Every free auth tier that clears our bar in 2026: 21 offers meet the criteria and 10 offers are demoted with a named reason. Recorded changes and a published ranking method. We could not confirm today's terms for 10 of them: on 3 the page we cite did not answer, and on 7 our own read did not confirm them. Each row says why.
A turnkey user and access management that works for you and supports multi-tenant (B2B) use cases. Free for up to 100 Daily Active Users, with all security features (no paywall for OTP, Passwordless, Policies, and so on).
Authorization-as-a-service — Community plan, free forever: 1,000 MAU, 20 tenants, no limit on authorization queries, 25 roles, 50 resource types, 5 condition sets, 2,000 role assignments, 20 groups, 2,000 resource instances and 2,000 relationship tuples, with 3 environments and no limit on projects. All features are open to all tiers. Open-source projects can get the Startup tier free. The page we cite for Permit.io states in words that it is free, which confirms the price — the limits stated here come from our own record rather than from that page. Note — 2026-06-09: Permit.io's pricing page added a limit of 2,000 relationship tuples to its free Community plan. The row first appears between the Internet Archive's captures of 2026-05-23 and 2026-06-09; the plan's other limits were unchanged. Source ↗
Two-factor authentication (2FA) by push notifications, free for 3 users, VPN, Websites, and SSH
Open source authentication — Self hosting the open source features is free without any limits! Cloud is free under 5K MAUs. Multi-factor Authentication is $0.01 / MAU (Minimum $100 / month). Account Linking is $0.005 / MAU (Minimum $100 / month).
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).
A free tool to search a username across 150+ social platforms to find matching profiles.
Authentication and fraud prevention — 10,000 MAU, passwordless login, OAuth, MFA, session management, device fingerprinting, 5 SSO/SCIM connections, 1,000 M2M tokens, password breach detection
Two-factor authentication (2FA) for website or app. Free for ten users, all authentication methods, unlimited, integrations, hardware tokens.
Passkey-first authentication — The 'Starter' (Free) tier includes 10,000 MAUs and 2 Projects. A 'Startup Plan' offers 1 million MAUs. All tiers include 10,000 free monthly active users.
Self-hosted identity provider covering SSO, SAML, OAuth2/OIDC and LDAP. The open-source edition is free and aimed at homelab users and simple use cases. Enterprise is $5/user/month billed annually with external users at $0.02/user/month and no charge for service accounts; Enterprise Plus starts at $20k annually.
Authentication and user management. Free Forever plan: 7,500 MAU, 10 tenants, 3 SSO connections. All core auth methods: passwords, magic links, OTP, passkeys, social login, MFA
Bring Passwordless, OTPs, 2FA, SSO to your apps in minutes. All Front-end included. Free tier: unlimited MAUs, up to 2 applications, 2 admin seats, 100 SMS/WhatsApp messages.
10,500 MAU, OAuth 2.0/OIDC/SAML, MFA (email/SMS/app), passwordless, multi-tenancy (5 organizations), feature flags (10 max). No credit card required
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 user infrastructure, formerly Stack Auth: auth, teams, RBAC, API keys, emails. Free tier is $0 forever: up to 10,000 auth users, 1 dashboard admin, 1,000 emails per month, email/OAuth/magic links, community support. Also self-hostable for free.
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.
MojoAuth makes it easy to implement Passwordless authentication on your web, mobile, or any application in minutes. — Free up to 25,000 MAUs. No credit card required.
User sign-up and sign-in for web and mobile apps. Free tier: 10,000 monthly active users per account on the Lite and Essentials tiers, with no 12-month limit; user pools created on or before November 22, 2024 keep 50,000. Users who sign in through SAML or OIDC federation: 50 MAU free. The Plus tier and machine-to-machine token requests are paid only.
Authentication for B2B SaaS — free up to 10,000 MAUs and 10K Transactional Emails (with a watermark branding: "Powered by PropelAuth").
Seamless Integration of SSO, MFA, passwordless auth and more. Includes SDKs for frontend and backend apps. Free tier: 7,500 Consumer MAUs (B2C), 250 B2B MAUs, 2 social login providers. When we last read the page we cite for this offer, on 2026-10-31, we found a change we could not reconcile with the terms we publish, so we cannot confirm these terms today.
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 limits. The 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.
Developer authentication via Auth0 platform — 25,000 MAU free, social login, passwordless, MFA, SSO. Note: developer.okta.com/signup now routes to Auth0. When we read the page we cite for this offer on 2026-10-06, we found the same terms as an earlier read we had declined to record, and we have read it again since, on 2026-10-31, without confirming the terms above, so we cannot confirm these terms today.
Two-factor authentication (2FA) on multiple devices, with backups. Drop-in replacement for Google Authenticator. Free for up to 100 successful authentications. The page we cite for this offer states no amount, tier or rate we can read when we last looked, on 2026-10-11, so we cannot confirm these terms today.
Open-source identity infrastructure — The 'Developer' tier is free, includes 1 member, 0 production environments, 2 development environments, and no included monthly credit.
Keycloak Identity and Access Management as a Service. Free up to 100 users and one realm.
Identity platform — 25K MAU (B2C), unlimited logins, social + database connections, Universal Login, 1 Enterprise Connection, 5 Organizations, 1 Custom Domain. No credit card required
Fine-grained authorization as a service for applications and APIs. Free up to 1000 MAUs and 100 authorizer instances. The page we cite for this offer states no amount, tier or rate we can read when we last looked, on 2026-10-11, so we cannot confirm these terms today.
