---
title: "Auth Pricing Wars: Cognito vs Auth0 vs Firebase vs Supabase vs Clerk"
description: "Compare authentication pricing for AWS Cognito, Auth0, Firebase, Supabase, and Clerk. See free tiers, per-MAU costs, and which to choose for your API."
canonicalUrl: "https://zuplo.com/learning-center/api-authentication-pricing"
pageType: "learning-center"
authors: "adrian"
tags: "Auth0, Supabase, Firebase, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Clerk"
image: "https://cdn.zuplo.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=crop,width=1200,height=630/www/media/posts/2024-11-27-api-authentication-pricing/image.png"
---
Choosing an authentication provider is one of the most consequential
infrastructure decisions you'll make. The wrong choice can quietly drain your
budget as your user base grows — or force a painful migration when you outgrow a
platform's capabilities.
Amazon recently
[tripled the cost of Cognito](https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1h0oojq/amazon_triples_the_price_of_their_auth_service/)
for large user bases (60K+ MAU) and reduced the free-tier limits from 50K to 10K
MAU for new user pools. Cognito had traditionally been the most affordable
identity and access management service, so this price hike has many teams
reevaluating their options.
In this guide, we break down the pricing, free tiers, and cost-at-scale for five
of the most popular authentication providers: **AWS Cognito**, **Auth0**,
**Firebase Authentication**, **Supabase Auth**, and **Clerk**.
## Quick Pricing Comparison
Before diving into each provider, here's a side-by-side view of what you can
expect to pay at key usage milestones. All prices shown are monthly estimates
for standard email/password and social login authentication.
_Note: Auth0 recently expanded its free tier to 25,000 MAU. Clerk's free tier is
10,000 MAU with "First Day Free" counting (users aren't counted until 24+ hours
after signup). Prices are estimates — always verify with each provider._
If you're a B2B SaaS startup, these prices are likely negligible compared to the
average revenue per user. If you're a scaling social media or B2C company
however, these costs add up fast. There's a huge variety in platforms, features,
and pricing — here are the top Cognito alternatives by pricing and features.
## Amazon Cognito
If you're not familiar, Amazon Cognito provides an authentication server and an
authorization service for OAuth 2.0 access tokens. In the context of
[API authentication](/learning-center/api-authentication), Cognito is often used
as an alternative to
[IAM roles/policies](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/apigateway/latest/developerguide/permissions.html#api-gateway-control-access-iam-permissions-model-for-calling-api)
and
[Lambda authorizers](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/apigateway/latest/developerguide/apigateway-use-lambda-authorizer.html),
with the former only applying to AWS users/services (i.e., internal APIs) and
the latter having unpredictable costs and requiring custom code.
### Cognito Pricing
The recent price increase likely has to do with
[additional features](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/improve-your-app-authentication-workflow-with-new-amazon-cognito-features/)
being added to Cognito to make it more competitive with SaaS offerings. These
features include passwordless login (passkeys), email OTP, and SMS OTP.
Cognito now offers three pricing tiers — **Lite**, **Essentials**, and **Plus**
— which replaced the old single-tier model. The Essentials tier (the default for
new user pools) charges $0.015/MAU after the first 10,000 free users. The Plus
tier adds advanced security features at $0.02/MAU with no free tier. The Lite
tier is still available but no longer the default — it offers volume discounts
down to $0.0025/MAU at scale, making it the most cost-effective option for
high-volume applications already in the AWS ecosystem.
If you are using Amazon Cognito for authenticating your API calls and have more
than 10,000 Monthly Active Users, you'll want to evaluate whether the new
pricing still makes sense for your use case. I found an
[auth price comparison tool](https://saasprices.net/auth?users=15000) you can
use to compare plans and prices.
## Auth0
[Auth0](https://auth0.com/) (now part of Okta) is a flexible identity management
platform offering authentication and authorization as a service. It's often used
to provide Universal Login (authentication across platforms) and Multi-Factor
Authentication. Auth0 is powerful — with extensibility around signup/login
flows, detailed monitoring, mature OIDC support, and documentation for almost
every use case.
