Need authentication but not sure who to go with? Read on for an in-depth comparison of the leading authentication providers.

Introduction


Solutions that authenticate and manage users’ access to a system have never been more important.

In today’s post, we will be looking at some of the leading Authentication providers, breaking down their features and pricing so you can decide if they fit your requirements.

Auth0 and Okta


Auth0

Auth0 is an authentication and authorization software as a service platform. It started in 2013 as an identity management service to allow developers to easily connect their apps to enterprise and social providers.

Over the years they have scaled their services, achieved compliance certifications, and added more features. Today they are one of the leading Auth providers in the space.

Okta

Okta is another leader in the authentication and authorization space, but, with a focus on workforce identity and integration with other enterprise services.

On May 3, 2021, Okta announced they had acquired Auth0 for $6.5B. This brought a lot of attention to Auth0. Okta is notorious for being a sales-focused company and many speculate that this practice will trickle down to Auth0. You can learn more about what that means for the market here.

So what is the difference between Auth0 and Okta?

As mentioned previously Okta’s main focus is workforce identity. Although they do offer customer identity solutions, pricing for these plans is billed annually and it can be extremely expensive. After the Auth0 acquisition, Okta now encourages developers who are looking for more affordable auth solutions to use Auth0

Advantages of using Auth0

Simple Setup:

SDK and Integration support:

Feature set:

Disadvantages of using Auth0

Expensive

Opaque Pricing:

Extensibility:

Auth0 Pricing:

Free Plan

Auth0’s free plan allows having up to 7000 MAUs and up to 2 social connections and 3 Actions, Rules, and hooks.

Paid Plans

Auth0 splits its paid plans into two sections based on your use case, with each use case having a free, professional, and enterprise tier. In both cases, the enterprise tier has fully custom pricing and you need to talk to their support team.

Use Case 1: Business to Consumer

Use Case 2: Business to Business

So is Auth0 the way to go?

Auth0 has all the functionality you need and is easy to set up and integrate with, but their pricing doesn’t scale well and it can become very expensive as your userbase grows and you require more features.

Amazon Cognito


Cognito is a service that provides authentication, authorization, and user management for web and mobile apps. It is part of the AWS suite of products and can be used easily with any of their other offerings such as Lambda.

Cognito supports multiple compliance programs and can scale to millions of users. It has grown in popularity due to its accessible pricing.

Advantages of using Cognito

Pricing:

Integration with other AWS services:

Disadvantages of using Cognito

Developer Experience:

Features:

UI Customization:

Migration:

AWS Cognito Pricing

Cognito’s free tier offers up to 50,000 MAUs for free. Included are the Identity pool features which cover access control and RBAC.

Free:

Paid Features:

Cognito offers pricing tiers for additional MAUs and users with SAML/OIDC connections. They also offer advanced security features like compromised credential protection, risk-based adaptive authentication, and monitoring.

So is Cognito the way to go?

Cognito’s free tier and integration with other AWS services position it as a great auth provider, but it does not provide the best developer experience. Users have complained about the documentation being confusing at times, making it hard to integrate with.

SuperTokens


SuperTokens is an open-source authentication solution that provides a managed service for hassle-free auth and an on-prem solution so developers can manage their data.

Starting as a session management solution in 2019, SuperTokens has evolved into a complete auth solution providing email-password, social and passwordless login with extensive customization options to curate the login experience to your needs.

SuperTokens differentiates itself from its competitors with its flexibility. If you don’t want to deal with handling user data you can use the managed service or, you can self-host the solution for free and control 100% of the data with your database. There are also no restrictions on completely customising the auth flow with their override feature.

Advantages of using SuperTokens:

Completely Open Source:

Simple Setup:

Flexibility:

Disadvantages of using SuperTokens:

Enterprise features:

Tech Stack Support

SuperTokens Pricing:

At the time of writing this article, the SuperTokens feature set is completely free. If you decide to use the self-hosted version you can download the core and use it for free for an unlimited amount of users.

Self-Hosted:

Managed Service:

So is SuperTokens the way to go?

SuperToken’s feature set and pricing make it a great choice for startups and mid-level businesses, but it may not be the best fit for large organisations that require enterprise features.

Conclusion


So what authentication provider do you go with? Well in the end it depends on your use case.

Written by the Folks at SuperTokens — hope you enjoyed it! We are always available on our Discord server.

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