Okta alternatives: 11 identity and access management tools compared
Teams look for an Okta alternative when the per-user suite price, the annual minimum or the add-on list outgrows what they planned, or when the real need is customer login rather than staff SSO. They move to a directory that also manages devices, to the identity service of their existing cloud, to self-hosted servers, or to developer-first services.
Short answer: The first three alternatives to Okta in our identity and access management software ranking are JumpCloud, Microsoft Entra ID and authentik. 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 JumpCloud if you want staff SSO and device management from one vendor and fewer than a few hundred users. All 11 alternatives below are ranked products from Best Identity and Access Management Software in 2026, and each says where it differs from Okta.
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Pricing: Per user per month, published for entry suites; higher suites quoted; billed annually; trial
Established in: United States
Built for: Mid-sized companies buying staff single sign-on with a large app catalogue
Not for: Small teams below the contract minimum or wanting monthly billing
01
Why buyers look past Okta
01
Suites, add-ons and a sales gate
Okta sells workforce identity as suites billed annually per user: Starter at 6, Core Essentials at 14 and Essentials at 17 per user per month, with a 1,500 dollar annual contract minimum. Professional and Enterprise are quoted. Adaptive MFA, Device Access and API Access Management are listed as add-ons on the lower suites, so the real price depends on which of them you need.
02
Customer login is a different product on a different contract
Okta's pricing page splits Workforce Identity from Customer Identity. The customer side starts from an Enterprise base platform at 3K per month, requires an annual contract and has no month-to-month option, and it points to Auth0 pricing separately. A team that bought workforce SSO and now wants sign-up for its own customers is buying a second product.
03
Automation has documented ceilings
Okta's developer pages cap each org at 25 active event hooks and 400,000 triggering events per 24 hours. Workflows allows 5 active flows on Starter and unlimited only on the Maximum tier, and Okta flags event-hook flows above 100,000 events a day as outside its best-supported zone. Teams that automate joiners and leavers heavily meet these limits as they grow.
User management free up to a user cap; SSO and Directory Sync per connection, published
Enterprise SSO billed per customer connection, user login free to one million
you sell to companies and want to pay for SSO only when a customer asks for it
#7
03
What each one does differently
1
JumpCloud
United States · Per user per month, published for single products; packages quoted; 30-day trial
Combines the directory with device management, so one console covers staff logins and laptops. SSO is sold at 11 per user per month billed annually, device management at 9, and bundles are quoted, with Platform Essentials capped at 300 users. Suspended users are still billed. It is a staff product, not a customer-login service.
Switch from Okta if you want staff SSO and device management from one vendor and fewer than a few hundred users.
United States · Free edition with an Azure subscription; Premium per user per month, published
Entra ID Free needs an Azure subscription and covers MFA, unlimited SSO and password self-service. Premium P1 costs 7 and P2 10 per user per month, paid yearly, and both come inside Microsoft 365 E3 and E5. P2 adds risk detection and privileged access. Strongest where staff already live in Microsoft 365.
Switch from Okta if your staff already sit in Microsoft 365 and you would rather pay through that licence than a second vendor.
United States · Open source core, self-hosted; enterprise tier per user per month, published
Software you host yourself, with no hosted version from the vendor. The open source tier is free, has no vendor support and covers OIDC, SAML, LDAP, SCIM, RADIUS and Kerberos. Enterprise adds paid features at 5 per internal user and 0.02 per external user per month, billed annually. Support starts with subscriptions over 1,000 dollars.
Switch from Okta if you have operations staff and want staff SSO, LDAP and RADIUS on servers you control.
Not stated by the vendor · No vendor price list; open source, self-hosted at your own cost
Community-run server licensed under Apache 2.0, with login for all your apps, social sign-in, brokering to other OIDC or SAML providers and federation with LDAP or Active Directory. The vendor lists no price, so you pay in staff time instead. Its own guide warns that console-exported realms are no backup.
Switch from Okta if you want a standards-based server with no licence fee and can run, patch and back it up yourself.
United States · Workforce per user per month with a user minimum, published; customer identity from a yearly floor; 30-day trial
The closest like-for-like in size. Workforce is 3 or 6 per user per month on an annual contract with a 5,000 user minimum, and customer identity starts at 35,000 a year. Both have a 30-day trial. The user minimum rules out small organisations, and the customer tiers are priced for large programmes.
Switch from Okta if you are a large organisation that wants another enterprise vendor and can meet a 5,000 user contract.
Switzerland · Cloud free tier capped by daily active users; Pro monthly, published; self-hosted option
Counts daily active users rather than seats: the Free cloud plan takes 100, while Pro costs 100 dollars monthly and includes 25,000. Free lets you pick EU, US, Swiss or Australian data residency. Source is AGPL v3, and only the quoted Enterprise tier can run on your own infrastructure.
Switch from Okta if you build customer login and want a choice of data region plus a code base you can read.
United States · Self-hosted Community edition free; hosted tiers from a published monthly base
You can run the Community edition on your own hardware at no cost, or buy hosting: Starter begins at 162 a month on annual billing, Essentials and Enterprise at 2,970. Starter support is forum-only. Designed around customer-facing applications, and the customer agreement bars decompiling the software.
Switch from Okta if you want to start on your own server at no licence cost and move to hosting later.
United States · Free developer tier; Production and Growth yearly with usage rates, published
Yearly plan plus metered usage: 770 a year for Production, 9,350 for Growth, then 0.14 or 0.12 per active daily user monthly above the included credit. Growth offers B2B SSO over OIDC only; SAML SSO and SCIM appear at Enterprise. Kratos is Apache 2.0 and a self-hosted licence is quoted.
