in October 2026, and a market summary lists P1 at $7 and Entra Suite at $12. Microsoft’s own licensing pages describe the products but show no numeric standalone price for PIM, so those dollar figures come from reviewers, not from Microsoft. If a P2 license expires, PIM activation, assignment management, access reviews, the admin center experience, APIs and PowerShell interfaces all become unavailable in the tenant. Recent changes lean toward tighter control. Microsoft says Conditional Access enforcement at role activation became generally available on June 30, 2026, which means a user can be forced through multifactor authentication every time they activate a privileged role. Custom extensions for PIM role activation entered preview in October and cover groups, Entra roles and Azure resources. On October 28, Microsoft retired the Iteration 2 beta APIs for PIM and told customers to move to Iteration 3. The service itself stays, but any script or integration written against the old beta endpoints needs work. Microsoft’s wider Defender and Entra messaging this fall pushes phishing-resistant authentication, no standing admin rights and just-in-time access together. The company’s Ignite conference runs November 17 to 20, 2026, and further identity announcements are likely there. Nothing in the sources shows a PIM rename, retirement or acquisition, and no analyst placement for PIM specifically appeared in Microsoft’s material. Where does PIM stop? It will not rotate the password on a Linux root account, record an SSH session or manage secrets for a build pipeline. Teams with mixed estates usually pair PIM with a dedicated vault, or accept that PIM covers the Microsoft control plane and something else covers everything else. Okta Privileged Access and ManageEngine PAM360: The Add-On and the Budget Pick Okta Privileged Access Okta sells privileged access as an add-on to its identity suites rather than a standalone product. Its pricing page lists Starter and Essentials suites billed annually, shows a Core Essentials tier at $14 per user per month, and notes a $1,500 annual contract minimum for Workforce Identity. A dated third-party review reported the Essentials Suite starting at $17 per user per month, and Okta’s materials reportedly say that suite includes one resource unit that can cover two Privileged Access users. The two price points differ, so confirm the exact tier in a quote. No standalone Privileged Access price appeared anywhere in the sources. Okta added Privileged Access Management to its nonprofit bundle, including the free tier for qualifying nonprofits. In October 2026 events, including an Identity Day event on October 8 and an event on October 20 about unifying identity governance and privileged access, the company kept positioning privileged access alongside identity governance, but no source ties those initiatives to a PAM pricing or feature change. The latest product-specific Okta article the research found dates to January 2024, so version-level detail on Okta Privileged Access is thin. That alone is a reason to run a hands-on proof of concept before you commit. Okta Privileged Access fits organizations that already run Okta as the identity provider for staff and want server and secrets access under one login and one policy engine. It makes little sense as a first PAM purchase for a team that does not use Okta. ManageEngine PAM360 PAM360 is the only dedicated PAM product here with prices in public. A dated third-party review reports $7,995 per year for 10 administrators and 25 keys, plus a free edition for one administrator and 10 resources and a 30-day trial. One small-business PAM review https://www.netsysgroup.com/blog/privileged-access-management-software-small-business and a PAM tools pricing roundup https://cyberpresso.com/reviews/best-privileged-access-management-tools both carry those figures. ManageEngine’s own pricing page adds that a perpetual license costs three times the annual subscription, with a 20 percent annual maintenance and support fee from the second year. ManageEngine ended support for its RubyRep-based high-availability design, as its end-of-life announcement https://pitstop.manageengine.com/portal/en/community/topic/end-of-life-announcement-rubyrep-based-ha-model-in-pam360 explains, and moved to a primary and secondary server design with a shared database. Anyone running the older HA design needs to plan that migration. Analyst signals are modest but real. The vendor reports a KuppingerCole Leadership Compass 2026 Market Leader result and a Strong Buy rating at 8.0 out of 10 in its Product Value Navigator, and says PAM360 features among ten leading PAM providers assessed by 170 global enterprises in Everest Group’s Voice of the Customer report. A