Admin By Request EPM vs Microsoft Intune EPM: A Detailed Comparison

Note: This blog post was originally published on December 16, 2025, and updated on June 25, 2026.

If you’re weighing up Endpoint Privilege Management solutions, Microsoft Intune EPM has probably come up. It makes sense: you’re already running Intune, it sits inside your existing environment, and Microsoft is a name everyone trusts.

But being in the box already doesn’t make it the right fit. And if you’re reading this because you’ve already deployed Intune EPM and it isn’t doing what you hoped, you’re in good company. We talk to a lot of teams who started there, ran into the limits, and went looking for something built for the job.

Microsoft Intune EPM is a relatively new entry in the privilege management space, and while it handles basic elevation, it lacks the depth and flexibility enterprise IT teams rely on. Admin By Request EPM was built specifically for privilege management and has been refined over more than a decade protecting millions of endpoints worldwide. Elevating applications safely is our entire product. For Microsoft, EPM is one small add-on among thousands of items in the catalogue.

The good news for anyone already on Intune: switching is painless. You can deploy our agent through Intune itself, so moving over doesn’t mean ripping anything out or learning a new deployment process.

We’ll compare the two products and show you how they work in practice. This comparison focuses on the EPM products themselves. E5 customers may have access to other Microsoft tools that partially cover some of these gaps, such as LAPS for emergency access, though each comes with its own management overhead.

Platform Support: Windows-Only vs Multi-Platform

Microsoft Intune EPM works exclusively on Windows endpoints. No macOS, no Linux, and nothing on the roadmap to suggest that changes.

The Windows support it does offer is narrower than most people expect. Intune EPM only covers devices with full Entra join. It doesn’t support Entra registered devices, it doesn’t support AD-only (non-hybrid) join, and there’s no Windows Home support. It also doesn’t run on Windows Server. In practice, that limits Intune EPM to Entra-joined Windows 11 Pro and Enterprise machines, and nothing else.

If your organization runs a mixed environment (and most do), you’re stuck managing privilege elevation through multiple tools. Separate policies, different approval workflows, fragmented audit logs.

Admin By Request EPM supports Windows, macOS, and Linux from a single platform, including Windows Server, ARM-based devices, and both Entra joined and Entra registered endpoints. Same policies, same approval workflows, same centralized management portal across all of it.

Real-Time Operations vs Delayed Responses

Privilege management is time-critical. When a user needs elevated access to get their job done, every minute of delay costs productivity, and in some settings the cost runs much higher than that. An approval that takes five minutes might be 4:59 minutes too late in environments like healthcare or emergency services.

Here’s what you’re working with on Microsoft Intune EPM:

• Policy changes take 20-30 minutes to reach endpoints
• Activity reporting can take up to 24 hours before events appear in the portal

Admin By Request EPM delivers:

• Instant policy update syncing
• Real-time audit log population

Those syncing and reporting delays create real gaps in your security visibility. If something goes wrong, you might not see it in the portal until the next day. Approval speed used to be another major issue with Intune EPM (taking 10-60 minutes), but recent updates have closed that gap, and approval times are now comparable between both products.

Deployment and Infrastructure

Microsoft Intune EPM requires a 20MB+ extension on top of your existing Intune infrastructure. If you need to roll back during testing, removing the components from your endpoints can take up to 7 days.

Our EPM agent is under 3MB and requires no additional infrastructure beyond the agent itself. Deploy it silently through your existing tools (SCCM, Intune, Jamf), and it configures automatically on install. Removal is straightforward with no waiting period.

The smaller footprint also means lower resource consumption on endpoints and a reduced attack surface.

Security Features: Built-In Protection vs Basic Elevation

Intune EPM requires careful policy design to avoid security gaps. If you allow elevation for tools like CMD, PowerShell, Windows Terminal, or Task Manager, a user can use that access to create their own local admin account, effectively sidestepping the controls EPM is meant to enforce. Microsoft’s reporting won’t show you what commands were run, so with the reporting delay, this can go unnoticed.

There’s also a question of how closely Intune EPM actually holds to the principle of least privilege. Once an application is approved, it can be reused for a 24-hour period without further checks. A genuine least-privilege model grants access for the specific task at hand, then revokes it, rather than leaving a 24-hour window open on an approved app.

Admin By Request EPM integrates OPSWAT MetaDefender, which checks every elevation request against a database of over 20 antivirus vendors in real time. Suspicious or malicious files are automatically blocked or quarantined before elevation happens, regardless of how your policies are set up.

We also have anti-tampering features that stop users from bypassing the product, even if they’ve gained elevated access through it. Everything is auditable and traceable.