Despite being one of the pioneers in the developer tooling space, Auth0 has not
kept up with the ease of use that newer platforms offer, and is more focused on
enterprise customers (reflected in the higher cost). If you're using Auth0 for
your enterprise API authentication, check out
[this guide](/blog/smart-api-routing-by-auth0-jwt-contents).
### Auth0 Pricing
Auth0 is the most expensive option on this list, but its mature feature set
makes it the most suitable option for enterprise organizations. The free tier
now covers up to **25,000 MAU** (increased from 7,500 in September 2024). Paid
plans start at $35/month (B2C Essentials) with roughly $0.07/MAU for additional
users — that's 5–10x more expensive per user than most competitors.
To put that in perspective: at 50,000 MAU, Auth0's B2C Essentials plan costs
roughly **$1,750/month**, while Supabase or Firebase would cost you **$0**. At
100,000 MAU, Auth0 runs around **$5,250/month**.
That said, not having Auth0's features — enterprise SSO, OIDC federation,
adaptive MFA, and compliance certifications — would likely cost you more in
engineering time if you need them. Watch out for hidden costs though:
machine-to-machine tokens, enterprise SSO connections (SAML/OIDC), and adaptive
MFA are often paid add-ons.
## Supabase Auth
Supabase is an open-source BaaS platform that includes an
[authentication service](https://supabase.com/auth) which can be easily
integrated using the Supabase SDK. What makes Supabase great is that it supports
almost every authentication method (email/password, magic link, phone OTP, etc.)
and provider (GitHub, Google, etc.) with relatively little work. Documentation
and community support are fantastic, which is why many developers use Supabase
for building
[CRUD APIs and prototypes](/blog/shipping-a-public-api-backed-by-supabase). If
you're interested in using Supabase for API authentication, we have
[a guide for that](/blog/api-authentication-with-supabase-jwt) too.
### Supabase Auth Pricing
The Supabase auth free tier is the most generous on this list alongside
Firebase, offering **50,000 MAU at no cost**. The Pro plan ($25/month) includes
100,000 MAU, and overage beyond that is just **$0.00325/MAU** — the lowest
per-user rate among the five providers compared here.
At 100,000 MAU, Supabase costs just **$25/month**, and even at 500,000 MAU you'd
only pay around **$1,325/month**. That makes Supabase by far the cheapest option
at scale for standard authentication.
The trade-off? Supabase Auth is bundled with the full Supabase platform
(database, storage, edge functions), so you can't purchase it standalone. And
because it's a jack-of-all-trades BaaS, the level of auth-specific customization
and reporting may not match a dedicated identity provider like Auth0.
## Firebase Authentication
Firebase is another BaaS platform, featuring slightly more mature versions of
Supabase's [auth features](https://firebase.google.com/docs/auth). Firebase is
particularly well-suited for mobile applications that need authentication, and
its infrastructure is robust thanks to the Google acquisition. If you're
building an API on Firebase, we have articles on
[creating an API](/blog/zuplo-plus-firebase-creating-a-simple-crud-api), and
[adding API key authentication](/blog/zuplo-plus-firebase-adding-api-key-auth)
or [JWT validation](/blog/using-jose-to-validate-a-firebase-jwt).
### Firebase Authentication Pricing
Firebase matches Supabase with a **50,000 MAU free tier** on both Spark and
Blaze plans. Beyond that, standard authentication (email/password, social,
anonymous) costs **$0.0055/MAU** — comparable to Cognito's old pricing.
At 100,000 MAU, Firebase costs roughly **$275/month**. At 500,000 MAU, expect
around **$2,475/month**. These prices are competitive, especially given the
generous free tier.
One important caveat: phone/SMS authentication is **never free**, even within
the 50K free tier. SMS verification costs range from $0.01 to $0.06+ per attempt
depending on the country, and you're charged for failed delivery attempts too.
Also, enabling OIDC/SAML federation via Identity Platform changes the pricing
model entirely to $0.015/MAU with only 50 MAU free — a massive jump if you need
enterprise SSO.
Like Supabase, Firebase isn't ideal for mid-size to enterprise companies — it's
restrictive in customization and locks you into Google's ecosystem.
