Adcyma vs Cakewalk
Cakewalk is a Berlin startup that governs access to SaaS applications — discovery, requests, and reviews across your app stack. Adcyma is identity governance for Microsoft Entra ID and Active Directory. They sound similar, but they solve different problems. Here's how to tell them apart.
Start free trial — no credit card, no consultantsThe 30-second comparison
Cakewalk finds the SaaS apps and AI tools your employees actually use — including the ones IT never approved — and puts access requests, onboarding, offboarding, and reviews on top. It's Slack-native, HR-driven, and quick to set up.
Adcyma governs the directory itself: accounts, group memberships, and access rights in Entra ID and on-prem Active Directory, with structured access reviews and compliance reporting for SOC 2, ISO 27001, and NIS2.
The one-sentence version: Cakewalk governs who has accounts in which apps. Adcyma governs your Microsoft identity foundation. Some companies eventually want both.
Where Cakewalk shines
Cakewalk is young, but it's ahead of the pack in specific areas:
SaaS and shadow IT discovery.
It surfaces the apps and AI tools in actual use across the company — including the ones nobody told IT about. For SaaS-heavy organizations, that visibility alone is valuable.
Slack-native access requests.
Employees request access where they already work, approvers approve in the same place, and policies automate the routine cases.
HR-driven app lifecycle.
With more than twenty HRIS integrations, joiners and leavers trigger account changes across connected SaaS apps automatically.
AI agent governance.
Cakewalk has moved early on governing what AI agents can access — an area most identity vendors haven't reached yet.
Where Cakewalk is not a directory governance tool
No on-prem Active Directory.
Cakewalk's integrations are cloud services. If part of your environment lives in on-prem AD — and for most mid-sized Microsoft shops it does — that part is outside Cakewalk's reach.
Entra ID is one source among many.
Cakewalk reads identities from Entra ID, but governing the directory itself — groups, memberships, the structure your Microsoft environment runs on — is not what it's built for.
App accounts, not the identity foundation.
Cakewalk manages who has accounts in which SaaS apps. Consistent role-based provisioning in your directory, and audit evidence about it, is a different job.
A young vendor.
Cakewalk is a seed-stage startup founded in 2022. That means fast development, but also a product still finding its shape — lately pivoting toward AI agent governance.
What Adcyma is built for
Adcyma governs your Microsoft identity foundation — the directory everything else depends on.
Automated lifecycle management.
Define role-based access once. When someone joins, changes roles, or leaves, the right changes happen automatically — in Entra ID, Active Directory, or both.
Access reviews that hold up in an audit.
Structured campaigns with clear ownership, deadlines, and escalation. Every decision is logged and export-ready for your auditor.
Compliance reporting for SOC 2, ISO 27001, and NIS2.
Pre-built reports. No assembling evidence from multiple sources under time pressure.
Operational in a day.
Connect to your Entra ID tenant or Active Directory, define your role structure, and start. No implementation project.
Feature-by-feature breakdown
| Cakewalk | Adcyma | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | SaaS-heavy, cloud-native teams | Microsoft-centric orgs, 50–1,000 employees |
| Governs | SaaS app accounts | Entra ID and Active Directory |
| On-prem AD support | No | Yes |
| Shadow IT discovery | Yes — a core strength | No |
| Access requests | Slack-native | Yes — with approval flows |
| Access reviews | Yes — app-level | Yes — directory-level, audit-ready |
| Compliance reporting | Audit trails | Pre-built for SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIS2 |
| Pricing | Quote-based | Public — free up to 25 users |
| European vendor | Yes — Germany | Yes — Sweden, hosted in Sweden |
Which one should you choose?
Choose Cakewalk if:
- Your environment is cloud-native with little or no Microsoft directory footprint
- Shadow SaaS sprawl and app spend are your biggest problems
- Your company lives in Slack and wants approvals there
- You're deploying AI agents and need governance over what they access
Choose Adcyma if:
- Your identity foundation is Entra ID, Active Directory, or both
- You need directory-level lifecycle automation and access reviews
- You're facing SOC 2, ISO 27001, or NIS2 requirements
- You want a vendor whose roadmap is centered on Microsoft identity
Questions we hear from companies evaluating both
Start with where the pain is. If the problem is that nobody knows which apps are in use and offboarding misses app accounts, that's Cakewalk's territory. If the problem is inconsistent onboarding, group sprawl, and an auditor asking who approved this access, that's directory governance — Adcyma. Larger SaaS-heavy companies sometimes end up with both.
Cakewalk's published integrations are cloud services — identity providers, HR systems, and SaaS apps. We found no on-prem Active Directory support in their materials. If AD is part of your environment, you'd need something else covering it.
The mechanics are similar; the object is different. Cakewalk reviews who has accounts in which SaaS apps. Adcyma reviews access in your directory — group memberships and rights in Entra ID and AD — and produces the structured evidence auditors ask for in SOC 2, ISO 27001, and NIS2 audits.
See if Adcyma fits your situation
Free for up to 25 users. No credit card. No consultants. Just connect your Entra ID tenant or Active Directory and see how it works.