This article is written by the team that builds Casdoor, so we are not neutral, and we say where we think Casdoor fits and where it doesn't. Facts about other products come from their own websites as of October 8, 2026 (listed under Sources) and may have changed. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.
Authentication pricing pages are hard to compare. Each vendor counts users differently (monthly active, monthly retained, daily active), includes different features in the base plan, and charges separately for different things. This article lines them up and works through one realistic example.
All prices are list prices in US dollars from each vendor's pricing page in October 2026, before discounts or negotiation.
How each vendor counts
| Vendor | Billing unit | Free tier | First paid plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Auth0 | Monthly active users (MAU) | 25,000 MAU | B2C Essentials $35/month, B2B Essentials $150/month |
| Clerk | Monthly retained users (MRU): users who come back after their first day | 50,000 MRU per app | Pro $25/month ($20 billed yearly) |
| WorkOS | MAU for AuthKit, plus per connection for SSO and directory sync | 1,000,000 MAU | Pay per feature |
| Amazon Cognito | MAU, by feature tier | 10,000 MAU (Lite, Essentials) | $0.0055 (Lite) to $0.02 (Plus) per MAU |
| Supabase Auth | MAU, as part of a Supabase plan | 50,000 MAU | Pro $25/month with 100,000 MAU |
| Zitadel | Daily active users (DAU) | 100 DAU | Pro $100/month with 25,000 DAU |
| Logto | Base fee plus token usage and add-ons | 50,000 MAU | Pro from $24/month |
| Stytch | MAU | 10,000 MAU | Pay as you go |
| Casdoor Cloud | Per dedicated instance; users are unlimited | Trial credit; self-host free | Basic $24.17/month billed yearly ($29 monthly) |
Worked example: 100,000 monthly active users
Assume a consumer app with 100,000 monthly active users who all return regularly, email and social login, no enterprise SSO. Monthly list price for login alone:
| Vendor | Plan | Monthly cost | How it's calculated |
|---|---|---|---|
| WorkOS | AuthKit | $0 | Free up to 1M MAU |
| Supabase | Pro | $25 | 100,000 MAU included |
| Casdoor Cloud | Basic | $29 | Flat; $24.17 billed yearly |
| Cognito | Lite | $495 | 90,000 × $0.0055 |
| Clerk | Pro | $1,025 | $25 + 50,000 × $0.02 |
| Cognito | Essentials | $1,350 | 90,000 × $0.015 |
| Auth0 | B2C | Custom quote | Self-serve plans stop at 30,000 MAU |
At this size the cheapest options are the ones that don't bill by user at all (WorkOS AuthKit's free tier, Casdoor's flat price) or bundle users into a platform you already pay for (Supabase).
The costs that come after login
The headline price is rarely what you end up paying. Watch for:
- Enterprise SSO and directory sync. Clerk charges $75 per SSO connection per month after the first, WorkOS and Stytch $125 per connection. With 20 business customers on SAML, that's roughly $1,400 to $2,500 a month.
- MFA, organizations and RBAC as add-ons. Logto sells RBAC, organizations, MFA, enterprise SSO and custom domains as monthly add-ons; Auth0 sells enterprise MFA and enterprise connections as add-ons.
- AI agents. Auth0's AI agent features add 50% to the base plan price.
- Growth. Per-user pricing is linear: double the users, roughly double the bill.
Where Casdoor fits
Casdoor Cloud charges for the instance, not the users: Basic $29, Premium $79 with a custom domain and a choice of regions, and higher tiers for priority support. SSO connections (SAML, OIDC, LDAP), MFA, organizations and RBAC are included on every plan, and the same open-source Casdoor is free to self-host if you'd rather run it.
The trade-off is that you get a dedicated server rather than a slice of a global multi-tenant service, so very large or spiky traffic may call for a bigger plan, and we don't yet offer the compliance reports (SOC 2, ISO 27001) some enterprise buyers ask for.
If your auth bill grows faster than your revenue, price out Casdoor Cloud or see how it compares with Auth0, Okta and Keycloak.
Sources
- Auth0 pricing
- Clerk pricing
- WorkOS pricing
- Amazon Cognito pricing
- Supabase pricing
- Zitadel pricing
- Logto pricing
- Stytch pricing
Product names are trademarks of their respective owners.