AWS Assume Role Helper vs Axiom Security Break Glass Access: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
AWS Assume Role Helper is a free privileged access management tool. Axiom Security Break Glass Access is a commercial privileged access management tool by Axiom Security. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best privileged access management fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, integrations, company size fit, here is our conclusion:
DevOps engineers and security teams managing multiple AWS accounts will find AWS Assume Role Helper valuable for reducing credential management friction without adding another IAM tool to their stack. The free, open-source approach (41 GitHub stars) eliminates manual credentials file editing, which directly cuts the most common source of exposed keys in CLI workflows. Skip this if you need centralized audit logging or cross-platform credential vaulting; this is a local efficiency play, not an access governance platform.
Axiom Security Break Glass Access
Teams managing on-call rotations across multiple incident response channels should use Axiom Security Break Glass Access for its tight integration with PagerDuty and OpsGenie, eliminating the friction between who's supposed to have access and who actually activates it. The tool's synchronization with live on-call schedules means you're not manually updating break glass rosters after every rotation change, and automatic access revocation after incidents closes a common gap where temporary elevated access becomes permanent. Skip this if your organization runs break glass workflows disconnected from on-call systems or needs deep integration with Slack/Teams incident channels; Axiom is built for teams that already live in PagerDuty.
