Auth0 free tier too limited? Compare free authentication alternatives: Clerk, WorkOS, Supabase Auth, Firebase Auth, Logto, FusionAuth, Keycloak, and more. Catalogue dates August to November 2026.
Auth0 is a powerful identity platform, but its pricing is one of the steepest cliffs in developer tools. The free tier gives you 25K MAU — generous for prototyping. But the moment you outgrow it, B2C paid plans start with Essentials at $35 a month for 500 MAU, and Professional at $240 a month; B2B plans start at $150.
The pricing pain is compounded by complexity. Auth0's tenant model, rule/action system, and connection limits create billing surprises. Teams regularly discover they need features (SSO, MFA customization, branding removal) that are locked behind higher tiers. "Auth0 alternatives" remains one of the most consistently searched developer queries.
The authentication landscape in 2026 offers real competition. Managed platforms (Clerk, WorkOS, Stytch) provide modern DX with generous free tiers. Open-source solutions (Keycloak, FusionAuth, Ory, Logto) give you unlimited users when self-hosted. And BaaS platforms (Supabase, Firebase) include auth as part of a broader free tier. The right choice depends on whether you prioritize DX, cost, or control.
Limits Increased
Auth0's Free plan went from 7,500 to 25,000 monthly active users, with unlimited social and Okta connections, Organizations, Passwordless authentication and a custom domain. Auth0 announced it on 2024-09-24, available that day. Source ↗
Before: Free plan: 7,500 monthly active users After: Free plan: 25,000 monthly active users, unlimited social and Okta connections, Organizations, Passwordless, a custom domain (a card is needed to add it, for verification only)
Postgres development platform: database, Auth, Storage, Realtime and Edge Functions. The Free plan is $0: unlimited API requests, 50,000 monthly active users, a 500 MB database on a shared CPU with 500 MB RAM, 5 GB egress plus 5 GB cached egress, 1 GB file storage, 500,000 Edge Function invocations, and Realtime with 200 concurrent connections and 2 million messages a month. Free projects are paused after 1 week of inactivity, with a limit of 2 active projects. Pro starts at $25 a month for the first project and includes $10 a month of compute credits, enough for one Micro instance.
Supabase makes daily backups only for Pro, Team and Enterprise projects, so a free project has none, and Supabase recommends exporting it yourself with the CLI's db dump command. (From supabase.com/docs/guides/platform/backups, read 2026-10-05.)
A paused project can be restored from the dashboard for 1 year. After that, only its backup file and Storage objects can be downloaded. (From supabase.com/docs/guides/platform/upgrading, read 2026-10-05.)
Supabase notifies you when you exceed the Free Plan quota. Continued overuse brings restrictions that can include a read-only database, 402 responses to every API request, or paused projects. They lift when the quota refills next billing cycle or on upgrade to Pro. (From supabase.com/docs/guides/platform/billing-faq, read 2026-10-05.)
A Spark account can create a small number of projects, usually about 5-10. (From firebase.google.com/support/faq, read 2026-10-05.)
Linking a Cloud Billing account to a Spark project, including one with $300 Google Cloud free trial credits, automatically upgrades it to the pay-as-you-go Blaze plan. (From firebase.google.com/docs/projects/billing/firebase-pricing-plans, read 2026-10-05.)
On Spark, email-link sign-in is limited to 5 emails a day; sending more needs a billing account (Blaze). (From firebase.google.com/docs/auth/limits, read 2026-10-07.)
Phone (SMS) sign-in is not available on the Spark plan; on Blaze each SMS sent is billed. (From firebase.google.com/pricing, read 2026-10-20.)
Since September 1, 2026, Remote Config allows up to 100,000 fetch requests a day per Spark project at no cost. A Spark project that exceeds this limit gets 30 days of normal service, then is throttled unless it upgrades to Blaze. Blaze projects pay $0.06 per 10,000 requests above 100,000 a day, up to 10,000,000, and $0.01 per 10,000 above that. (From firebase.google.com/docs/remote-config/pricing, read 2026-10-17.)
Spark projects that used Remote Config before September 1, 2026 are subject to the 100,000-fetches-a-day limit from December 1, 2026 until they upgrade to Blaze. Blaze projects that used Remote Config before September 1, 2026 start Remote Config billing on February 1, 2027. A Spark project that used Remote Config before September 1, 2026 and upgrades to Blaze before November 15, 2026 starts Remote Config billing on February 1, 2027. (From firebase.google.com/docs/remote-config/pricing, read 2026-10-17.)
On the Blaze plan, all Gemini Developer API usage, including calls through Firebase AI Logic, is pay-as-you-go, and most projects must prepay. A project with no billing account (on Spark) can use the Gemini Developer API's free tier with no payment method. (From firebase.google.com/docs/ai-logic/pricing, read 2026-10-21.)
User Management is free for up to 1 million users. Single Sign-On starts at $125/connection. Directory Sync starts at $125/connection. Audit Logs are free with paid options for log streaming and event retention. Radar is free for the first 1,000 checks.
Using your own domain for WorkOS's AuthKit login pages, Admin Portal and email sender address costs $99 a month. (From workos.com/pricing, read 2026-10-08.)
Free OSS (Apache 2.0). Red Hat-backed identity and access management. SSO, OIDC, SAML, LDAP, social login, MFA, fine-grained authorization. Self-hosted with no user limitsThe page we cite for this offer states no amount, tier or rate we can read when we last looked, on 2026-10-09, so we cannot confirm these terms today.
Identity platform — "FusionAuth Community is free and unlimited": self-host it on your own infrastructure, with the core authentication features and community support (forums, Slack, GitHub).
Open-source identity solution — Free tier is $0/month for up to 50,000 MAU and 50K tokens. Includes user authentication, machine-to-machine apps, account APIs, audit logs, and user management. Additional features like RBAC, MFA, and Organizations are paid add-ons.
Open-source identity infrastructure — The 'Developer' tier is free, includes 1 member, 0 production environments, 2 development environments, and no included monthly credit.
*FusionAuth and Keycloak are free self-hosted with no user limits. WorkOS leads managed platforms at 1M MAU free (AuthKit). Clerk and Logto both offer 50K MAU. Supabase and Firebase bundle auth into broader BaaS free tiers.
Or search our full index of 1,498+ developer deals.
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