Switch from Okta if you want building blocks you assemble yourself, with a path from managed service to your own servers.
United States · Free plan up to a monthly-active-user cap; paid tiers published for B2C and B2B
Owned by Okta, Inc., so it is a change of product, not of vendor. Free covers up to 25,000 monthly active users with one enterprise connection; Essentials is 35 and Professional 240 per month at 500 users. Features such as existing-database logins sit on higher tiers. It does not manage staff devices.
Switch from Okta if your need is customer login and you are content to stay with the same parent company.
United States · Free plan up to a retained-user cap; Pro and Business monthly, published
Ready-made sign-in and profile components for web apps, billed per retained user. Hobby costs nothing up to 50,000 per app; Pro is 20 monthly on annual billing and Business 250. Pro bundles a single SSO connection, and each further one adds 75 a month. It is made for shipping an app, not for running a staff directory.
Switch from Okta if you build a web product and want ready-made login screens instead of an enterprise suite.
United States · User management free up to a user cap; SSO and Directory Sync per connection, published
Charges by connected customer company rather than by login. The AuthKit user layer is free to 1 million users, whereas Enterprise SSO and Directory Sync each run 125 per connection monthly. Custom domains add 99 a month. Built for software vendors who sell to businesses, so it has no staff-device or workforce console.
Switch from Okta if you sell to companies and want to pay for SSO only when a customer asks for it.
Okta remains a sound pick for a company that wants one vendor for workforce SSO, MFA, lifecycle automation and governance, and accepts per-user suite pricing under an annual contract. Its pricing page shows a 30-day trial, a published ladder from Starter to Essentials, and extras such as Privileged Access and Identity Governance on the same contract. Before you leave, check how many suite features you really use, since several alternatives cover only part of that list.
05
What moving off Okta involves
01
Inventory what you built on top of Okta
List every Workflow, event hook and app assignment before choosing a target. Okta's Workflows have an export function, limited by plan to between 10 and 1,000 flows per 15-minute window, but the logic runs inside Okta and is rewritten elsewhere. Count which suite features sit behind add-ons, because the replacement may need to cover Adaptive MFA or Device Access separately.
02
Settle the password question early
The Okta pages we read describe importing users with hashed passwords through the Users API, naming algorithms such as BCRYPT and SHA-256. We found no documented route that hands password hashes out of an Okta org. Ask Okta support in writing, and budget for a reset email to every user or a staged migration if no hash export is possible.
03
Time the cutover to the annual billing date
Okta bills suites annually, so a mid-term switch means paying for seats you no longer use. Run the new provider in parallel for one pilot group, re-point apps that speak OIDC or SAML first, and leave legacy apps for last. Plan the end of the Okta term as the deadline for the last application.
06
Questions about replacing Okta
6 answers
What does Okta cost?
Okta's pricing page lists workforce suites per user per month, billed annually: Starter 6, Core Essentials 14 and Essentials 17. Professional and Enterprise are by enquiry.
A 1,500 dollar annual contract minimum applies to Workforce Identity. Customer Identity starts from an Enterprise base platform at 3K per month.
Does Okta have a free plan?
There is a 30-day free trial for the workforce suites. For developers the Okta Integrator Free Plan allows non-production use with up to 10 active users, and orgs deactivate after 180 days of inactivity unless an app is submitted to the Okta Integration Network.
Who owns Auth0?
Okta, Inc. Okta's privacy policy gives its mailing address as Okta, Inc. (including its subsidiary, Auth0 LLC) in San Francisco, and the Okta pricing page links to Auth0 as a separate platform. Moving from Okta to Auth0 keeps you with the same parent company.
Which alternatives can I run on my own servers?
Keycloak is Apache 2.0, authentik is MIT outside its enterprise directory, and Zitadel is AGPL v3. FusionAuth offers a free Community edition, and Ory publishes Apache 2.0 components. Only authentik has no hosted service; the other four also sell managed cloud.
Which alternative suits a Microsoft 365 company?
Microsoft Entra ID. Its pricing page says Microsoft 365 E3 includes Entra ID P1 and E5 includes P2, and Entra ID Free needs an Azure subscription. Whether the included tier covers your needs depends on the features you use today.
Which alternative is cheapest for customer login?
Both Clerk and WorkOS publish a free tier: 50,000 retained users per app at Clerk, 1 million users at WorkOS. Later costs come from enterprise SSO connections, 75 a month each at Clerk (after the first) and 125 a month each at WorkOS.
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Sources
Checked 23 October 2026
Okta pricing: Starter 6, Core Essentials 14, Essentials 17, 1,500 dollar minimum, add-ons, 30-day trial, Customer Identity 3K per month, annual contract, Integrator Free Plan, 24 hours five days support.
Okta privacy policy: Okta, Inc. including subsidiary Auth0 LLC, San Francisco address.
Okta event hooks: 25 active event hooks, 400,000 events per 24 hours.
Okta Workflows system limits: Active flow limits by plan, export limits per 15 minutes, 100,000 event-hook events per day caution.
FusionAuth pricing: Community self-hosted free, Starter 162, Essentials and Enterprise 2,970, support levels.
FusionAuth licence: Decompiling restriction in the customer licence agreement.
Ory pricing: Developer free, Production 770, Growth 9,350, aDAU rates, B2B SSO OIDC only on Growth, SAML and SCIM on Enterprise, self-hosted Enterprise License.
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
23 October 2026. How we review.
