CyberArk vs Delinea vs BeyondTrust: Real Privileged Access Management Cost in 2026
Short answer
None of the three vendors publishes pricing — CyberArk's own pricing page is reported to return a "Page not found" error, directing visitors to request a demo instead. Reported figures for CyberArk's core Privilege Cloud PAM product show a genuinely wide internal spread across sources, from $200/user/year in one community-reported estimate to $2,400–4,800/user/year in a detailed procurement-data analysis to $400–700/account/year at negotiated enterprise-discount pricing — these likely reflect different product tiers, account definitions, or negotiation stages rather than one source simply being wrong, and this article presents the range rather than picking one figure. What's more consistently corroborated: Delinea is reported to be 30–45% cheaper than CyberArk for comparable functionality with the most transparent pricing and fastest deployment of the three, and BeyondTrust is reported 20–40% cheaper than CyberArk while bundling PAM, remote access, and endpoint privilege management in one suite.
Pricing at a glance
| CyberArk | Delinea | BeyondTrust | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public rate card | None for PAM Enterprise — pricing page reportedly returns an error and directs to a demo request. Workforce Identity products (SSO, MFA) do have published rates | None found — quote-based | None found — quote-based |
| Core PAM reported rate | Deeply inconsistent across sources: $2,400–4,800/privileged user/year (Standard tier, small scale) to $7,000–12,000/user/year (advanced Privileged tier), dropping toward roughly $1,800/user above 1,000 seats in one detailed source; a separate source reports enterprise-discount pricing at $400–700/privileged account/year; a community-reported estimate cites $200/user/year for a first-year license-only cost | Reported at 30–45% below CyberArk's pricing for comparable privileged-account volumes | Reported at 20–40% below CyberArk for comparable functionality, particularly for asset-centric PAM |
| Endpoint Privilege Management | Reported at $30–85/endpoint in one source, $60–120/endpoint/year at list in another | Not itemized in available sources | Bundled into BeyondTrust's suite pricing alongside PAM and remote access |
| Secrets management | Reported at $40–180/workload | Not itemized in available sources | Not itemized in available sources |
| Workforce Identity (SSO/MFA) | SSO: $2/user/month. MFA: $3/user/month. Broader Identity Security Platform: $8–18/user/month depending on feature tier | Not itemized in available sources | Not itemized in available sources |
| Deployment timeline | Reported as the slowest of the three to deploy, consistent with its more extensive feature and compliance scope | Reported at 6–14 weeks, among the fastest | Reported at 6–14 weeks, similarly fast |
| Billing basis | Multiple distinct units depending on module: per privileged user/account for PAM, per endpoint for EPM, per workload for Secrets Manager, per user/month for Workforce Identity | Reported as the most transparent pricing of the three, though the exact billing unit for its published-equivalent figures wasn't detailed in available sources | Suite-based, bundling multiple capabilities; reported to become harder to predict once multiple modules are purchased separately over time |
CyberArk's reported pricing contains a genuine, unresolved inconsistency. At least four different sources report meaningfully different figures for what appears to be the same core Privilege Cloud PAM product: $200/user/year (a community-reported, license-only estimate), $400–700/account/year (an enterprise-discount figure from one detailed source), $1,800/user/year (the same source's reported rate above 1,000 seats), and $2,400–4,800/user/year (the same source's small-scale Standard tier rate). These likely reflect genuinely different scopes — a bare license estimate versus a fully-scoped small-deployment quote versus a heavily negotiated enterprise rate. The applicable rate depends on scope and contract terms, so a direct CyberArk quote is needed for a specific buyer.
What headline pricing excludes
CyberArk's modular pricing structure means the number of separately-billed components in a deployment is itself a major cost variable. PAM, Endpoint Privilege Manager, and Secrets Manager are all separately priced on different units (per user/account, per endpoint, and per workload respectively) — a company evaluating "CyberArk's cost" without first specifying which modules it needs, and how many assets each module will cover, is not asking a question CyberArk's own pricing structure can answer with one number.
BeyondTrust's suite bundling is reported to be predictable only when purchased together from the start. Teams that begin with just Password Safe and later add Privileged Remote Access or Endpoint Privilege Management are reported to find that the per-product pricing they negotiated initially "does not bundle cleanly" — meaning a phased BeyondTrust adoption can end up costing more than committing to the fuller suite up front would have.
True first-year spend on CyberArk is reported to run roughly double the license cost alone, once professional services and initial run costs are included — a company budgeting only the per-user or per-account license figure is very likely underestimating real first-year cost by a substantial margin.
None of the three vendors' reported per-user figures include the cost of the underlying deployment model (cloud versus on-premises), which is a separate factor affecting total cost across the category. Public sources do not quantify the specific cost difference between the two deployment models for any of the three vendors.
Hidden costs
- CyberArk's annual renewal uplift, without a negotiated cap, is reported to run 3–7% compounding — a real, avoidable cost drift if not addressed at initial contract signing, applicable across the PAM category generally, not just CyberArk specifically.
- Volume genuinely matters for CyberArk pricing: buyers managing 1,000 or more privileged accounts are reported to achieve meaningfully stronger per-account pricing than smaller deployments — a real, quantifiable negotiation lever tied to scale.
- Actively evaluating Delinea or BeyondTrust as competing alternatives during a CyberArk negotiation is reported to be a genuinely effective lever, with new competitive evaluations reported to achieve 30–45% better pricing, and platform-consolidation commitments (bundling EPM into a PAM-plus-Secrets renewal, for instance) reported to unlock the deepest available discounts.
