Auth0 Alternatives in 2026: 14 CIAM Platforms Compared

If you are on Auth0 and the bill, the Actions lock-in, or the enterprise SSO gating is what pushed you to this page, the answer depends on which of those three is actually hurting. For B2B enterprise SSO and SCIM without per-MAU pricing, look at WorkOS or SSOJet. To delete the per-MAU line item entirely, self-host Keycloak or FusionAuth. For a fast React or Next.js launch, Clerk. For passkey-first consumer auth, Stytch or MojoAuth.

This page compares fourteen Auth0 replacements, commercial and open source, on verified September 2026 pricing and on the specific pain each one removes. Auth0 itself is still a good product. Most teams that leave are not leaving because it is bad; they are leaving because the shape of their problem changed.

How we evaluated

Every price, plan name, and free-tier limit below was read off the vendor's own public pricing page or documentation in September 2026, not copied from another comparison post. Acquisition and end-of-life claims were checked against the acquiring company's own announcement. Where a vendor publishes no list price, this page says so rather than inventing a number.

Deepak Gupta founded LoginRadius and scaled it past a billion managed identities. Four axes decide real CIAM migrations. How does cost behave as monthly active users grow? How much proprietary logic must you re-implement? Is enterprise SSO a feature or a paywall? And can password hashes move without forcing a reset?

Last verified: September 2026. Checked this pass: vendor pricing pages, product documentation, and acquisition and end-of-sale announcements for all fourteen platforms.

Quick comparison

Platform	Pricing (Sept 2026)	Best for	Main trade-off
Clerk	Free to 50,000 MRU; Pro $25/mo; $0.02 per extra user; $75/mo per enterprise connection	React and Next.js teams shipping this week	Directory sync is thinner than a dedicated B2B platform
WorkOS	AuthKit free to 1M MAU; $2,500/mo per extra million; SSO and SCIM $125 per connection, sliding to $65	B2B SaaS selling SSO and SCIM upmarket	Not a consumer CIAM suite
SSOJet	Free forever, unlimited users and orgs, no SSO or SCIM connections; Business from $79/mo annual	Adding enterprise SSO and SCIM one logo at a time	Scoped to the enterprise-readiness layer
Stytch	Free to 10,000 MAU and agents; pay as you go above; $125 per extra SSO or SCIM connection	Passkey-first consumer and B2B auth	Smaller enterprise federation catalog
Descope	Free to 7,500 MAU; Pro from $249/mo (10,000 MAU); Growth from $799/mo	Teams that change auth flows constantly	Visual orchestration suits non-code-first teams
MojoAuth	Free to 25,000 MAU; Business Pro from $50/mo	Passwordless and OTP-first consumer login	No SCIM provisioning
FusionAuth	Community free and unlimited; Starter from $162/mo annual; Essentials and Enterprise from $2,970/mo	Self-hosting without a Java ops burden	Licence is not OSI-approved
Keycloak	Free, Apache 2.0; infrastructure and staff only	Data sovereignty and zero licence cost	You own upgrades, theming, and uptime
Supabase Auth	Free to 50,000 MAU; Pro $25/mo to 100,000 MAU; $0.00325 per extra MAU	Postgres-native auth bundled with the backend	B2C-leaning, no deep B2B organizations model
SuperTokens	Apache 2.0 self-hosted core, free; managed hosting priced separately	Open source auth with modern SDKs	Smaller ecosystem than Keycloak
Ory	Open source (Kratos, Hydra, Keto); Ory Network usage-priced	Kubernetes-native, modular identity	You assemble and staff the parts
Amazon Cognito	Lite free to 10,000 MAU then $0.0055; Essentials free to 10,000 then $0.015; Plus $0.020, no free tier	AWS-native stacks	Developer experience lags modern platforms
Firebase Authentication	Free to 50,000 MAU; Identity Platform SAML and OIDC free only to 50 MAU	Mobile-first consumer apps on GCP	No real B2B organizations or enterprise SSO
Okta	Workforce SSO from $6/user/mo; Customer Identity enterprise base $3,000/mo	Large enterprises standardising on one IAM vendor	Okta owns Auth0, so this is a sideways move on vendor risk

Why teams leave Auth0

Okta acquired Auth0 in May 2021, and the product briefly carried the "Okta Customer Identity Cloud" name before reverting to Auth0. The reasons teams move are consistent and they are not about the brand.

Cost at scale. Auth0 prices on tiered monthly active users. The public pricing page shows a free tier at 25,000 MAU, B2C Essentials from $35 per month and Professional from $240, with B2B Essentials from $150 and Professional from $800. The curve steepens past 100,000 MAU, and above roughly 500,000 MAU identity is often the largest line item in the budget.