## Clerk
[Clerk](https://clerk.com/) combines the great developer experience and easy
setup of Supabase with the dedication to user and access management of Auth0. It
includes embeddable UI components to quickly get started, and APIs for more
advanced use cases. If you're a startup building with Next.js or React, Clerk is
a very attractive option for getting to market. Many Zuplo customers have
[integrated Clerk](/blog/integrating-clerk-with-zuplo-for-seamless-api-authentication)
for their API authentication.
### Clerk Pricing
Although Clerk is a great option for _getting to market_, it gets expensive as
you scale. The free tier covers **10,000 MAU**, and the Pro plan ($25/month
base) charges **$0.02/MAU** after that — linear and predictable, but approaching
Auth0 territory at higher volumes.
At 50,000 MAU, Clerk costs **$825/month**. At 100,000 MAU, that jumps to
**$1,825/month**. Compare that to Supabase at $25/month or Firebase at
$275/month for the same user count.
To be fair, Clerk counts MAU slightly differently than other platforms — users
are only counted as active when they return 24+ hours after signup. If you run a
PLG/PLS SaaS or a B2C product with heavy ad traffic, that counting method can
help offset some churn-driven costs. Clerk also charges separately for B2B
organizations ($1.00/MAO beyond 100 included), so factor that in if you're
building multi-tenant applications.
Clerk isn't as enterprise-ready as Auth0 yet — no HIPAA compliance or uptime SLA
on the free or Pro plans — but its developer experience and pre-built components
are hard to beat for early-stage teams.
## What's the Best Amazon Cognito Alternative?
Based on the features and pricing, here's how we'd roughly recommend you choose
based on your MAU and business model.
Or here's a version with more nuance:
|
Company Type
|
<50K MAU
|
50–100K MAU
|
100K+ MAU
|
| B2B SaaS |
Clerk |
Clerk |
Auth0 |
| B2C (e.g., social media) |
Supabase |
Supabase |
Self-hosted |
Note that your _projected_ MAU matters more than your current count — think
about where your user base will be in 2–3 years when your company reaches
maturity.
**For B2B SaaS**, Clerk is affordable relative to the average contract value of
a paying user. Unless your average deal size is very low or your ratio of free
to paid users is extremely high, a few cents per seat is worth the excellent
developer experience. Clerk is especially compelling if you're charging
per-seat. Consider Auth0 if your company is already an enterprise with hundreds
of thousands of users and needs compliance certifications or advanced identity
federation.
**For B2C products**, Supabase gets you most of the way for small to medium
applications thanks to its 50K free tier and incredibly low per-MAU rates. You
may need additional services for analytics and monitoring. If you're building a
boom-or-bust B2C product (social media, gaming, media) where user counts could
spike rapidly, consider an open-source self-hosted solution like
[SuperTokens](https://supertokens.com/) to avoid per-MAU costs entirely.
## Adding Authentication to Your APIs
Whichever identity provider you choose, you'll still need to validate tokens at
your API layer. At Zuplo, we've always advocated
[using API keys for API authentication](/blog/you-should-be-using-api-keys), but
we have built-in support for JWT validation from all five providers covered in
this article:
- [Auth0 JWT Auth Policy](https://zuplo.com/docs/policies/auth0-jwt-auth-inbound)
- [Clerk JWT Auth Policy](https://zuplo.com/docs/policies/clerk-jwt-auth-inbound)
- [Amazon Cognito JWT Auth Policy](https://zuplo.com/docs/policies/cognito-jwt-auth-inbound)
- [Firebase JWT Auth Policy](https://zuplo.com/docs/policies/firebase-jwt-inbound)
- [Supabase JWT Auth Policy](https://zuplo.com/docs/policies/supabase-jwt-auth-inbound)
With Zuplo, you can add
[JWT authentication](/learning-center/jwt-api-authentication) to your API in
minutes — no custom code required. Each policy validates the incoming token,
populates the `request.user` object with the authenticated identity, and lets
you layer on [rate limiting](/learning-center/api-rate-limiting),
[authentication](/learning-center/api-authentication), and monitoring per
consumer.
If you're comparing auth providers and want to see how they integrate with an
API gateway, [sign up for Zuplo](https://portal.zuplo.com) and try it out — it
takes less than a minute to add JWT validation to any route.