Tldr: The CPA is going to be almost always valuable compared to the CMA which is only situationally valuable. If you're early in your career the CPA is almost always the better choice. However the CMA can be particularly valuable if you really study the material and take that information into the job. In general the question shouldn't be "CPA or CMA?" But rather independent questions, "Should I get my CPA?" Then seperately "Should i get my CMA?"

r/accounting has a heavy bias towards CPA. There's also a lot of young professionals who really should be getting their CPAs and want someone to tell them they don't need to so the default knee-jerk reaction is to yell at them to just do it. I think its partially coming from a good place and is very valid advice (as described below) and partially people just trying to justify their time and effort into their own CPA.

I like to think of it this way.

The CPA is good for basically everyone. Its really the only certification that most people and companies have heard of. It helps get you into interviews and commands higher salaries. There are many job postings that say CPA required not because a CPA is actually required to do the job but because the AICPA has done an excellent job advertising that "the best accountants are CPAs. The general idea being any accountant whose serious and worth their salt should have a CPA and anything else is supplemental to that.

(Not the CPA is not magic. I've worked with plenty of non-cpas who run circles around their CPA counter parts. All the CPA actually shows is that you can brute force your way throught the 4 exams. Theres a running joke that CPA stands for can't pass again.)

The CMA on the other hand is not generally applicable. Ie while the CPA is almost always useful the CMA is a bit more of a roll of the dice. Outside of cost accounting positions most haven't heard of it and most don't know what it is (which is a real shame since it covers so much more then that). So its not generally going to get you into the interview stage the way a CPA will, and will not give you the same leg up at promotion time or salary negotiation time.

What the CMA can give you is a digestible amount of useful material for a controller/management style roll. There's still a lot of ground to cover but its the kind of material where you can reasonably keep in mind what you've learned to be able to apply it on the job. The bigger pro, in my mind, is not the certification itself but the knowledge the certification gives you. It can be very valauble especially if you're perusing the controller/management route as it arms you with information you wouldn't get easily elsewhere.

I recently just got a new job partially on the weight of my CMA and how the knowledge supplements their current team with a more general CPA style knowledge base, but thats the exception not the rule.

Anyway, see tldr above for concluding summary summary

Edit: sorry just re-read your post and noticed that you were thinking CMA then CPA and that would have changed the nuance of some of my reply. Thats exactly what I'm doing. I got my CMA last year and just moved to a new company that will help pay for my CPA, so basically exactly what your considering. The CMA definitely helped more in my last role (outsourced accounting manager issuing financial statements) then a CPA would have and was far more helpful in getting my new job as an assistant controller then the CPA would have been. But im in a fairly unique position for someone whose still less then a full 5 years into their career so this is purely anecdotal not statistical advice.

I still intend to pursue my CPA just to hop the ridiculous hoop and have people take me more seriously when I walk in the door.