Auth0 alternatives: 11 identity and access management tools compared
Teams look for an Auth0 alternative when the bill is driven by monthly active users and by the tier that unlocks one specific feature, or when they want the identity server under their own control. Auth0 belongs to Okta, Inc. Buyers move to developer-first hosted services, to open-source servers they run themselves, or to a workforce directory when the real need is staff login.
Short answer: The first three alternatives to Auth0 in our identity and access management software ranking are Clerk, WorkOS and Keycloak. Places 1 to 3 go to challengers, vendors outside the best-known brands in a category, wherever the category has them; the established names follow from place 4 in their ranked order. Choose Clerk if you build a web product and want ready-made login screens with a free allowance counted per retained user. All 11 alternatives below are ranked products from Best Identity and Access Management Software in 2026, and each says where it differs from Auth0.
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Pricing: Free plan up to a monthly-active-user cap; paid tiers published for B2C and B2B
Established in: United States
Built for: Developer teams wanting hosted customer login with many ready connections
Not for: Consumer apps with large user bases and thin margins
01
Why buyers look past Auth0
01
Features sit behind the tier, and users set the meter
Auth0's pricing page puts custom database connections and cross-app SSO on Professional and above, with Essentials priced at 35 per month and Professional at 240 per month for 500 monthly active users. Machine-to-machine access is 1,000 tokens on Free and Essentials and 5,000 on Professional. A product that needs one of these features pays for the whole tier.
02
Getting data out is gated
Auth0's own export guide says bulk user export is not available on the Free plan. Password hashes and MFA secrets leave only as a PGP-encrypted file requested through a support case, and the pricing page says passwords are stored as bcrypt hashes. A team planning an exit should test that route before signing.
03
The vendor is now part of a workforce-identity company
Auth0 pages carry the Okta, Inc. copyright, and Okta's privacy policy names Auth0 LLC as a subsidiary. Okta's own pricing page links separately to Auth0 pricing and sells a distinct Okta Customer Identity product. Buyers who chose Auth0 as an independent developer service sometimes reconsider once two product lines sit under one owner.
Workforce per user per month with a user minimum, published; customer identity from a yearly floor; 30-day trial
Workforce and customer identity packages sold on annual contracts
you are a large organisation that needs no-code orchestration and has the contract size to match
#9
03
What each one does differently
1
Clerk
United States · Free plan up to a retained-user cap; Pro and Business monthly, published
Sells prebuilt sign-in and profile screens priced per retained user: Hobby is free up to 50,000 per app, Pro is 20 per month billed annually, Business 250. A user counts once they return 24 hours after signing up. Enterprise SSO is one connection on Pro, then 75 per month for each extra.
Switch from Auth0 if you build a web product and want ready-made login screens with a free allowance counted per retained user.
United States · User management free up to a user cap; SSO and Directory Sync per connection, published
Splits the product in two: AuthKit user management is free up to 1 million users, while Enterprise SSO and Directory Sync cost 125 per connection per month. You pay per customer company that connects its identity provider, not per login. Custom domains are a separate 99 per month.
Switch from Auth0 if you sell to businesses and want to pay for SSO only when a customer actually asks for it.
Not stated by the vendor · No vendor price list; open source, self-hosted at your own cost
A community server under the Apache License 2.0 with SSO, social login, brokering to OIDC and SAML providers and LDAP or Active Directory federation. It has no price list and no vendor tier, so cost is your own operations time. Its realm export is documented as unsuitable as a full backup.
Switch from Auth0 if you have operations staff and want the identity server on infrastructure you control.
Switzerland · Cloud free tier capped by daily active users; Pro monthly, published; self-hosted option
Cloud pricing counts daily active users: Free covers 100, Pro is 100 US dollars per month with 25,000 included. The Free plan lists data residency in the EU, US, Switzerland or Australia. Its code is under the AGPL v3, and self-hosting appears on the quoted Enterprise tier. Daily counting is not comparable with Auth0's monthly users.
Switch from Auth0 if you want a choice of data region and a code base you can read, and your daily traffic is modest.
United States · Self-hosted Community edition free; hosted tiers from a published monthly base
A Community edition you run yourself for free, plus hosted tiers from 162 per month billed annually (Starter) and from 2,970 per month for Essentials and Enterprise. Starter adds breached-password detection and advanced MFA but comes with community support only. The licence forbids decompiling the app.
Switch from Auth0 if you want to start on your own server at no licence cost and move to hosting later without changing product.
United States · Free developer tier; Production and Growth yearly with usage rates, published
Priced per yearly plan plus usage: Production 770 per year, Growth 9,350 per year, then 0.14 or 0.12 per aDAU per month above an included credit. B2B SSO is OIDC only and starts at Growth. Kratos and Hydra are Apache 2.0, and a self-hosted Enterprise Licence is quoted.
Switch from Auth0 if you want standards-based building blocks and a path from managed service to your own servers.
United States · Open source core, self-hosted; enterprise tier per user per month, published
An identity provider you host yourself; there is no hosted version. The free tier is community-supported and covers OIDC, SAML, LDAP, SCIM and RADIUS. Enterprise is 5 per internal user and 0.02 per external user per month, billed annually. Built for staff and homelab as much as for customer login.
