Microsoft Entra
Shares rank 5 of 12 identity providers by recommenders
People recommend Entra as a cloud identity platform with built-in RBAC and phish-resistant MFA, even on the free tier. Critics warn of vendor lock-in and past security flaws.
People recommend Entra as a cloud identity platform with built-in RBAC and phish-resistant MFA, even on the free tier. Critics warn of vendor lock-in and past security flaws.
26 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 18
- approval share
- 31%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Replaces Active Directory and scales permissions
“it's possible to use Entra as your Active Directory, along with the fine grained RBAC built in to the platform”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “GitHub experience various partial-outages/degradations” “Entra is one of the few software that manages permissions at scale”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “Should we fear Microsoft's monopoly?” Phish-resistant MFA and SSO standards
“Even with the free version you get phish-resistant MFA, SAML, OIDC, OAuth.”
Comment from 4 May 2026 in “VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage” “platform SSO works pretty well, at least with Entra and Okta”
Comment from 4 Mar 2026 in “Apple Introduces MacBook Neo”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Poor documentation and slow performance
“Between Entra and Dataverse and everything else, the whole system is a poorly documented bowl of spaghetti.”
Comment from 21 Oct 2026 in “Voxtral 3” “documentation from both Microsoft & Canonical had heavily generated documentation that was flat out wrong”
Comment from 12 Feb 2026 in “ai;dr” “I was using Entra and Azure the other day and boy are they slow and clunky.”
Comment from 9 Aug 2026 in “You might want to build your WebApp in Canvas instead of HTML” - Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Ask: Why does everything Microsoft create lately feel fragile and half-baked?”
Security vulnerabilities and misconfigurations
“Entra has already had vulnerabilities where a user in one tenant could access global admin of every other tenant.”
Comment from 30 Sep 2026 in “I could've accessed 17T Microsoft records” “Entra misconfiguration that got Microsoft's own sensitive internal services owned by a researcher”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?” “I mean Entra and Okta got popped.”
Comment from 28 Oct 2026 in “Leak Exposes 41,000 Homeland Security Workers–Including Undercover ICE Agents” Employer policies limit passkeys
“Every step along the way of a corporate MS account is bullshit, passkeys are just a victim of enterprise policies.”
Comment from 14 Oct 2026 in “Passkeys are not a trap” “Microsoft Entra is a workforce product. An employer always decides how you authenticate to your work account.”
Comment from 14 Oct 2026 in “Passkeys are not a trap” “I was not able to store and use the passkey in my password manager of choice”
Comment from 14 Oct 2026 in “Passkeys are not a trap” Vendor lock-in across Microsoft products
“the horizontal integration across Entra, not the Office experience, that is the lock in”
Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices” “Intune and Entra are the vendor-lock in technologies”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “Apple Business”
Other identity providers people recommend
The four most recommended other identity providers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 12 identity providers, rankedWhat people said
24 of the 26 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I mean Entra and Okta got popped.”
“Between Entra and Dataverse and everything else, the whole system is a poorly documented bowl of spaghetti.”
“Every step along the way of a corporate MS account is bullshit, passkeys are just a victim of enterprise policies.”
“Microsoft Entra is a workforce product. An employer always decides how you authenticate to your work account.”
“I was not able to store and use the passkey in my password manager of choice”
“Entra has already had vulnerabilities where a user in one tenant could access global admin of every other tenant.”
“I was using Entra and Azure the other day and boy are they slow and clunky.”
“Logins are broken, exchange, admin, entra, everything feels so fragile.”
“I'm not sure how much much info there is left that isn't already combed through by NSA and friends”
“got added to their Microsoft Entra tenant”
“I don't have API keys, or passwords of any kind, anywhere in the stack.”
“Even with the free version you get phish-resistant MFA, SAML, OIDC, OAuth.”
“enterprise management of Windows devices is in a worse place than it was ten years ago.”
“you're in for a world of pain on Linux”
“Intune and Entra are the vendor-lock in technologies”
“platform SSO works pretty well, at least with Entra and Okta”
“There are so many exploits for AD but few for Entra.”
“Microsoft is pushing customers to Entra (formerly Azure Active directory).”
“documentation from both Microsoft & Canonical had heavily generated documentation that was flat out wrong”
“it's possible to use Entra as your Active Directory, along with the fine grained RBAC built in to the platform”
“Entra is one of the few software that manages permissions at scale”
“the horizontal integration across Entra, not the Office experience, that is the lock in”
“Entra misconfiguration that got Microsoft's own sensitive internal services owned by a researcher”
“Entra and intune are a poor substitute for Active Directory.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.