Active Directory Control Paths vs Adaxes: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
Active Directory Control Paths is a free identity governance and administration tool. Adaxes is a commercial identity governance and administration tool by softerra adaxes. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best identity governance and administration fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, company size fit, deployment model, here is our conclusion:
Active Directory Control Paths
Identity and access teams in mid-sized organizations running on-premises Active Directory will get the most from Active Directory Control Paths because it surfaces privilege escalation routes that standard AD auditing tools simply don't visualize. The tool is free and maintains 680 GitHub stars, meaning it's been battle-tested by actual practitioners who've contributed hardening feedback over years. Skip this if your environment is mostly cloud-native or you need a commercial vendor to sign an SLA; this is a single-purpose graph analyzer that requires you to interpret what you find and act independently.
Mid-market and enterprise teams managing hybrid AD and Entra ID environments will get the most from Adaxes because it handles cross-domain delegation and approval workflows without forcing you into a full IAM platform rebuild. Its support for LDAPS/Kerberos encryption, role-based permission delegation, and DMZ-capable web interface maps directly to NIST PR.AA and PR.PS controls that most organizations actually need to audit. Skip this if your priority is cloud-native identity orchestration or you're standardizing exclusively on Entra ID; Adaxes assumes on-premises AD is staying in your infrastructure.