Switch from Auth0 if you need one self-hosted system for staff apps, LDAP and RADIUS as well as customer login.
United States · Per user per month, published for entry suites; higher suites quoted; billed annually; trial
Okta's workforce suites run 6 per user per month (Starter), 14 (Core Essentials) and 17 (Essentials), with a 1,500 dollar annual minimum. Customer identity needs an annual contract, and the free Integrator plan is limited to 10 active users in non-production. It is the owner of Auth0, not an independent option.
Switch from Auth0 if your main users are employees and you already buy from Okta.
United States · Free edition with an Azure subscription; Premium per user per month, published
Entra ID Free is available with an Azure subscription and includes MFA and unlimited SSO. P1 costs 7 and P2 10 per user per month, paid yearly. Customer-facing sign-up sits in a separate pay-as-you-go product, Entra External ID. Aimed at organisations on Microsoft 365 and Azure rather than app builders.
Switch from Auth0 if you already run Azure and your users are staff or partners rather than public customers.
United States · Per user per month, published for single products; packages quoted; 30-day trial
A directory for staff devices and logins: SSO is 11 per user per month billed annually, device identity management 13. Packages above that are quoted, and suspended users still count as billable. It does not offer a developer SDK experience for consumer login. Prices exclude VAT.
Switch from Auth0 if your actual need is to manage employees, laptops and shared logins from one console.
United States · Workforce per user per month with a user minimum, published; customer identity from a yearly floor; 30-day trial
Customer identity starts at 35,000 per year (Essential) and 50,000 (Plus), and workforce at 3 or 6 per user per month on a 5,000 user minimum. A 30-day trial exists for both. The entry price rules out small projects; it targets large organisations with orchestration and gateway needs.
Switch from Auth0 if you are a large organisation that needs no-code orchestration and has the contract size to match.
Auth0 stays sensible for a product team that wants a hosted service with a free tier up to 25,000 monthly active users, passkeys and passwordless login on every plan, and a ladder up to an Enterprise tier with a 99.99 percent SLA and optional private deployment. It also suits teams that already trust Okta as a vendor. Check first that the features you need do not sit one tier above your budget, and that the export route fits your exit plan.
05
What moving off Auth0 involves
01
Plan the user export before you cancel
Bulk export of profiles to NDJSON or CSV runs from the dashboard or the Management API and, according to the export guide, is not available on the Free plan. If you are on Free, you may need to upgrade for a month. Run the 10-user sample export first to check the field structure.
02
Ask for password hashes early
Hashes and MFA secrets come as a PGP-encrypted file through a support case, and you must generate a 4096-bit key pair before you ask. Whether the new platform imports bcrypt hashes is a question for its own documentation. Without hashes, plan a password reset email for every user.
03
Rebuild the Actions and rules by hand
Auth0 customisation runs through Actions and Forms, and the plan sets how many you may have (5 on Free, 15 on Professional). Other platforms use different hook models, so this logic is rewritten rather than exported. List every Action before choosing a target.
06
Questions about replacing Auth0
6 answers
What does Auth0 cost?
On the default view of its pricing page, Free covers up to 25,000 monthly active users at 0 per month.
Essentials is 35 and Professional 240 per month, both shown for 500 monthly active users. Enterprise is quoted, with custom user tiers. The page also has a B2B view with different limits.
Does Auth0 have a free plan?
Yes. Free includes up to 25,000 monthly active users, one custom domain, 5 organisations and one enterprise connection, with community support. A 22-day trial of paid features precedes it, after which the Free plan applies automatically.
Who owns Auth0?
Okta, Inc. The Auth0 site carries the Okta, Inc. copyright, and Okta's privacy policy lists Auth0 LLC as a subsidiary of Okta, Inc. at 100 First Street, San Francisco.
Can I export my users from Auth0?
Profiles export to NDJSON or CSV through the dashboard or Management API, but not on the Free plan. Password hashes and MFA secrets come as a PGP-encrypted file requested through a support case.
Which alternatives can I run on my own servers?
Keycloak (Apache 2.0), authentik (MIT outside its enterprise directory), Zitadel (AGPL v3), FusionAuth Community edition, and Ory's Apache 2.0 components. Authentik does not offer a hosted version at all.
Which alternative has the lowest entry price for a startup?
Clerk and WorkOS both publish a free tier, up to 50,000 retained users per app and 1 million users respectively. The cost appears later, in Clerk's per-connection SSO fee and WorkOS's per-connection SSO fee of 125 per month.
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Sources
Checked 20 October 2026
Auth0 pricing: Free up to 25,000 MAU, Essentials 35 and Professional 240 per month at 500 MAU, tier limits, 22-day trial, bcrypt, Okta copyright.
Auth0 bulk user export: JSON-compatible and CSV export, not available on the Free plan, 10-user sample.
Founder of The Knowledge Engineers and of 2 Steps Ahead, an AI search visibility agency. Editorially responsible for every page on this site; research and drafting are AI-assisted.
Written, edited and fact-checked by Sebastiaan Smits. Last reviewed
20 October 2026. How we review.
