JIT Access — Head-to-Head

CyberArk vs. Delinea

Delinea exists in the market CyberArk created, formed from the 2021 merger of Thycotic and Centrify into a hybrid-focused PAM platform that competes on deployment simplicity and user experience rather than trying to out-feature the category leader. Both are vault-centric. The difference is how much infrastructure and professional services you have to stand up to get there.

The fault line between them

CyberArk's depth is the product of being first and biggest: the deepest Active Directory integration in the PAM market, the largest partner and integration ecosystem, and a feature surface that covers nearly every privileged access pattern an enterprise might have. That depth comes paired with deployment complexity, CyberArk implementations routinely involve extensive professional services engagements before they're fully operational.

Delinea's pitch is that most organizations don't need the full weight of CyberArk's platform to solve their actual problem. Secret Server and Privilege Manager serve different deployment profiles, and the inherited Centrify lineage gives Delinea particularly strong Linux/Unix credential elevation. The post-merger integration of the two product lines is still a live consideration, buyers need to confirm which product line maps to their environment before evaluating features.

Criteria	CyberArk	Delinea
Architecture
JIT model	Vault checkout + session proxy	Vault-centric JIT via Secret Server and Privilege Manager
Active Directory integration	Deepest AD integration in the PAM market	Solid AD coverage; not the architectural centerpiece
Linux/Unix credential elevation	Covered via PSM and vaulted accounts	Strong, inherited from the Centrify lineage
Deployment
Deployment complexity	High; extensive professional services typically required	Lighter deployment model; positioned as faster to operationalize
Partner ecosystem	Largest partner and integration ecosystem in enterprise PAM	Solid but narrower ecosystem than CyberArk
Product line clarity	Single coherent product line	Thycotic/Centrify integration still settling; verify which line maps to your environment
Operational
Ownership / roadmap	Now part of Palo Alto Networks' Identity Security pillar; integration ongoing	Independent; no ownership transition to track
Pricing / TCO	Enterprise pricing; typically higher TCO	Generally lower TCO for comparable hybrid PAM scope

Capability assessments based on publicly available vendor documentation and independent coverage. Validate specific feature depth against your environment before purchase.

When each wins

CyberArk wins when

The environment is large, AD-centric, and the buyer needs the deepest available PAM feature surface
The partner and integration ecosystem is itself a procurement requirement
Budget and professional-services capacity exist to support a complex deployment

Delinea wins when

The priority is a lighter, faster-to-deploy vault-centric PAM platform
The Linux/Unix server fleet is a significant part of the privileged access problem
Total cost of ownership is a binding constraint relative to CyberArk's enterprise pricing

Finding

This is largely a budget-and-complexity decision rather than a capability gap. CyberArk's depth is real, but so is its deployment overhead; Delinea trades some of that depth for a faster path to a working PAM deployment, with particular strength on Linux/Unix. Buyers should weigh how much of CyberArk's broader feature surface they'll actually use against what a lighter deployment saves in time and services cost.