cloud edition is reportedly in beta, which makes PAM360 a strong on-premises choice today and a watch item for cloud buyers. PAM Solutions Pricing Table: What Each Vendor Publishes Pricing for privileged access management is mostly a negotiation, so a table can only show what is public and flag what is not. Prices below are US dollars as reported in October 2026 and vary by region, term and channel. | Vendor and product | Public price signal | Billing basis | Source type | What else you pay for | |---|---|---|---|---| | Idira ex-CyberArk | No public list price found | Contract quote | Vendor pages, reviews | Support tiers and add-on modules | | Delinea Platform and Secret Server | No public price | Contract quote | Dated third-party review | Modules, StrongDM-based access | | BeyondTrust Pathfinder | No public USD list price | Contract quote | Vendor pricing-request page | Password Safe, Remote Access, EPM | | Microsoft Entra PIM | $10 per user per month Entra ID P2 | Yearly, per user | Dated third-party reviews | The P2 or ID Governance license for every PIM user | | Okta Privileged Access | Add-on, no standalone price | Annual suite billing | Vendor pricing page | An Okta suite, $1,500 annual minimum | | ManageEngine PAM360 | $7,995 per year for 10 administrators and 25 keys | Annual, or perpetual at 3x annual | Third-party reviews, vendor page | 20 percent yearly maintenance on perpetual | | PAM360 free edition | $0 for 1 administrator and 10 resources | Free | Dated third-party review | Nothing, but with tight limits | Three pricing models https://shattered.io/edr-vs-xdr-crowdstrike-defender-sentinelone-2026/ emerge. Quote-only contracts Idira, Delinea, BeyondTrust put the burden on you to benchmark. Bundled licensing Entra PIM, Okta looks cheap per seat but only if you already own, or planned to buy, the parent license. Published tiered pricing PAM360 is the easiest to budget and the only one with a free entry point. Per-seat math can mislead in PAM. A privileged user count is usually far smaller than a workforce count, which favors per-admin models for small teams. For Entra PIM, every user who relies on PIM needs the qualifying license, so count carefully before multiplying by $10. Compare total cost over three years, including the vault, session tooling and any extra module that fills a gap the base product leaves. Analyst Rankings and Benchmark Evidence for Privileged Access Management Independent head-to-head testing of PAM products is rare. Nothing in the research turned up a lab benchmark that scores all six tools on the same attack scenarios. What exists instead are analyst reports, peer review scores and vendor-run telemetry. Each answers a different question, and none answers the one a buyer most wants answered, which is how a product behaves in your environment. | Source | Date | What it says | Limit | |---|---|---|---| | Gartner Magic Quadrant for Privileged Access Management, 2026 | October 2026 | Delinea announced October 21 and BeyondTrust announced October 26 each say they were named Leaders for the eighth consecutive report. BeyondTrust adds highest for ability to execute | Both claims come from the vendors. Read the report for the full placement of the other four | | Gartner Peer Insights | Shown on Delinea’s page, October 2026 | Delinea displays 4.6 out of 5 from 1,607 reviews | Peer scores skew toward satisfied, engaged users | | KuppingerCole Leadership Compass for PAM, 2026 | 2026 | ManageEngine reports Market Leader status, and Delinea lists the 2026 report as a resource | Report scope and scoring weights differ from Gartner | | Everest Group PAM Voice of the Customer, 2026 | 2026 | PAM360 features among ten leading PAM providers assessed by 170 global enterprises | Vendor-published summary, not a ranking of all six tools | | Frost Radar: Privileged Access Management, 2026 | June 2026 | Delinea reports Growth Index Leader and Innovation Index Leader | Growth and innovation indexes do not measure security efficacy | | BeyondTrust Phantom Labs telemetry | October 2026 | 1.28 million shell commands from about 132,000 agent prompts in four weeks, 85 percent of coding-agent users with an MCP server | Vendor research on its own observed sample | Read across these sources and a pattern emerges. Delinea and BeyondTrust collect the most analyst recognition, and both lead their own marketing with the Gartner result. That makes them the safest defaults for a board-level audience that asks about analyst standing. Idira lists a wide library of reports but the sources do not confirm a 2026 placement. Entra PIM and Okta Privileged Access appear mainly in other categories, such as access management, where Okta says it ranked as a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Access