amazon web services - AWS IAM Role vs Group

Question

The AWS official site reads role as a collection of permissions and group as a collection of users. But still they look the same to me. You attach policies to groups or roles, and then assign groups or roles to a user. What exactly are the differences between role and group?

Answer 1

Short answer for googlers: you can't assign role to user.

• group is a bunch of users with the same policies
• role is a preset of policies for service(s)

Users can asume roles according to AWS docs:

Assuming a Role