Lock-in through Actions. The custom logic that makes Auth0 flexible (Actions, and the older Rules and Hooks) is proprietary. Every business rule you put there is a rule you re-implement somewhere else later. That is the real switching cost, not the SDK rewrite.

Enterprise SSO economics. B2B Organizations and enterprise connections sit in higher tiers, so the per-customer cost of selling upmarket climbs at exactly the moment you start closing enterprise deals.

Passkey orchestration. Auth0 supports WebAuthn, but teams that want passkey-first flows with conditional UI as the default often find the newer platforms ship better orchestration out of the box.

If you are not sure the pain is real, read Auth0 Isn't Overpriced, You're the Wrong Buyer before you plan a migration. A large share of "Auth0 is too expensive" complaints are a buyer-stage mismatch, not a pricing problem.

Pain to pick

If your problem is	Look at
The bill explodes above 100,000 MAU	WorkOS, FusionAuth, Keycloak
Enterprise SSO and SCIM on a budget	WorkOS, SSOJet
You need to self-host and kill per-MAU cost	Keycloak, FusionAuth, SuperTokens, Ory
You want passkey-first modern auth	Stytch, MojoAuth
Fast launch on Next.js or React	Clerk
Auth flows change every sprint	Descope
Already all-in on AWS	Amazon Cognito
Auth bundled with your backend, on Postgres	Supabase Auth
One vendor for workforce and customer identity	Okta, Ping Identity

Modern developer platforms

1. Clerk: fastest path off Auth0 for React and Next.js

Clerk is the most common Auth0 replacement for product teams whose front end is React or Next.js. It ships prebuilt, themeable auth components, organizations for light B2B multi-tenancy, and a developer experience tuned to the App Router, so a working sign-in flow is hours of work rather than days.

Pricing (verified September 2026). Clerk bills on Monthly Retained Users rather than MAU. The Hobby plan is free to 50,000 MRU per app. Pro is $25 per month ($20 annual), Business is $300 per month, and overage runs $0.02 per user from 50,001 to 100,000, sliding to $0.012 at ten million. Pro includes one enterprise connection (SAML, OIDC, or EASIE); extra connections are $75 per month each, falling to $15 at very high counts.

Where it beats Auth0. Time to first login, component quality, and a free tier twice Auth0's. Where it does not. Directory Sync as a product, long-tail IdP connectors, and deep B2B tenant modelling. Compare them directly at Auth0 vs Clerk, and if the real question is Clerk versus WorkOS, see Clerk vs WorkOS.

2. Stytch: passkey-first primitives, now Twilio-owned

Stytch ships passkeys, magic links, embedded flows, and device fingerprinting with orchestration designed around passwordless rather than retrofitted onto a password core. Twilio acquired Stytch in November 2025, which is a fact to raise in any procurement review: it changes the ownership risk profile, not the product.

Pricing (verified September 2026). The pay-as-you-go plan includes 10,000 monthly active users and AI agents at no cost, with unlimited organizations, five SSO or SCIM connections, and 1,000 machine-to-machine tokens. Extra SSO or SCIM connections are $125 each, and fraud fingerprinting is $0.005 per fingerprint beyond 10,000.

Watch out. The enterprise federation catalog is smaller than Auth0's. Demo the exact identity providers your largest customers run before you commit. Head to head: Auth0 vs Stytch.

3. Descope: auth flows in a visual builder, not in Actions code

Descope's differentiator is a drag-and-drop flow builder for authentication and user journeys, including passwordless and step-up. If your Auth0 pain is that every flow change needs an engineer and an Actions deploy, this is the direct answer.

Pricing (verified September 2026). Free Forever covers 7,500 MAU with all authentication methods, RBAC, MFA, three SSO connections, and one OIDC federated app. Pro starts at $249 per month for 10,000 MAU and Growth at $799 per month for 25,000 MAU, both billed annually with usage-based overage. The free tier does not allow overages; you upgrade instead.

Watch out. Visual orchestration is a different mental model. Code-first teams often find it indirect. See Auth0 vs Descope.

4. MojoAuth: passwordless and OTP-first, cheapest real free tier

MojoAuth is a passwordless-first CIAM: email, SMS and WhatsApp OTP, magic links, and passkeys via WebAuthn, with a hosted login page that removes most of the front-end work. It suits consumer products where login conversion is the metric that matters.