Management for the ninth consecutive year. One more caution on benchmarks. Endpoint security has standard lab tests that vendors quote, but PAM does not have an equivalent standard test. A claim of PAM efficacy without a named methodology deserves a polite request for the methodology. What should you do with all this? Use analyst reports to build a shortlist, then use your own proof of concept to choose. Ask each finalist to rotate a service account across a hundred hosts, broker an SSH session with recording, grant a time-boxed cloud role and revoke it on schedule, and surface an AI agent’s tool calls in the audit log. Time each step. Those four tasks tell you more than any quadrant. Real-World Examples: What Happened in the Last Six Months Product pages describe intent. Dated events show how the vendors behave under pressure. Seven developments from the research give a realistic picture of each company’s direction in 2026. 1. Delinea absorbs StrongDM March 5, 2026 . Announced January 15 and completed less than two months later, the deal gave Delinea just-in-time runtime authorization for engineering and DevOps teams. It tells buyers that Delinea sees developer and agent access as part of PAM, not a side market. 2. CyberArk becomes Idira from May 31, 2026 . The rebrand rolled through cloud services and then through self-hosted releases in May, June and July, ahead of the customer portal transition. Customers face a slow cutover rather than a single event. 3. BeyondTrust announces AI Agent Security and ships it October 21 . The module restricts what an agent may do on a Windows or macOS endpoint before it acts. Phantom Labs’ telemetry of 1.28 million observed shell commands gave the launch a data point, although it is vendor research. 4. ManageEngine retires its old HA model. The RubyRep-based high-availability design reached end of life, replaced by primary and secondary servers sharing a database. Teams on the old design had to plan an architectural change, not a patch. 5. Microsoft retires PIM beta APIs October 28, 2026 . Iteration 2 beta APIs for Azure resources, Entra roles and groups went away. Scripts that called them need updating to Iteration 3, a small but real reminder that cloud PAM features change under you. 6. Okta adds PAM to the nonprofit free tier. Okta added Privileged Access Management to its nonprofit bundle, including the free tier for qualifying nonprofits, which shows Okta using privileged access as an adoption lever inside its suite. 7. BeyondTrust Remote Support flaw reported as exploited reported October 19 . A third-party report said a critical Remote Support vulnerability was allegedly used as a zero-day by a China-nexus actor. It illustrates why PAM vendors need the same patch discipline you demand of everyone else. One further data point sharpens the picture. CyberArk reportedly released security bulletins CA26-39 through CA26-44, though the available result does not say which products they affect or how severe they are. That is not alarming in itself, since vendors that publish bulletins are usually vendors that fix things. It does show why PAM products belong in your vulnerability management cycle with an owner and a patch deadline. The customer side is quieter. No verifiable named PAM customer deployment surfaced in the sources for any of the six vendors. When a salesperson offers references, ask for a company of your size, in your industry, that has run the product through a full upgrade cycle. Best PAM Solution by Use Case: 7 Recommendations No single product wins every scenario, and the data supports different picks for different buyers. These recommendations rest on the verified facts above plus judgment, and each one names the trade-off. Teams building a broader identity and defense plan can also browse the wider security coverage https://shattered.io/category/security/ for adjacent comparisons. - Large enterprise with mixed on-premises and cloud estates: shortlist Delinea, BeyondTrust and Idira, and run the same proof of concept on all three. Each holds analyst standing or a long history, and each sells by quote, so competitive bidding is your main price lever. - Microsoft-centered organization: start with Entra PIM, priced at a reported $10 per user per month through Entra ID P2. It covers Entra roles, Azure resources and groups, and Conditional Access can force MFA at activation. Add a vault only for the non-Microsoft systems it cannot reach. - Okta-centered workforce identity: look at Okta Privileged Access as an add-on, and compare it against Delinea or BeyondTrust on a like-for-like proof of concept. The lack of a published standalone price means you should force a written quote. - Small team or tight budget: PAM360 