Short answer. Workforce IAM manages employees' access to the company's own tools. CIAM manages the people who use your product: consumers and business customers, whose accounts are registered, invited or provisioned, often by the customers themselves.
What's the difference between IAM and CIAM?
IAM (identity and access management) covers identities and access broadly; in this comparison it means workforce IAM, managing employees' access to the company's own tools. CIAM (customer identity and access management) manages the people who use your product: consumers and business customers. Workforce accounts are usually created centrally by IT or HR. Customer accounts are registered, invited or provisioned, often by the customers themselves.
Side-by-side comparison table
| IAM (workforce) | CIAM (customer) | |
|---|---|---|
| Users | Employees and contractors | Consumers and business customers |
| Illustrative scale | Thousands of employees | Thousands to millions of customers |
| Registration | Created by IT or HR | Self-service sign-up or invitation |
| Sign-in | Corporate account, SSO, MFA | Social login, passwordless, MFA, partner SSO |
| Administration | Central IT | Your team, plus customer administrators in B2B |
| Experience | Workforce-facing | Customer-facing, part of your product |
| Privacy | Employee data protection | Customer consent and data protection |
| Success measure | Security and productivity | Security, conversion and retention |
Where the line blurs
Contractors, partners and suppliers sit between the two. Workforce platforms can invite them as guests, and some vendors sell both workforce and customer products. The choice depends on your relationship with these users, who administers them, and what your application needs.
Why using IAM for customers fails
A workforce setup fails customers when:
- Sign-up is not self-service: accounts have to be created by IT or HR.
- Branding is limited: customers see a corporate sign-in page, not your product.
- Customers sit next to employees: mixing them in one directory complicates security and administration.
- Scale and cost do not fit: licensing and limits are sized for employees, not large customer bases.
- There are no customer administrators: business customers cannot manage their own users.
Where B2B CIAM sits
B2B CIAM serves business customers. Their users often sign in with their company's identity provider, as employees do. But they belong to your customers, not to you, so they are managed as customers: organized by company, administered by each company's administrator, and given a branded experience in your product.
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Start your free trialFrequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between IAM and SSO?
SSO lets a user sign in once and reach several applications. It is one capability inside IAM, which also covers accounts, permissions and audit.
What's the difference between an IdP and IAM?
An identity provider (IdP) is the system that signs users in and vouches for them to applications. IAM is the broader practice of managing identities and access, of which the IdP is one part.