Auth0 vs Okta vs AWS Cognito Pricing 2026: Complete Identity Platform Comparison

Quick Summary: Which Auth Platform Is Right for You?

Auth0 Pricing 2026

Auth0 (now owned by Okta) is the developer-favorite identity platform. Its free tier is generous for early-stage apps, but costs grow quickly as your MAU climbs.

Auth0 B2B Pricing (Organizations)

Auth0 Organizations (B2B SaaS use case) is available on Professional plans and above. Each "organization" is a tenant (customer company) you create. At scale, Auth0 becomes expensive for B2B SaaS because you pay per MAU across ALL your customers' users.

Okta Pricing 2026

Okta dominates enterprise identity and workforce (employee) authentication. For B2B SaaS customer authentication, Okta's "Customer Identity Cloud" (formerly Auth0) and "Workforce Identity Cloud" serve different use cases.

AWS Cognito Pricing 2026

AWS Cognito is by far the cheapest option at scale, but it comes with significant trade-offs in developer experience and UI customization.

Real Cost Models: What You Actually Pay

Scenario 1: B2C App with 10,000 MAU

Scenario 2: B2C App with 100,000 MAU

Scenario 3: B2B SaaS with 50 Employees

Feature Comparison

When to Choose Auth0

• You're building a B2C consumer app and need social login + good DX out of the box
• Developer experience matters most — Auth0's SDKs, documentation, and Rules/Actions pipeline are best-in-class
• You need Passwordless + WebAuthn — Auth0 leads here
• You're under 7,500 MAU — free tier is excellent for early-stage apps
• You need B2B multi-tenancy via Organizations (simpler than building it yourself)

Don't choose Auth0 if: You're building at scale (100K+ MAU) and cost is a priority — AWS Cognito will be significantly cheaper. Or if you need enterprise workforce identity — that's Okta's domain.

When to Choose Okta

• You're selling to enterprise — enterprise procurement teams require Okta compatibility for SSO
• Workforce identity is your use case — employee SSO, onboarding/offboarding, AD integration
• You need advanced governance — lifecycle management, PAM (privileged access), compliance reporting
• Your customers demand SAML/SCIM — Okta is the gold standard here
• You need a dedicated customer success team — Okta's enterprise support is excellent

Don't choose Okta if: You're a startup building a consumer app — the pricing model isn't designed for high-MAU B2C apps. Or if you're budget-sensitive and don't need enterprise-grade features.

When to Choose AWS Cognito

• You're already on AWS and want to minimize vendor sprawl
• Cost is the primary driver — 50K MAU free, then fractions of a penny per user
• You're building a high-scale consumer app (1M+ MAU) where per-MAU pricing is critical
• You have engineering bandwidth to deal with a more complex setup and less polished DX
• Your backend is Lambda/API Gateway — Cognito integrates natively via Authorizers

Don't choose Cognito if: Developer experience is a priority, you need advanced features like passwordless out of the box, or you don't have AWS expertise on the team. The customization options require Lambda triggers for even basic flows.

Hidden Costs to Watch For

Auth0

• MAU growth trap: At 10K MAU you're paying ~$86/mo, at 50K MAU ~$343/mo — cost scales linearly with growth
• B2B Organization limits: Organizations feature has per-MAU pricing across all your customers' users combined
• Machine-to-machine tokens: M2M tokens are priced separately (per-token) on most plans
• Log retention: Default is 2 days on free tier; extending it costs money

Okta

• Module sprawl: Base Workforce Identity is just SSO. Each additional module (MFA, Lifecycle, Governance) is billed separately — easy to 4–5x your cost
• Minimum user counts: Enterprise contracts often have minimums (e.g., 50 users) regardless of actual usage
• Annual commitment required: Monthly billing is rare; most contracts are annual
• Professional Services: Complex enterprise deployments often require paid implementation

AWS Cognito

• SAML federation: $0.015/MAU — 3x the base price. Critical for B2B SaaS with enterprise customers
• Advanced Security Features: +$0.05/MAU for bot detection, compromised credential detection — basically required for production
• SMS costs: SNS charges for every text-based MFA. At scale this adds up significantly
• Lambda invocation costs: If you use Lambda triggers extensively for customization, compute costs apply

The Bottom Line

For most startups: start with Auth0's free tier (7,500 MAU) and migrate to Cognito when your MAU growth makes Auth0's per-MAU pricing too expensive. The migration is painful but worth planning for at 25–50K MAU.

For B2B SaaS companies: Auth0 Organizations is the path of least resistance for multi-tenancy. When you're selling to enterprise accounts that require SSO, you'll need to add Okta-compatible SAML — both Auth0 and Cognito support this, but Okta is the standard that enterprise IT teams already know.

For high-scale consumer apps: AWS Cognito wins on cost — sometimes by 80–90% vs Auth0 at 500K+ MAU. The engineering investment to work around Cognito's rough edges pays off quickly.