offers a free edition for one administrator and 10 resources and a reported $7,995 per year for 10 administrators and 25 keys. It is the only option here you can price without talking to anyone. - DevOps and AI-agent heavy engineering: Delinea, through its StrongDM acquisition and just-in-time runtime authorization, and BeyondTrust, through AI Agent Security on Windows and macOS endpoints, are the two with concrete agent controls. Pick Delinea if the risk sits in databases and servers, and BeyondTrust if it sits on developer endpoints. - US federal and regulated buyers: Delinea reportedly holds FedRAMP High authorization for Secret Server, which can shorten a compliance review. Confirm the current status in the FedRAMP Marketplace before relying on it. - Endpoint least privilege and vendor remote access: BeyondTrust’s Endpoint Privilege Management and Privileged Remote Access are its core strengths. Patch Remote Support promptly and verify advisory status. A final tip on shortlisting. Pick two vendors from different shapes, say one dedicated platform and one bundled option, then compare. A bundled tool that covers most of your need at a fraction of the price is worth knowing about before you sign a large contract. Pros and Cons of Each Privileged Access Management Tool | Platform | Pros | Cons | |---|---|---| | Idira ex-CyberArk | Backed by Palo Alto Networks. Long analyst record across vaulting and secrets. Self-hosted and cloud names are clear | Brand and support-portal transition under way. No public price. Gartner 2026 placement not confirmed in sources | | Delinea | StrongDM adds developer and agent access. Gartner Leader claim and 1,607 peer reviews. Reported FedRAMP High for Secret Server | Quote-only pricing. Platform still integrating a 2026 acquisition | | BeyondTrust | Shipped AI Agent Security in October. Strong endpoint and remote access heritage. Frequent integration announcements | Quote-only pricing. Reported Remote Support zero-day activity this month | | Microsoft Entra PIM | Cheapest route for Microsoft estates at a reported $10 per user per month. Conditional Access at activation | Needs P2 or ID Governance. No vault or session recording. Beta API retirement shows churn | | Okta Privileged Access | Fits Okta customers. Free tier for qualifying nonprofits | No standalone price. Thin product-specific release detail | | ManageEngine PAM360 | Published prices. Free edition and 30-day trial. Perpetual license option | Cloud edition still reportedly in beta. HA redesign required for older installs | The cons column reads shorter for the big vendors only because their problems are commercial rather than technical. A quote-only price is a real cost for a buyer, since it costs weeks of calls to learn what a competitor lists on a web page. Weigh that friction against the capability gap before you choose the cheaper product. How to Migrate Between PAM Platforms: A 10-Step Plan Switching PAM tools carries more risk than switching most software, because you hold the keys to everything during the move. Cutover plans fail when teams forget a service account that nobody owned. The sequence below applies whether you are leaving CyberArk for Idira-era contracts, moving from a legacy vault to Delinea or BeyondTrust, or replacing a home-grown process with Entra PIM. 1. Inventory every privileged identity. Include human admins, shared accounts, service accounts, API keys, SSH keys, certificates and AI agents with tool access. Record an owner for each. 2. Classify by blast radius. Domain admin, cloud owner and root credentials come first. Low-risk test accounts come last. 3. Check contract and support dates. If you run CyberArk, note the upcoming customer portal transition and confirm any reported December 31 onboarding deadline for Endpoint Privilege Manager with your account team. 4. Audit scripts and integrations. Entra PIM scripts built on the retired Iteration 2 beta APIs need Iteration 3. 5. Stand up the target in parallel. Keep the old tool authoritative while you onboard a pilot group. 6. Onboard low-risk accounts first. Prove rotation, checkout, session recording and approval flow before touching crown-jewel credentials. 7. Move human admins to just-in-time access. Remove standing rights as each group cuts over, and enforce MFA at activation. 8. Move service accounts and secrets. This is where hidden dependencies surface. Rotate after cutover so the old vault no longer holds a valid copy. 9. Add AI agents to scope. Decide which agents get credentials, which get none and which run under a separate policy. 