AWS IAM Access Analyzer vs kube2iam: 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.. kube2iam 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.
Teams running Kubernetes on AWS who need to eliminate long-lived IAM credentials in pods will find kube2iam's annotation-driven approach simpler than managing separate credential distribution systems. The tool intercepts metadata API calls at the container level, meaning you get temporary credentials without adding a sidecar or rewriting application code, and the 2,000+ GitHub stars reflect real adoption in production clusters. Skip this if you're standardizing on IRSA (IAM Roles for Service Accounts) or already using EKS; kube2iam is built for self-managed Kubernetes where metadata interception is still your cleanest option.