A complete authorization management system for authoring, testing, and deploying access policies. Fine-grained authorization and access control, free up to 100 monthly active principals. When we last read the page we cite for this offer, on 2026-10-24, we found a change we could not reconcile with the terms we publish, so we cannot confirm these terms today.
Managed Keycloak hosting with Phase Two's Organization extension. No free tier since 2026-07-30, when Phase Two shut down its free shared realms. The Starter cluster is $149/month after a 30-day free trial; users are unlimited, and it is sized for 5,000 active users a month. Note — 2026-07-30: Phase Two shut down its free shared realms on 2026-07-30, 30 days after announcing it on 2026-06-30. Its cheapest plan is now the Starter cluster at $149 a month, with a 30-day free trial. Source ↗
| Vendor | Free Tier | Key Limits | Durability | Read / catalogue date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZITADEL Cloud | Free | A turnkey user and access management that works for you and supports multi-tenant (B2B) use cases. Free for up to 100 Da... | stable | 2026-10-31 |
| Permit.io | Free | Authorization-as-a-service — Community plan, free forever: 1,000 MAU, 20 tenants, no limit on authorization queries, 25 ... not confirmed · page states a free price · 2026-11-09 | watch effective 2026-06-09 |
2026-11-09 |
| logintc.com | Free | Two-factor authentication (2FA) by push notifications, free for 3 users, VPN, Websites, and SSH | stable | 2026-11-04 |
| SuperTokens | Free | Open source authentication — Self hosting the open source features is free without any limits! Cloud is free under 5K MA... read found the page different · 2026-11-08 |
stable | 2026-11-08 / 2026-08-23 |
| FusionAuth | Community | Identity platform — "FusionAuth Community is free and unlimited": self-host it on your own infrastructure, with the core... | stable | 2026-11-12 |
| 360username | Free | A free tool to search a username across 150+ social platforms to find matching profiles. | stable | 2026-11-01 |
| Stytch | Free | Authentication and fraud prevention — 10,000 MAU, passwordless login, OAuth, MFA, session management, device fingerprint... | stable | 2026-11-09 |
| Authress | Free | First 1000 billable calls are free. 0.0012 USD per call, billed monthly. | stable | 2026-10-28 |
| duo.com | Free | Two-factor authentication (2FA) for website or app. Free for ten users, all authentication methods, unlimited, integrati... | stable | 2026-11-11 |
| Hanko | Free | Passkey-first authentication — The 'Starter' (Free) tier includes 10,000 MAUs and 2 Projects. A 'Startup Plan' offers 1 ... | stable | 2026-11-05 |
| authentik | Free OSS | Self-hosted identity provider covering SSO, SAML, OAuth2/OIDC and LDAP. The open-source edition is free and aimed at hom... | stable | 2026-11-12 |
| Descope | Free Forever | Authentication and user management. Free Forever plan: 7,500 MAU, 10 tenants, 3 SSO connections. All core auth methods: ... | stable | 2026-11-07 |
| Authgear | Free | Bring Passwordless, OTPs, 2FA, SSO to your apps in minutes. All Front-end included. Free tier: unlimited MAUs, up to 2 a... | stable | 2026-10-24 |
| Kinde | Free | 10,500 MAU, OAuth 2.0/OIDC/SAML, MFA (email/SMS/app), passwordless, multi-tenancy (5 organizations), feature flags (10 m... | stable | 2026-11-01 |
| Logto | Free | Open-source identity solution — Free tier is $0/month for up to 50,000 MAU and 50K tokens. Includes user authentication,... read found the page different · 2026-10-31 |
watch effective 2025-10-01 |
2026-10-31 / 2026-08-16 |
| Hexclave | Free | Open-source user infrastructure, formerly Stack Auth: auth, teams, RBAC, API keys, emails. Free tier is $0 forever: up t... | stable | 2026-10-24 |
| WorkOS | Free | User Management is free for up to 1 million users. Single Sign-On starts at $125/connection. Directory Sync starts at $1... | stable | 2026-11-03 |
| MojoAuth | Free | MojoAuth makes it easy to implement Passwordless authentication on your web, mobile, or any application in minutes. — Fr... | stable | 2026-11-11 |
| Clerk | Hobby | Drop-in auth with 50K monthly retained users free, unlimited apps | stable | 2026-11-01 |
| Amazon Cognito | Free | User sign-up and sign-in for web and mobile apps. Free tier: 10,000 monthly active users per account on the Lite and Ess... | stable | 2026-11-10 |
| PropelAuth | Free | Authentication for B2B SaaS — free up to 10,000 MAUs and 10K Transactional Emails (with a watermark branding: "Powered b... | stable | 2026-10-24 |
We publish no ranking of these. Nothing we record measures popularity or generosity, so naming a best or a top few would be our preference rather than our data. We hold 21 free auth offers that clear our bar, each listed with the terms we publish and the date we last read them. Our ranking rule is published at /criteria.
21 offers meet our criteria for this category. Of those, 19 carry no recorded change to the terms we publish, and 2 a recorded narrowing. The Durability column below says which offer is in which group, and links the dated record behind every change. We do not rank these by how much you get, because the limits are not comparable without reading each vendor's page.