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Cybersecurity · head to head

BigID vs Delinea

BigID logo

BigID

Cybersecurity

Data discovery and classification across cloud, on-premise and unstructured stores

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Delinea logo

Delinea

Cybersecurity

Privileged access management from the merged Thycotic and Centrify

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: BigID pricing scales with data sources and volume, so the cost rises exactly as the estate you need to scan grows, and the modules shown in a demo, including AI security posture and headless deployment, are frequently separate licences that appear only in the final quote.; Delinea the Thycotic and Centrify lineages are integrated unevenly, so buying the full portfolio means running consoles and agents that do not share one administrative model as cleanly as the marketing suggests.
  • They diverge on capability: BigID covers Structured and unstructured scanning, Delinea covers Secret Server.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which BigID and Delinea actually diverge.

Attributes where BigID and Delinea differ
AttributeBigIDDelinea
PlatformsWeb, API, Self-hostedWeb, Windows, Linux, macOS

Identical on both: starting price (On request), pricing model (quote), free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Cybersecurity).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in BigID

  • Structured and unstructured scanning
  • Identity correlation
  • Data security posture management
  • Access intelligence
  • Privacy request support
  • Retention and minimisation
  • AI data controls
  • Policy and remediation workflow

Only in Delinea

  • Secret Server
  • Privileged session recording
  • Privilege Manager
  • Server PAM
  • Discovery
  • DevOps secrets
  • Behaviour analytics

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

BigID

  • A bank that has to prove which of thirty year old file shares contain customer identifiers before a data centre migrationnot Delinea
  • A privacy team that cannot fulfil deletion requests because nobody knows which unstructured stores hold a given customer’s recordsnot Delinea
  • A security team wanting to find sensitive data sitting in publicly readable object storage buckets before an attacker doesnot Delinea
  • A company building retrieval augmented AI that must exclude regulated personal data from the index it feeds to a modelnot Delinea

Delinea

  • An organisation whose cyber insurer now requires privileged credentials to be vaulted and rotatednot BigID
  • A mid-market IT team that abandoned a heavier PAM rollout and needs a vault that can be in production in weeksnot BigID
  • A company removing local administrator rights from every workstation after a ransomware incidentnot BigID
  • An audit finding that shared service account passwords are stored in a spreadsheet and used by contractorsnot BigID

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

BigID

  • Pricing scales with data sources and volume, so the cost rises exactly as the estate you need to scan grows, and the modules shown in a demo, including AI security posture and headless deployment, are frequently separate licences that appear only in the final quote.
  • Scanning large unstructured estates is slow and computationally expensive, so most organisations sample rather than scan everything, which reintroduces uncertainty into the very question they bought the tool to settle.
  • Classification accuracy on messy unstructured content requires tuning, and out of the box false positives on things like reference numbers create a large triage backlog that a small governance team cannot clear.
  • It discovers and reports but does not remediate, so realising value requires a separate process and often separate tooling to actually delete, restrict or move the data it flags.
  • It is built for large enterprises and both the price and the administrative overhead are disproportionate below a few thousand employees, where a lighter DSPM tool covers the security use case for far less.

Delinea

  • The Thycotic and Centrify lineages are integrated unevenly, so buying the full portfolio means running consoles and agents that do not share one administrative model as cleanly as the marketing suggests.
  • Modules are licensed separately by different units, per privileged user for the vault and per endpoint for privilege management, which makes total cost hard to model and easy to underestimate at scale.
  • Delinea does not publish rates, so buyers benchmark against third party and public sector listings; expect list prices to be negotiable by a wide margin, which means the first quote is not the price.
  • Thoma Bravo ownership since 2021 has coincided with firmer renewal pricing, and buyers with a single-vendor PAM estate have little leverage once credentials are inside the vault.
  • Migrating out of a privileged access vault is a genuinely hard project because every automated process that fetches a secret has to be repointed, so the switching cost is real and the vendor knows it.

Pricing, plan by plan

BigID

On request
  • BigID Platform$undefined/year
    • Priced by number of data sources and data volume
    • Discovery and classification core
    • Optional DSPM, access intelligence and AI security modules licensed separately

Delinea

On request
  • Secret Server$undefined/year
    • Priced per privileged user, tiered by edition
    • Cloud or on premises deployment
    • Session recording in higher editions
  • Privilege Manager$undefined/year
    • Priced per endpoint
    • Local admin rights removal and application elevation
    • Licensed separately from Secret Server
  • Server PAM$undefined/year
    • Priced per managed server or per privileged user
    • Just-in-time server access
    • Licensed separately

Which should you pick?

Choose BigID if

  • You need structured and unstructured scanning.
  • You work on Web, API, Self-hosted.
  • You also want identity correlation.
BigID review

Choose Delinea if

  • You need secret server.
  • You work on Web, Windows, Linux, macOS.
  • You also want privileged session recording.
Delinea review

Questions people ask

Is BigID or Delinea better?
Neither clearly leads. BigID starts at On request and Delinea at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, BigID or Delinea?
BigID starts at On request and Delinea at On request.
Does BigID or Delinea run on more platforms?
BigID runs on Web, API, Self-hosted. Delinea runs on Web, Windows, Linux, macOS.
What is BigID best used for?
BigID is most often used for a bank that has to prove which of thirty year old file shares contain customer identifiers before a data centre migration, a privacy team that cannot fulfil deletion requests because nobody knows which unstructured stores hold a given customer’s records, a security team wanting to find sensitive data sitting in publicly readable object storage buckets before an attacker does, a company building retrieval augmented ai that must exclude regulated personal data from the index it feeds to a model. Of those, a bank that has to prove which of thirty year old file shares contain customer identifiers before a data centre migration and a privacy team that cannot fulfil deletion requests because nobody knows which unstructured stores hold a given customer’s records are not what Delinea is typically brought in for.
What can BigID do that Delinea cannot?
BigID covers Structured and unstructured scanning, Identity correlation, Data security posture management, Access intelligence. Delinea covers Secret Server, Privileged session recording, Privilege Manager, Server PAM.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

BigID: What does BigID cost?

It is quoted by data source count and volume. Reported contracts run from roughly 15,000 to 175,000 US dollars a year, and add-on modules such as AI security posture are licensed on top.

Delinea: Is Delinea the same as Thycotic?

Delinea is the merged company formed from Thycotic and Centrify in 2021. Secret Server is the former Thycotic product; the server access products come from Centrify.

BigID: Does it handle unstructured data?

Yes, and that is its main advantage. It classifies data in files and shares and correlates findings back to individuals, not just to data types.

Delinea: Is pricing published?

Not by Delinea. Public sector frameworks have listed Secret Server Cloud around 348 GBP per user per year, which is a reference point, not a quote.

BigID: Will it delete the data it finds?

Not by itself in most deployments. It identifies and routes findings; deletion and remediation happen through your own processes or connected systems.

Delinea: Does one licence cover endpoints and servers?

No. Secret Server, Privilege Manager and Server PAM are separately licensed on different units. Scope all three if your requirement spans them.

BigID: Is it a privacy tool or a security tool?

Both are sold from the same discovery core. Buyers increasingly come from security wanting data security posture management rather than from legal wanting privacy.

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