Pricing (verified September 2026). The free tier covers 25,000 MAU permanently with email OTP, magic links, social login, and basic attack protection. Business Pro starts at $50 per month for 5,000 MAU and adds passkeys, phone OTP, custom domain branding, MFA, and SSO. Enterprise private cloud is quoted. Startups and non-profits get 50 percent off annual billing.

Watch out. No SCIM provisioning, and admin-side reporting is lighter than an enterprise IAM suite. For the cost case at real volume, see Why We Cancelled Auth0 at 350,000 MAU. Head to head: MojoAuth vs Auth0.

B2B enterprise-readiness platforms

5. WorkOS: the answer to Auth0's enterprise SSO pricing

WorkOS is built around the B2B enterprise-readiness layer: SAML, OIDC, Directory Sync (SCIM), audit logs, and an admin portal your customers' IT teams configure themselves. If your Auth0 bill grew because you started selling to enterprises, this is the most direct fix.

Pricing (verified September 2026). AuthKit is free to the first one million MAU, then $2,500 per month per additional million. SSO and Directory Sync connections are priced identically on a sliding scale: $125 each for one to fifteen connections, $100 for sixteen to thirty, $80 for thirty-one to fifty, $65 for fifty-one to one hundred, and custom above that.

Watch out. Connection pricing is the thing to model. At 200 enterprise tenants the connection line dominates, which is exactly where per-organization billing looks better. WorkOS is also not a consumer CIAM suite: progressive profiling, bot defence, and adaptive MFA are not the product. See Auth0 vs WorkOS.

6. SSOJet: per-connection B2B SSO and SCIM, no per-MAU fee

SSOJet covers the same enterprise-readiness job as WorkOS: SAML and OIDC SSO, SCIM provisioning, JIT provisioning, a customer-facing admin portal, and audit logs for SOC 2 and ISO evidence. It is designed to sit alongside an existing auth stack rather than replace it, which shortens the migration.

Pricing (verified September 2026). The Free plan is free forever with unlimited users, MAUs, and organizations, and includes passkeys, social login, magic links, and email OTP, but no enterprise SSO or SCIM connections. Business starts at $79 per month billed annually ($99 monthly) and covers 2 to 200-plus connections, where an SSO connection and a SCIM connection each count as one. Enterprise adds unlimited connections, dedicated private cloud, data residency in eleven regions, and SOC 2, ISO 27001, and HIPAA coverage. There are no per-user or per-MAU fees on any plan.

Watch out. Smaller connector ecosystem than WorkOS or Auth0. Verify the identity providers your named accounts actually run. Head to head: Auth0 vs SSOJet and SSOJet vs WorkOS.

Self-hosted and open source

7. Keycloak: the zero-licence-cost baseline

Keycloak is the de facto open source identity server: Apache 2.0, OAuth 2.0, OIDC and SAML 2.0, identity brokering, LDAP and Active Directory federation, and a full admin console. There is no per-MAU charge at any scale, which is why it is the default answer to "our Auth0 invoice is the problem".

Release cadence (verified September 2026). Keycloak 26.7.4 shipped on 16 September 2026. The project has no long-term-support line: only the newest release gets security fixes, so staying current is an operational commitment, not an option.

Real cost. The licence is free; the deployment is not. Budget roughly half to one full-time engineer for upgrades, theming, SPI extensions, and on-call. Below about 100,000 MAU that headcount usually costs more than a SaaS invoice. Above it, Keycloak wins on cost. Head to head: Auth0 vs Keycloak.

8. FusionAuth: self-hosting without the Keycloak operational tax

FusionAuth is a single-binary, API-first CIAM you run yourself or in FusionAuth Cloud. It carries most of the breadth teams expect from Auth0 (SSO, MFA including TOTP and WebAuthn, social login, per-tenant theming, multi-tenancy) with materially lighter operations than Keycloak.

Pricing (verified September 2026, and it has changed). Older comparisons quote "$37 per month cloud, $125 per month self-hosted". Those numbers are gone. The current pricing page lists Community as free and unlimited with the core authentication features, Starter from $162 per month billed annually, and Essentials and Enterprise from $2,970 per month billed annually. Cloud and self-hosted use the same four tiers.

Watch out. The FusionAuth licence is not OSI-approved. Procurement teams that require an OSI licence will block it, and Keycloak or Ory become the fallback. Head to head: Auth0 vs FusionAuth.

9. SuperTokens: Apache 2.0 core, now with Rownd's customers

SuperTokens is an open source authentication layer with an Apache 2.0 core you can self-host at no cost, plus managed hosting if you want it. The SDK surface and framework integrations are the draw; it is lighter than Keycloak and more opinionated than Ory.

