AWS IAM Access Analyzer vs CloudTracker: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
AWS IAM Access Analyzer is a commercial identity governance and administration tool by Amazon Web Services, Inc.. CloudTracker is a free identity governance and administration tool. 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, company size fit, deployment model, here is our conclusion:
Teams managing large AWS environments who need to eliminate excess IAM permissions without manual policy review will find AWS IAM Access Analyzer indispensable; it surfaces unused access across your account ecosystem and validates least privilege automatically. The tool covers NIST PR.AA and ID.AM functions directly, catching the permission creep that auditors flag every time. Skip this if your organization runs mostly outside AWS or treats IAM governance as a once-yearly compliance checkbox rather than ongoing hygiene.
AWS teams buried under IAM sprawl need CloudTracker because it surfaces exactly which permissions each user actually touches, then flags what they don't use. It's free and requires nothing but CloudTrail logs, so you can start finding over-privileged accounts in your first afternoon without a vendor implementation call. Skip this if your IAM is already lean or you need automated remediation; CloudTracker is forensic analysis, not a removal tool.
