Alternatives to Amazon Cognito
AWS-managed customer identity service with social login, MFA, and passkeys
Amazon Cognito ranks #11 of 12 in Authentication & identity providers, with an Alt Score of 78. It is available on the web. 12 of 12 checklist rows are verified against a public source.
Amazon Cognito is AWS's managed customer identity and access management service, providing user pools for sign-up/sign-in, social and enterprise SSO federation, MFA, and native passkey support, plus fine-grained authorization. It's widely used by teams already on AWS who want identity infra integrated with their existing cloud stack rather than a third-party vendor. It differentiates from Auth0/Clerk on pay-as-you-go AWS pricing and deep IAM/Lambda integration.
Developers and enterprises building web and mobile applications on AWS who need a managed identity service — both for consumer-facing sign-up/sign-in (CIAM) and for federating an organization's workforce identities through enterprise SAML or OIDC providers.
A user pool acting as a user directory, authentication server, and OIDC identity provider, plus an identity pool that exchanges tokens for temporary IAM credentials. Supported sign-in methods include username/password, one-time-password passwordless sign-in, WebAuthn passkeys, MFA (SMS, email, or TOTP), social identity providers (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple), and SAML 2.0/OIDC federation, along with user groups mapped to IAM roles for permissions.
Applications integrate with a Cognito user pool either directly through the user pools API and AWS SDKs, or through Cognito-hosted 'managed login' web pages that act as an OAuth 2.0/OIDC authorization server and issue JSON web tokens after authenticating the user (including via linked social, SAML, or OIDC identity providers). When temporary AWS credentials are needed, an identity pool exchanges those tokens with AWS STS for scoped, role-based access to backend resources.
Why people leave Amazon Cognito
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Ranked alternatives
Ordered by Alt Score. Click any score to see the breakdown.
FusionAuth is a developer-focused authentication and user management platform that can be self-hosted for free (Community Edition) or run as a managed cloud service.
Ory is an open-source identity platform composed of modular services — Kratos for identity/authentication, Hydra for OAuth2/OIDC, and Keto for permissions — that can be self-hosted or consumed as a ma.
Zitadel is an open-source identity and access management platform, written in Go, offering OIDC/OAuth2/SAML, MFA, passwordless, and a native multi-tenant 'organizations' concept designed for SaaS prod.
Auth0 (an Okta company) is a developer-focused identity platform providing authentication, authorization, social and enterprise SSO, MFA, and user management via drop-in SDKs and a hosted login, for w.
Clerk is a developer-first authentication and user-management platform with pre-built React/Next.js UI components, social and passwordless login, passkeys, MFA, and B2B organizations, designed to add.
Frontegg is a B2B-focused identity platform that bundles authentication, tenant/org management, roles and entitlements, and a pre-built admin portal for end customers.
Stytch is a developer platform for authentication and fraud prevention, offering passwordless and passkey login, social and enterprise SSO, B2B multi-tenant auth, and device fingerprinting through API.
Descope is a customer identity and access management (CIAM) platform that lets developers build authentication journeys (social login, passwordless, MFA, passkeys) with a visual no-code/low-code flow.
WorkOS is a platform of enterprise-readiness APIs — SAML/OIDC single sign-on, SCIM directory sync, audit logs, and its AuthKit user management — that lets B2B SaaS apps add the features enterprise cus.
Keycloak is an open-source identity and access management server (a CNCF project) offering single sign-on, social and enterprise SSO, user federation, MFA, and fine-grained authorization, self-hosted.
Feature comparison
Rows come from the Authentication & identity providers checklist (16 rows). Human-verified cells only. ? means the value has not been verified.
| Authentication & identity providers checklist | Amazon Cognito | FusionAuth | Ory | Zitadel | Auth0 | Clerk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | ||||||
| Starts at | ||||||
| License | ||||||
| Platforms | ||||||
| Social login | ||||||
| Passwordless / magic links | ||||||
| Passkeys / WebAuthn | ||||||
| MFA | ||||||
| Enterprise SSO (SAML / OIDC) | ||||||
| SCIM provisioning | ||||||
| B2B org / multi-tenant | ||||||
| Self-hostable | ||||||
| Pre-built UI components | ||||||
| RBAC / permissions | ||||||
| Open source | ||||||
| Generous free tier (MAUs) |
Every fact and feature listed for Amazon Cognito is verified against its own pages. Each alternative is sourced on its own page.