What’s Missing from Microsoft EPM

Microsoft Intune EPM provides application-level elevation through pre-approved rules or manual approval workflows. That covers basic needs, but it’s missing functionality enterprise IT teams use daily:

• Minimal tamper protection: As noted above, users granted elevation for tools like CMD, PowerShell, Terminal, or Task Manager can use that access to create a local admin account and work around EPM’s controls.
• No Support Assist feature: Helpdesk staff can’t temporarily escalate their own privileges to troubleshoot user issues without logging in as a different account
• No Admin Sessions: Users can’t get time-limited, system-wide elevation for tasks that involve multiple elevated operations
• No Break Glass functionality: No emergency access within EPM when a device becomes disjoined from your directory (E5 customers may have LAPS available as a separate tool)
• No offline mode: If a device isn’t connected to the network, users can’t elevate anything through EPM (again, E5 customers may have LAPS for offline emergency access)
• Limited system elevation support: Struggles with Control Panel, Regedit, and other system-level tools

Admin By Request EPM includes all of these. Support Assist lets helpdesk staff upgrade their permissions temporarily inside a user’s profile, with both accounts logged for audit purposes. Admin Sessions provide time-limited, system-wide elevation when it’s needed. Break Glass generates one-time, time-limited local admin accounts for emergencies. Offline PIN codes allow elevation without network connectivity.

Management at Scale: Sub-Settings vs Policy Sprawl

Microsoft Intune EPM requires you to build policies on a group basis. As your organization grows and different departments need different elevation rules, you quickly end up with dozens (or hundreds) of policies that get difficult to manage.

Admin By Request EPM uses a Sub-Settings architecture. You set global defaults at the tenant level, then create unlimited override groups for specific departments, locations, or use cases. Policies are layered and matched on a first-setting, first-match basis, so you get granular control without the management overhead.

Organizations with 100,000+ endpoints run our platform without needing extra administrators to wrangle policy sprawl.

Feature Comparison Table

Upcoming Licensing Changes

Microsoft announced in December 2025 that Intune EPM will be included in Microsoft 365 E5 subscriptions starting in July 2026 at no additional cost. That makes EPM more accessible for organizations already committed to the E5 tier.

EPM is being added to the E5 tier specifically, so Microsoft 365 E3 customers don’t get it bundled and would still need to license it as a standalone add-on. The pricing changes taking effect July 1, 2026 raise E3 from $36 to $39 per user monthly and E5 from $57 to $60 per user monthly.

Microsoft is also rolling out new EPM features including a readiness dashboard for deployment oversight, Security Copilot integration for risk assessment before approvals, and scope tag enforcement for role-based access control.

These additions improve the management experience, but they don’t touch the core technical limitations we’ve laid out here: multi-platform and Windows Server support, broader device join coverage, offline functionality, integrated malware scanning, meaningful tamper protection, and operational features like Support Assist, Admin Sessions, and Break Glass. Microsoft’s strongest move with EPM has been on licensing, not product development.

When Microsoft EPM Makes Sense

Microsoft Intune EPM isn’t the wrong choice for everyone. If your organization runs exclusively on Entra-joined Windows machines, is already committed to Microsoft 365 E5, and has basic privilege elevation requirements, it might be enough for what you need.

For organizations that need reliable, full-featured privilege management across multiple platforms with advanced security controls, Microsoft’s offering falls short.

Don’t Just Take Our Word for It

Plenty of teams have already made this exact comparison and moved across.

Circet Benelux, one of the fastest-growing international network service providers in the world, is one of them. They found Microsoft EPM wasn’t sufficient for their needs: it took a long time to get policies pushed through, set up new applications, extract hashes, and get decent reporting. With a lot of custom applications that needed local admin rights, the security-versus-convenience question was a real challenge.

After researching the alternatives, Admin By Request came up most often. Once their team tested it, it did what it was supposed to do without hidden pitfalls or heavy overhead. In David Stevens’ words, it was easy to use, approve and audit requests, it updated fast, accepted changes on the fly, and was very granular. They migrated certain groups off local administrator rights with minimal impact, and scored us a 10 out of 10 on Net Promoter Score. His advice to other teams: save yourself the hassle of other products, request a trial, set it up, and buy it if you need more than 25 licenses.

It isn’t only customers making the case. Jonathan Edwards, the Microsoft MVP behind the Bearded 365 Guy YouTube channel, has compared the two products directly and reached a similar verdict on where Intune EPM lands as a basic option versus a purpose-built one.

See the Difference Yourself

There are two easy ways to put both products side by side.

Book a demo and we’ll walk you through exactly how Admin By Request EPM handles the things Intune EPM can’t: multi-platform support, instant policy updates, real tamper protection, and features like Support Assist and Break Glass. This is the quickest route if you’re currently on Intune EPM and can’t simply spin up a competing product on the spot.

Or try it yourself. Our free plan covers up to 25 endpoints with full functionality and no time limit. Deploy it in your environment (through Intune, if you like) right alongside Microsoft Intune EPM and compare them directly. The differences tend to show up fast.