10. Decommission the old tool. Export audit logs for your retention period, then remove access and revoke leftover credentials. A short script helps with step one. The example below reads an exported account list and flags entries with no owner or no rotation date, which are the likeliest sources of surprises during cutover. python import csv def risky accounts path : flagged = with open path, newline="" as f: for row in csv.DictReader f : no owner = not row.get "owner", "" .strip never rotated = not row.get "last rotated", "" .strip if no owner or never rotated: flagged.append row "account" , no owner, never rotated return flagged for account, no owner, never rotated in risky accounts "privileged accounts.csv" : print f"{account}: no owner={no owner} never rotated={never rotated}" Run the flagged list past system owners before cutover. Any account that still has no owner after that review is a candidate for disabling rather than migrating. Verdict: Which PAM Solution Wins in 2026 For most mid-size and large organizations, Delinea and BeyondTrust earn the top spots on the evidence collected here. Both claim an eighth consecutive Gartner Leader placement, both shipped agent-related controls in 2026, and both give you a full PAM platform rather than a feature. Delinea edges ahead for server, database and DevOps access because of StrongDM. BeyondTrust edges ahead for endpoints and remote access because of Endpoint Privilege Management and its October 21 AI Agent Security release. The reported Remote Support zero-day activity is the one mark against BeyondTrust this month, and a patched, monitored deployment should reduce that concern. Idira is the right call if you already run CyberArk or sit deep in the Palo Alto Networks ecosystem. The rebrand adds transition work, possibly running to December 31, so negotiate support commitments in writing. Entra PIM wins on cost and simplicity for Microsoft shops at a reported $10 per user per month, with the caveat that it covers only the Microsoft control plane. PAM360 wins for small budgets thanks to a free edition and a reported $7,995 annual entry price. Okta Privileged Access wins only when Okta already anchors your identity stack. | Need | Pick | Why | |---|---|---| | Best overall platform | Delinea or BeyondTrust tie | Analyst claims plus shipped agent controls | | Best for Microsoft estates | Entra PIM | Reported $10 per user per month, native activation controls | | Best for budget buyers | ManageEngine PAM360 | Free edition and published $7,995 annual price | | Best for existing CyberArk customers | Idira | Continuity through the brand transition | | Best for Okta shops | Okta Privileged Access | Single identity plane, add-on pricing | Before you sign, ask every finalist for a written price, a patch-response commitment and a plan for AI-agent identities. The vendors that answer all three quickly are usually the ones that will support you after the contract starts. Frequently Asked Questions About PAM Solutions What is privileged access management? Privileged access management is the set of tools and policies that control, monitor and limit accounts with elevated rights, such as administrators, service accounts and now AI agents. It typically combines a credential vault, session recording, just-in-time access and audit logging. Is CyberArk now called Idira? Yes. CyberArk began moving its products and services to the Idira brand on May 31, 2026, and the vendor’s site now reads Idira by Palo Alto Networks. Product names such as Idira PAM Self-Hosted and Idira Privilege Cloud appear in current documentation. Which PAM tool has public pricing? ManageEngine PAM360 has the clearest public price, a reported $7,995 per year for 10 administrators and 25 keys, plus a free edition. Entra PIM is priced through Entra ID P2, reported at $10 per user per month. Delinea, BeyondTrust and Idira sell by quote. Does Entra PIM need a special license? Yes. PIM requires Microsoft Entra ID P2 or Microsoft Entra ID Governance, and Entra ID P1 alone is not enough. If the license or trial expires, PIM features stop working in the tenant. Which vendors say they are Gartner Leaders for 2026? Delinea announced Leader status on October 21 and BeyondTrust on October 26, each describing it as an eighth consecutive appearance. Verify the full quadrant in the Gartner report, which also covers vendors not listed here. How should PAM handle AI agents? Treat agents as privileged identities with their own inventory, owners and limits. BeyondTrust’s AI Agent Security, generally available October 21, and Delinea’s just-in-time runtime authorization for AI agents are the most concrete options among these six. Is a free PAM tool good enough? For a lab or a very small team, the PAM360 free edition for one administrator and 10 resources can work. Anything larger will outgrow it quickly, so use it to learn the workflow rather than as a long-term control.