What changed in 2026. SuperTokens acquired Rownd's authentication business line on 16 March 2026 and announced that the legacy Rownd Authentication platform would sunset on 20 June 2026, with migration paths to SuperTokens hosted. If you were evaluating Rownd, that product line no longer exists as an independent option.

10. Ory: modular, Kubernetes-native identity

Ory splits identity into components: Kratos for identities, Hydra for OAuth 2.0 and OIDC, Keto for permissions, Oathkeeper for the proxy. Teams running GitOps and Kubernetes pick it because each piece is independently deployable and API-first. The cost is that you assemble and staff the stack yourself; this is not an easier Keycloak.

11. Supabase Auth: the bundled model on Postgres

Supabase Auth keeps the thing teams like about Firebase, auth bundled with the backend, on a Postgres foundation with row-level security and an open source core you can self-host.

Pricing (verified September 2026). The Free plan includes 50,000 MAU, Pro is $25 per month with 100,000 MAU included, Team is $599 per month with the same 100,000 MAU, and overage on both is $0.00325 per MAU. Total stored users are unlimited; the cap is on monthly active authentication.

Watch out. B2C-leaning. It does not solve an enterprise SSO requirement on its own.

Hyperscaler-native options

12. Amazon Cognito: cheapest per user, most expensive in engineering hours

Cognito gives you user pools, OIDC and SAML federation, Lambda triggers, MFA, and tight integration with the rest of AWS inside the same account and IAM model. On raw price per user nothing here beats it.

Pricing (verified September 2026, and the old numbers are wrong). The 50,000 free MAU tier that most comparison posts still quote was replaced in November 2024. Current Cognito pricing has three tiers. Lite is free to 10,000 MAU, then $0.0055 per MAU for the next 90,000 and $0.0046 above that. Essentials, the default for new user pools, is free to 10,000 MAU then $0.015. Plus has no free tier and costs $0.020 per MAU. SAML and OIDC federation is billed separately at $0.015 per MAU above a 50 MAU free allowance. Pools created before 22 November 2024 on Lite can retain the legacy 50,000 MAU free tier under conditions AWS documents.

Watch out. The developer experience is the known trade: a constrained hosted UI, Lambda-trigger debugging, and the User Pool versus Identity Pool split that confuses new teams. Head to head: Auth0 vs Cognito.

13. Firebase Authentication: fastest zero-to-login, hard B2B ceiling

Firebase Authentication is still the quickest way to a working consumer login on mobile, with SDKs for Web, iOS, Android, Flutter, Unity, and C++, and automatic session and token handling.

Pricing (verified September 2026). Standard authentication is free to 50,000 MAU on both Spark and Blaze. With the Identity Platform upgrade, SAML and OIDC authentication is free only to 50 MAU, after which Google Cloud pricing applies. Phone authentication bills per SMS at region-dependent rates.

Watch out. No genuine B2B Organizations model and no first-class enterprise SAML story. The first customer that demands SSO is the signal to move.

14. Microsoft Entra External ID: only if you are already a Microsoft shop

Entra External ID is the successor to Azure AD B2C and brings customer identity into the Microsoft cloud with Entra administration, Conditional Access, and federation. One hard constraint belongs in every evaluation: Azure AD B2C has not been sold to new customers since 1 May 2025. If you were considering B2C as an Auth0 replacement, that door is closed; new work goes on Entra External ID.

Enterprise IAM suites

Okta and Ping Identity

Okta is the obvious enterprise option and the awkward one, because Okta owns Auth0. Moving from Auth0 to Okta Customer Identity changes the product and the pricing model but not the vendor. Okta's published pricing shows Workforce SSO from $6 per user per month on the Starter suite and $17 on Essentials. Customer Identity carries a $3,000 per month enterprise base platform fee billed annually, with usage-based add-ons quoted on total annual MAU.

Ping Identity is the other enterprise-grade option, strongest on hybrid deployment, legacy federation, and regulated-industry compliance. ForgeRock is not a separate choice any more: ForgeRock joined Ping in August 2023 and the platforms are one portfolio. For the detailed enterprise comparison, see Auth0 vs ForgeRock.

OneLogin still exists under One Identity, which acquired it in October 2021. It remains a reasonable mid-market access-management option but it is no longer an independent CIAM roadmap.

What migrating off Auth0 actually costs

The SDK rewrite is the easy part and usually runs 60 to 90 days for a mid-sized product. Three things decide whether the project slips.

Password hashes. Auth0 exports bcrypt password hashes in bulk, so on a well-planned migration users never see a reset prompt. Verify the target accepts your hash format before you commit. The exception worth knowing: Amazon Cognito uses SRP and cannot export reusable hashes, so a migration from Cognito needs a just-in-time re-hash on next login. That asymmetry surprises teams that plan the two directions the same way.

