CyberArk Privilege Cloud vs Teleport
CyberArk Privilege Cloud
CyberArk Privilege Cloud is the SaaS delivery of CyberArk's PAM platform. It provides a credential vault, session management, threat analytics, and just-in-time access for privileged users, managed entirely by CyberArk. Privilege Cloud is widely used in enterprise and government PAM deployments, with FedRAMP High authorization and deep integrations with legacy enterprise systems (mainframes, AS/400, network devices).
Pros
- Category leader in analyst reports (Gartner MQ Leader for years)
- Broadest coverage of legacy enterprise systems
- FedRAMP High makes it the default for US federal agencies
- Strong threat analytics and behavioral monitoring
Things to check
- Expensive; enterprise-only pricing with long sales cycles
- Administrative complexity; steep operational learning curve
- UI feels less modern compared to modern DevOps PAM tools
- Implementation typically requires professional services engagement
Pricing: Quote-based. Public-sector reference: Privilege Cloud Standard about $1,495 per user/yr (Texas DIR reseller pricelist, 2023; government list price, may exceed commercially discounted price).
Teleport
Teleport is a modern infrastructure access platform that unifies SSH, Kubernetes, database, and application access behind a single identity-aware proxy. It replaces VPNs, bastion hosts, and shared credentials with short-lived certificates tied to SSO identity. Teleport is open source at its core (Apache 2.0), with a commercial Enterprise tier that adds FedRAMP support, IdP hosting, and advanced policies. It is popular with DevOps and SRE teams operating at cloud-native scale.
Pros
- Excellent developer experience; cloud-native design
- Open source core with strong enterprise tier
- Short-lived certs eliminate shared credentials and password sprawl
- Broad protocol support (SSH, K8s, DB, apps) in one tool
Things to check
- Enterprise features require the paid tier
- Complex to operate at scale without dedicated SREs
- Self-hosted HA setup requires Postgres/etcd expertise
- Smaller integration catalog than legacy PAM vendors
Pricing: Community edition free for companies under 100 employees and under $10M revenue. AWS Marketplace entry $50,000/yr (25-user minimum, 2026); usage-based quote (active users, workloads, resources) otherwise.