Has StrongDM been acquired?

Yes. Delinea completed its acquisition of StrongDM on 5 March 2026, on undisclosed terms, and strongdm.com now carries the line Part of Delinea's identity security control plane at the top of its homepage. Delinea says the combination pairs its privileged access management with StrongDM's just-in-time runtime authorization.

Is CyberArk still sold on its own after the Palo Alto Networks acquisition?

Yes. Palo Alto Networks completed the acquisition on 11 February 2026, paying CyberArk shareholders 45 dollars in cash plus 2.2005 Palo Alto Networks shares per CyberArk ordinary share. Its announcement states that CyberArk's Identity Security solutions will continue to be available as a standalone platform while integration into the wider Palo Alto Networks ecosystem proceeds. So you can still buy CyberArk without buying the rest of the platform, at least for now.

Which scores higher in your capability rubric?

CyberArk, at 4.7 overall against 4.1. CyberArk scores higher on seven dimensions: authentication, SSO and federation, lifecycle provisioning, MFA and passwordless, governance and audit, deployment flexibility, and support and ecosystem. StrongDM scores higher on two, developer experience at 4.5 against 3.0 and pricing transparency at 3.5 against 2.5. The two tie at 4.5 on authorization, which is the dimension both platforms exist to serve.

Can StrongDM replace CyberArk?

For a cloud-native estate of databases, servers, and Kubernetes clusters, often yes. For legacy Windows and Unix administrative accounts, network devices, application-to-application credentials, and the long-lived vaulting an auditor expects to see documented, generally no. StrongDM brokers and records access; it is not built as a credential vault of record. Since both companies now sit inside larger platforms, the more useful question is which platform you want to be a customer of.

StrongDM vs CyberArk

The honest comparison

This pairing changed shape in the first quarter of 2026, and the change matters more than the feature list. Palo Alto Networks completed its acquisition of CyberArk on 11 February 2026. Three weeks later, on 5 March 2026, Delinea completed its acquisition of StrongDM. Neither of these is an independent vendor. StrongDM's own homepage now leads with the line that it is part of Delinea's identity security control plane.

The products still solve different problems. StrongDM puts one proxy in front of databases, servers, Kubernetes, and clouds, brokers every connection against policy, and records it. CyberArk is the credential vault and session isolation layer that regulated organizations build a privileged access program around, covering Windows and Unix administrators, network gear, and application credentials alongside cloud consoles.

Our rubric puts CyberArk at 4.7 and StrongDM at 4.1, and the matrix above shows where. CyberArk takes seven dimensions including governance and audit at 5.0, the maximum on that scale, and deployment flexibility at 4.5 against 4.0, because it ships self-hosted as well as SaaS while StrongDM is SaaS only. StrongDM takes two, developer experience at 4.5 against 3.0 and pricing transparency at 3.5 against 2.5. They tie at 4.5 on authorization.

Read the developer experience gap seriously rather than as a nice-to-have. Privileged access controls that engineers route around do not reduce risk, and StrongDM's adoption has come from teams replacing bastion hosts and shared credentials that people were already circumventing. Read the governance gap just as seriously in the other direction: if your audit evidence has to cover an estate wider than cloud infrastructure, the vault is the thing being audited.

When StrongDM wins

Your privileged estate is databases, servers, clusters, and clouds, and it is what engineers touch daily
Developer experience is the adoption risk, and StrongDM leads that dimension 4.5 to 3.0
You want one per-user SKU rather than a modular quote, which StrongDM's pricing page describes as covering every feature
Delinea is already your vault, so StrongDM's runtime authorization layer lands on a platform you run

When CyberArk wins

Legacy Windows and Unix administrator accounts and network devices are the bulk of the estate, which is not StrongDM's ground
You need self-hosted deployment, where CyberArk scores 4.5 on deployment flexibility against StrongDM's SaaS-only 4.0
Auditors want the vault, rotation, and session isolation evidence CyberArk scores 5.0 on
Palo Alto Networks has confirmed CyberArk stays available as a standalone platform, so buying it does not require buying the rest

Pricing

Neither is cheap and neither publishes a number. StrongDM's pricing page describes a single-SKU, per-user model that includes every feature, which is the source of its 3.5 on pricing transparency, but the figures come from sales rather than the site. CyberArk is quote-based and modular across vaulting, session management, secrets, and cloud privilege, and it scores 2.5 accordingly. Budget implementation services for CyberArk and integration time for StrongDM, then model both against seats and covered systems in the TCO calculator.

Verdict

Choose StrongDM when the privileged estate is cloud infrastructure, engineers are the users, and you want the option they will actually adopt. Choose CyberArk when vaulting, rotation, and session isolation across a mixed estate are the program, and the evidence has to satisfy an auditor. Our assessment is that with both vendors now inside larger platforms, the platform question deserves as much weight as the product question, and it is a fair one to put to both sales teams. For the certificate-native alternative to StrongDM see Teleport vs StrongDM, for the comparison inside Delinea's own portfolio see Delinea vs BeyondTrust, and for the wider shortlist see best PAM tools.