Actions, Rules, and Hooks. Every piece of business logic living in Auth0 has to be re-implemented on the target's extension model. Inventory these first. They, not the SDK, determine the timeline.

Enterprise connections. Each configured SAML or OIDC connection means a coordinated change with that customer's IT team: new ACS URL, new entity ID, new certificate. Budget calendar time, not engineering time. Most teams run both platforms in parallel during cutover.

Step-by-step: the CIAM Compass migration guide for Auth0, the password hash migration guide, and Auth Migration Hell for the failure modes.

How to choose

Pick by the pain, not by the feature grid. If the bill is the problem and you have ops capacity, self-host FusionAuth or Keycloak. If enterprise SSO economics are the problem, use WorkOS or SSOJet. If you need to ship modern auth fast under 100,000 MAU, use Clerk for React or Stytch for passkey-first. If you are crossing from consumer into enterprise B2B, you may find Auth0 was right and the tier was wrong.

For a stage-by-stage framework rather than a vendor list, read Auth0 vs Okta vs Stytch vs WorkOS vs SSOJet: A Buyer-Stage Framework. For the full scored matrix across every vendor on one set of axes, use the CIAM Compass Auth0 profile and the CIAM providers directory.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best alternative to Auth0?

There is no single best one. The right pick follows your reason for leaving. For enterprise SSO and SCIM without per-MAU pricing, WorkOS (free to 1M MAU) or SSOJet (no per-user fees). To eliminate per-MAU cost entirely, self-host Keycloak or FusionAuth Community. For passkey-first consumer auth, Stytch or MojoAuth. For a fast React or Next.js launch, Clerk.

Clerk vs Auth0: which should I pick?

Pick Clerk if your front end is React or Next.js, you are under 100,000 users, and time to first login matters more than breadth. Clerk's free tier is 50,000 monthly retained users against Auth0's 25,000 MAU, and its prebuilt components are better. Pick Auth0 if you need deep B2B organizations, a long tail of enterprise IdP connectors, Directory Sync as a first-class product, or FedRAMP. Clerk charges $75 per month per enterprise connection beyond the first, so model that before you switch for cost reasons.

WorkOS vs Auth0: is WorkOS cheaper?

On a B2B SSO shape, almost always. AuthKit is free to one million MAU, where Auth0 bills tiered MAU from 25,000. The cost that replaces it is per connection: $125 each for the first fifteen SSO or Directory Sync connections, sliding to $65 at high volume. So WorkOS wins when you have many users and fewer enterprise tenants, and the gap narrows as tenant count climbs. Switch to Auth0 for consumer CIAM breadth, not for the invoice.

Auth0 vs Keycloak: when is self-hosting actually cheaper?

Keycloak has no licence fee, so the comparison is Auth0's invoice against your infrastructure plus staff. A production high-availability Keycloak deployment plus the engineer who owns upgrades, theming, and on-call typically costs more than Auth0 below roughly 100,000 MAU and less above it. Keycloak has no LTS release line, so "we will upgrade later" is not a supported plan. Model both sides over three years, including the migration.

Is there a free or open source alternative to Auth0?

Yes, several. Keycloak is Apache 2.0 and self-hosted with no per-MAU cost. SuperTokens has an Apache 2.0 core. Ory publishes Kratos, Hydra, and Keto as open source. FusionAuth Community is free and unlimited but its licence is not OSI-approved, which matters if procurement checks. Supabase Auth is open source and self-hostable. On the commercial side, WorkOS (1M MAU), Supabase (50,000 MAU), Clerk (50,000 MRU), and MojoAuth (25,000 MAU) all have free tiers larger than Auth0's.

How long does migrating off Auth0 take?

Plan 60 to 90 days of engineering for a mid-sized product, plus calendar time for enterprise customers to reconfigure their identity providers. Password hashes export from Auth0 in bulk, so users normally keep their credentials. The variable is how much logic lives in Auth0 Actions, Rules, and Hooks, because none of it ports directly. Inventory that logic before you pick a target platform, not after.

What is the difference between CIAM and workforce IAM?

CIAM manages external customer identities and optimises for registration conversion, self-service, consent, and scale to millions of users. Workforce IAM manages employees and optimises for directory services, provisioning, device posture, and access governance. Auth0, Clerk, Stytch, Descope, FusionAuth, and MojoAuth are CIAM. Okta Workforce Identity and Microsoft Entra ID are workforce IAM. Several vendors sell both, but the products are architecturally different and priced differently. See IAM vs CIAM.