Auth0's pricing is becoming too expensive for our needs, especially as usage grows. We're looking for alternatives that can handle service accounts, machine-to-machine authentication, and API access. What platforms or self-hosted solutions have worked well for you, and how do their pricing and operational trade-offs compare?
4 Answers
WorkOS and CloudIAM are additional hosted options to investigate. They may be a better fit if you want managed infrastructure and enterprise-focused features rather than taking on the maintenance of a self-hosted identity platform.
Keycloak is the most frequently recommended option here. It’s flexible, supports SSO and several authentication flows, and can be self-hosted, which helps avoid usage-based pricing. The trade-off is that your team has to operate and maintain it.
Clerk, Authentik, and Zitadel are worth comparing if you prefer a managed or more polished developer experience. They can be simpler to get started with than Keycloak, but you’ll want to check their pricing carefully for API calls and larger user counts.
Logto and Hanko are also interesting choices. Logto has worked well for us so far, while Hanko is open source, can run on your own infrastructure, and has pricing that felt more reasonable. Hanko’s team has also been responsive to feedback.
We ended up choosing Keycloak for the same reason. It isn’t completely effortless to run, but it has covered our authentication requirements well.