auth0-vs-okta-identity-cloud

Auth0 and Okta Identity Cloud are identity management solutions integrally featuring single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication, social login, and related identity-related security features. Both are offered in flexible suites that may be structured to provide employee or customer login and identity management. They are competing solutions. Okta’s is dominant, and is used across companies of all sizes, somewhat more so across mid-size or larger entities. Auth0 is a smaller company that competes from the middle of the identity pack, and is deployed at relatively smaller companies than Okta, possibly because it has a service tier that is free for long-term use, and that might be adequate for many kinds of projects.

Features

There are plenty of reasons to deploy Okta or Auth0 for a company or company’s identity management, authentication, or single sign-on needs.

Choosing Okta is usually a straightforward decision: it is very strong across its core competencies, particularly for creating a central place for employees to login to the many cloud-based enterprise apps they may use (SSO). Okta presents a fluid sign-in process for end-users, with an easy to use UI that creates an efficient employee experience. Also, administrative users describe a flexible MFA solution with adjustable rules and stringency based on access location or any particular app’s security needs. It also provides strong password management.

Auth0 stands out for providing companies a relatively low cost or costless solution; its greatest strength is its functional but free or low cost SSO and multi-factor authentication. Auth0’s free plan is available for up to 7000 external users and 500 internal users for workplace identity (a Covid-19 initiative to make remote work safer, and easier). Okta does not provide a similarly capable free plan. Also, Auth0 is billed as a solution for developers with a focus on flexibility, letting the user build the app that is needed for their infrastructure, with SDKs and quickstarts for setting up authentication on a variety of platforms, along with good documentation.

Limitations

Some reasons Okta or Auth0 may not be appropriate for a company or project also exist.

Okta’s cost can be somewhat high vs. its many competitors. For non-technical users (or even technical users), some users complain that implementing an Okta identity solution is more complicated than it needs to be. While end-users may not experience these issues, company admin behind the scenes may be scratching their heads trying to make it all work. Also, Okta’s fans often surface a wish list of missing features, some such as a fat client for workstations, biometric authentication, and more customizable (i.e. less annoying) session logout rules for users, as well as official powershell support.

While Auth0 is a developer-oriented solution, some users feel the documentation is a little confusing, and are frustrated by what they describe as constantly changing or never finished features. But the most unwelcome surprise is the freemium woes. After humming along for free, some developers have said Auth0’s cost caught them by surprise, when finding a particular needed tool gated behind steeply tiered pricing, placing features that have become essential hopelessly out of reach for their project.

Pricing

As stated, Auth0 is free with up to 7,000 external active users with unlimited logins, or 500 insider active users. The paid developer plan adds additional features including up to 2 days of log retention and 1 log stream, role management, and other features, starting at $23 per month per 1000 external authenticated users. There are additional tiers for more users, and all tiers cost about 23c per user. For employee support with social login, MFA, and enterprise identity support (e.g. Active Directory) the Developer Pro plan is required. Its pricing depends on the number of internal users, external users, and machine to machine tokens included.

Okta offers a number of identity services and pricing can become quite complex. Workforce Identity prices are based on each needed feature on a per user / per month basis. SSO is priced at $2 per user, per month, and Adaptive SSO (adds risk-based authentication with device, location, and network context) is priced at $5 per user / per month.Okta MFA is priced at $3 per user / per month with Adaptive MFA (adds device context, geo-location and “impossible travel” detection, additional network context) is $6 per month. Okta’s Universal Directory service is $2 per user per month. Okta also offers a number of add-ons (access gateway, API Access management, etc.). Customer Identity products range from free for 1000 MAUs, to $42,000 for an enterprise plan. Enterprise plans include access to Okta add-ons, for an additional fee.