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Deepak Gupta markCIAM Compass

The trust contract

Methodology.

What this is, and what it isn't

CIAM Compass is practitioner research into the Customer Identity and Access Management vertical, produced by the editorial team behind it working with Deepak Gupta. It is built from hands-on testing, primary-source documentation, conversations with people who run CIAM in production, and active participation in the identity community. The aim is a resource a buyer or an engineer can genuinely learn the category from, and trust when choosing a vendor.

It also tracks where the market is heading: pricing pressure at scale, the shift to passkeys, B2B Organizations becoming table stakes, and the arrival of agentic identity. The work is opinionated, sourced, dated, and signed. It is not a vendor-sponsored analyst subscription, not pay-to-play, and not a crowdsourced directory padded with vendor copy. There are no sponsored placements, no affiliate links, and no vendor money. Throughout this site, "we" is the editorial team behind CIAM Compass.

Author

Deepak Gupta, Technical co-founder and CEO of GrackerAI, a GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) platform for cybersecurity and B2B SaaS. Previously co-founder, CISO & CTO of LoginRadius, a CIAM platform that scaled to 1B+ end users. Helped define the CIAM category in its early days; now building a new category product in GEO. CIAM practitioner since 2012. Writes at guptadeepak.com , read more about Deepak.

What we evaluate

Every vendor is scored on the same capability matrix, eight groups covering authentication, authorization, user management, developer experience, security, agentic identity, compliance, and consent / privacy. Each capability is one of true, false, or partial. Each rating is assessed from primary sources: vendor documentation, release notes and changelogs, public pricing pages, and hands-on testing where access allows. The sources behind a profile are listed on that profile. Found something wrong? Corrections are welcome through the contact route on the disclaimer page, and material changes are dated in the vendor's changelog.

Per-axis scoring (1–5)

A small number of axes carry a 1–5 score because the underlying quality varies meaningfully across vendors: dx_score, docs_quality, passkey_orchestration_quality, pricing_transparency_score, and migration_difficulty (inbound and outbound).

We deliberately do not publish an aggregate score per vendor. Aggregate scores invite reductive comparisons and obscure the trade-offs.

TCO band assumptions

Every vendor is priced at 10k / 100k / 500k / 1M MAU using:

  • 60% MAU activity rate
  • 1 standard MFA factor enabled
  • 2 enterprise SSO connections (where charged per connection)
  • Standard support tier
  • US data residency
  • No add-on modules (FGA, IDV, fraud) unless bundled at the relevant tier

Estimates are intentionally rough. Exact pricing requires a vendor quote. The TCO calculator lets you vary assumptions.

Update cadence

  • Vendor profiles are reviewed at least every 180 days.
  • CIAM guides are reviewed at least every 365 days.
  • Pages older than the threshold render a stale-content banner.
  • Vendor pricing pages are checked at each review and whenever a pricing change surfaces. The TCO bands are point-in-time estimates, not a live feed.

Conflict of interest

CIAM Compass takes no money from vendors. The editorial maintainer (Deepak Gupta) holds no commercial relationship with any CIAM vendor in this index , no employment, board seat, paid advisory, cap-table position, or material consulting engagement. The maintainer's current operating role is at GrackerAI, a GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) platform outside the CIAM category. The maintainer's past LoginRadius affiliation ended before this portal was authored.

There are no sponsored placements, no affiliate links, no premium tier. If any commercial relationship with an indexed vendor ever forms, this section updates first, and the affected vendor profile carries a prominent disclosure banner.

Citation

Cite the canonical URL of the specific page along with the last_verified date visible on that page. Content is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Suggested attribution: "CIAM Compass (guptadeepak.com/ciam-compass), [page title], last verified [date]."