Best Auth0 Alternatives (2026)
Open-source, self-hostable, and lower-cost alternatives to Auth0 — ranked and compared.
Auth0 remains a genuinely good product. The SDKs are polished, the documentation is thorough, the hosted login pages handle edge cases that would take weeks to implement from scratch, and the social identity connector library covers every OAuth provider a product team is likely to need. For early-stage applications with modest user counts, the free tier is a reasonable place to start.
The tension surfaces at growth. Auth0's pricing is tied to monthly active users, and the jump from the free tier to paid plans scales steeply once a consumer application starts acquiring tens of thousands of users. A B2B product with 500 active enterprise accounts might trigger the same MAU bill as a B2C product with 10,000 casual users, because the metric doesn't distinguish high-value from low-value engagement. After Okta's 2021 acquisition, pricing adjustments made this math harder for many existing customers.
Self-hosting is simply not an option. Auth0 is a managed SaaS — all authentication flows, tokens, and user records live on Okta's infrastructure. For organizations in regulated industries, healthcare, financial services, or those with contractual data residency requirements, that constraint alone is disqualifying.
The combination of MAU-based cost growth and the absence of a self-hosting path is driving a wave of teams toward open-source identity providers. Keycloak brings enterprise-grade federation and a decade of hardening to your own infrastructure at zero licensing cost. authentik offers a friendlier setup experience with the same protocol coverage. SuperTokens provides a developer-first SDK model closer to the Auth0 experience but with a self-hosted core you fully own.
The 3 best Auth0 alternatives
Battle-tested open-source identity and access management with SSO, OIDC, and SAML.
- Apache-2.0 licensed — completely free with no seat or MAU limits
- CNCF-incubating project with Red Hat backing and a decade of production hardening
- Java-based stack is resource-heavy and slow to cold-start compared to modern alternatives
Modern open-source identity provider with a clean UI, supporting SSO, OIDC, SAML, and LDAP.
- Significantly friendlier admin UX than Keycloak — less XML, no realm mental model
- MIT-licensed community edition is free with no MAU or seat limits
- Enterprise features (audit logs, support SLAs) require a paid license
Open-source authentication with session management, social login, and passwordless — self-host or managed.
- Apache-2.0 licensed core is free to self-host with no MAU or seat limits
- Recipe-based architecture lets you mix and match auth methods modularly
- Enterprise features like SAML SSO and SCIM provisioning require the paid managed plan
Auth0 alternatives compared
| Spec | Keycloak | authentik | SuperTokens |
|---|---|---|---|
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT / Open-core | Apache-2.0 |
| Open source | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Self-host | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Starting price | Free / self-host | Free / self-host | Free / self-host |
| Stars | 23,500 | 14,200 | 13,800 |
Read our Auth0 profile → · More Authentication & Identity →
Frequently asked questions
What is the best Auth0 alternative?
Keycloak is our top pick — Battle-tested open-source identity and access management with SSO, OIDC, and SAML. It is open source and self-hostable, Free / self-host.
Is there a free or open-source Auth0 alternative?
Yes. Keycloak, authentik, SuperTokens are open source, and most can be self-hosted for free aside from infrastructure cost.
Can I self-host an alternative to Auth0?
Yes — Keycloak, authentik, SuperTokens support self-hosting, giving you full data ownership.