- CyberArk's pricing is reported to be "widely considered unworkable for MSPs and small businesses" specifically due to high per-user costs, required professional services, and infrastructure overhead — a real structural fit issue independent of any specific dollar figure, and a reason smaller organizations are commonly directed toward Delinea, BeyondTrust, or other lower-cost alternatives instead.
Worked scenarios
Given the genuine inconsistency in CyberArk's own reported pricing described above, the figures below present the Standard-tier small-scale range as the primary reference point, with the caveat that actual quotes may land considerably lower depending on negotiation and account definition.
25 privileged users
| Estimated annual cost | |
|---|---|
| CyberArk (reported Standard tier, small scale) | 25 × $2,400–4,800 = $60,000–120,000/year |
| Delinea (illustrative, applying its reported 30–45% discount to the CyberArk figure) | 25 × $2,400–4,800 × 0.55–0.70 ≈ $33,000–84,000/year |
| BeyondTrust (illustrative, applying its reported 20–40% discount) | 25 × $2,400–4,800 × 0.60–0.80 ≈ $36,000–96,000/year |
The Delinea and BeyondTrust figures above are illustrative transformations of CyberArk's reported rate using each vendor's reported relative discount — not independently reported Delinea or BeyondTrust benchmarks in their own right.
250 privileged users
At this scale, CyberArk's reported figures suggest pricing is still likely closer to its small-scale Standard-tier range than to its reported above-1,000-seat rate, since 250 seats falls short of the volume threshold associated with the steepest reported discounts. Using the Standard-tier range: 250 × $2,400–4,800 = $600,000–1,200,000/year for CyberArk, with Delinea and BeyondTrust again illustratively 20–45% below that range depending on which vendor's reported discount is applied. A company at this scale should treat these as planning inputs for a negotiation rather than expected costs, especially given the genuine uncertainty in which CyberArk reference figure actually applies.
2,500 privileged users
At this scale, one detailed source's reported trend of pricing dropping toward roughly $1,800/user/year above 1,000 seats becomes the more relevant CyberArk reference point: 2,500 × $1,800 = $4,500,000/year. A separate source's enterprise-discount figure of $400–700/account/year would instead suggest a dramatically lower $1,000,000–1,750,000/year — nearly a 3-to-4-fold difference between these two reported figures at the same scale, illustrating just how unresolved CyberArk's real enterprise pricing remains across available sources. This range aligns broadly with the market-wide benchmark that full enterprise PAM deployments commonly run $150,000 to over $2 million annually, though where in that wide range a specific 2,500-seat deployment lands cannot be determined with confidence from public information.
Normalizing across billing units
This article deliberately keeps CyberArk's several billing units separate rather than forcing them into one per-user figure: PAM is priced per privileged user or account, Endpoint Privilege Manager per endpoint, Secrets Manager per workload, and Workforce Identity per user per month. A company needing multiple modules should build its total cost estimate by pricing each module against its own actual asset count (privileged accounts, endpoints, workloads, and total user base respectively) rather than assuming a single per-user rate applies across the whole deployment.
Break-even and crossover
The clearest, most consistently corroborated relative fact across sources: Delinea and BeyondTrust both reliably price below CyberArk for comparable PAM functionality — Delinea by a reported 30–45%, BeyondTrust by a reported 20–40% — a pattern that holds directionally across multiple independent sources even where CyberArk's own absolute pricing remains genuinely unresolved. This makes Delinea's or BeyondTrust's quote a more reliable relative benchmark for negotiating CyberArk pricing than any single absolute CyberArk figure in isolation.
Who pays more, and when
- A large enterprise with complex, multi-domain environments and strict compliance requirements is reported to be the buyer profile CyberArk is built for, and its higher reported cost may be justified by compliance-grade session controls and mature credential vaulting that Delinea's or BeyondTrust's faster, cheaper deployments don't fully replicate.
- A mid-market team without a dedicated PAM specialist, wanting fast deployment and lower total cost of ownership, is reported to be best served by Delinea, described as "the sweet spot of capability and usability" for this segment.
- An organization wanting privileged access management unified with remote support and endpoint privilege management in one platform is BeyondTrust's stated strength, though a team should commit to the fuller suite from the outset rather than adding modules piecemeal, given the reported bundling-inconsistency risk.
- A small business or MSP should look toward Delinea, BeyondTrust, or other lower-cost alternatives rather than CyberArk, whose pricing model is reported as poorly suited to this segment specifically.
- Any organization negotiating with CyberArk should actively bring a genuine competing evaluation from Delinea or BeyondTrust into the conversation — this is reported as the most reliable mechanism for extracting meaningful concessions, more so than any other single negotiation lever in this category.
Limitations and uncertainty
None of the three vendors publishes pricing for their core PAM products (CyberArk publishes only its narrower Workforce Identity SSO/MFA rates). CyberArk's reported core PAM pricing shows a genuine, unresolved internal conflict across multiple independent sources, ranging from $200 to $4,800+ per user/account per year depending on the source and likely the specific scope being described — this article presents this spread as a finding about the category's opacity rather than resolving it. Delinea's and BeyondTrust's absolute pricing could not be established from any source reviewed; only their relative discount percentages against CyberArk are reported with reasonable consistency, and the illustrative dollar figures calculated from those percentages in this article's worked scenarios are derived transformations, not independently reported benchmarks for either vendor.
Official sources
None of the three vendors publishes pricing for their core PAM products. All figures in this article are drawn from multiple independent third-party pricing analyses and procurement-data benchmarks, with the genuine spread across sources noted explicitly rather than resolved.