Intune vs Azure AD (Microsoft Entra): What’s the Difference?
This is one of the most common mix-ups I run into when we talk to a business about their Microsoft setup. People will say they need “Azure” when they mean Intune, or they will ask whether they should use Intune “instead of” Azure AD. And I get why. Microsoft’s naming does not make this easy, especially now that Azure AD has been renamed Microsoft Entra ID. So let me try to lay it out in plain language.
The short version: these are not competing products. They do two different jobs, and in most setups you are using both together.
Azure AD, now Entra ID, is about WHO
Azure Active Directory, which Microsoft now calls Entra ID, is your identity system. It is the thing that answers the question “who is this person and are they allowed in.” When someone signs into Microsoft 365, into email, into your apps, Entra ID is what checks their username, their password, their multi-factor authentication, and decides whether to let them through.
That is the identity layer. Users, groups, sign-in, authentication. If you have ever set up single sign-on or turned on MFA for your team, you were working in Entra ID whether you knew it or not.
Intune is about the DEVICE
Microsoft Intune is your device and app management system. It answers a different question, which is “what is this laptop or phone, is it safe, and what is it allowed to do.” Intune is how you push settings to company devices, require a PIN or encryption, deploy applications, keep things patched, and wipe a device if it gets lost or an employee leaves.
So Entra ID manages the person. Intune manages the machine in their hands. Two different layers of the same stack.
Where they work together
Here is the part I think is most useful to understand, because it is where the real value is. These two are designed to talk to each other.
The best example is something called Conditional Access. That is an Entra ID feature, the identity side. But you can build a rule that says “only let someone into email if they are on a device that Intune says is healthy and compliant.” So the identity system checks who you are, and then it checks with the device system to make sure the machine is safe before it lets you in. That is a layered approach, and it is a lot stronger than just a password.
That is the whole point. Identity and device management working together, each covering a gap the other cannot. One without the other leaves a hole.
So which one do you need
Almost always, both. And here is the good news for most small and mid-sized businesses. If you are on a plan like Microsoft 365 Business Premium, or E3 or E5, you already have both Entra ID and Intune included. A lot of companies are paying for these tools and only using a fraction of what they already own.
The mistake I see is treating this as an either/or decision, or turning on identity protection but never actually managing the devices, which leaves half the door open. If you want to see how these pieces fit into a real deployment, our take on Intune implementation best practices walks through it.
If your team is not sure what you are already licensed for, or you know you have these tools but nobody ever set them up right, that is a conversation we have all the time. Take a look at our Microsoft Intune and Azure services and reach out. Most companies are closer to a solid setup than they think, they just are not using what they are already paying for.