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Starts at $0.0055/MAU verified 2026-07-30
Cheapest paid tier (Lite); rate drops to $0.0046/MAU after 100,000 MAU/mo. Essentials is a flat $0.015/MAU, Plus is a flat $0.020/MAU with no free tier.
$0.0055 per MAU past the 10,000 free tier
https://aws.amazon.com/cognito/pricing/ -
Platforms Web verified 2026-07-30
Docs describe support for 'web and mobile apps' generically via SDKs; Cognito's own pages don't name specific mobile OS platforms (iOS/Android), so only Web is claimed here with direct textual support
Amazon Cognito is an identity platform for web and mobile apps.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cognito/latest/developerguide/what-is-amazon-cognito.html -
Pricing model Usage-based verified 2026-07-30
You pay for Amazon Cognito Lite based on monthly active users (MAUs) in your user pool configured with pricing tier of Lite.
https://aws.amazon.com/cognito/pricing/ -
Status active verified 2026-07-30
Pricing model and free-tier structure were overhauled November 2024, and passkey/WebAuthn support is documented as a current feature — indicates active ongoing development.
This is the same pricing as previously listed before November 22, 2024
https://aws.amazon.com/cognito/pricing/ -
Social login Yes verified 2026-07-30
Your web and mobile app users can sign in through social identity providers (IdP) like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cognito/latest/developerguide/cognito-user-pools-social-idp.html -
Passwordless / magic links Yes verified 2026-07-30
Passwordless sign-in is one-time-password (email/SMS/app) based, not a clickable magic link.
Amazon Cognito then generates a one-time password (OTP), a code that they must confirm. A successful code completes authentication.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cognito/latest/developerguide/amazon-cognito-user-pools-authentication-flow-methods.html -
Passkeys / WebAuthn Yes verified 2026-07-30
This is passkey or WebAuthn authentication. It's common for application developers to permit users to enroll a biometric device after they first sign in with a password. With Amazon Cognito user pools
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cognito/latest/developerguide/amazon-cognito-user-pools-authentication-flow-methods.html -
MFA Yes verified 2026-07-30
You can choose SMS text messages, email messages, or time-based one-time passwords (TOTP) as additional factors to sign in your users who have passwords as their primary authentication factor.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cognito/latest/developerguide/user-pool-settings-mfa.html -
Enterprise SSO (SAML / OIDC) Yes verified 2026-07-30
You can provide single sign-on (SSO) in your app for your organization's workforce identities in SAML 2.0 and OIDC IdPs with user pools.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cognito/latest/developerguide/what-is-amazon-cognito.html -
SCIM provisioning No verified 2026-07-30
This overview page enumerates Cognito's user pool/identity pool capabilities (federation, directory, permissions) and does not mention SCIM-based provisioning anywhere in the developer guide.
Amazon Cognito is a service that you can use to sign in users, federate with identity providers, control permissions to access your backend resources, and save mobile user data in the AWS Cloud.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cognito/latest/developerguide/what-is-amazon-cognito.html -
B2B org / multi-tenant Yes verified 2026-07-30
Group-based multi-tenancy works best when your architecture requires Amazon Cognito user pools with identity pools.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cognito/latest/developerguide/group-based-multi-tenancy.html -
Self-hostable No verified 2026-07-30
Cognito is described throughout the developer guide as an AWS-hosted managed cloud service; no self-hosted/on-premises deployment option is documented.
Amazon Cognito is a service that you can use to sign in users, federate with identity providers, control permissions to access your backend resources, and save mobile user data in the AWS Cloud.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cognito/latest/developerguide/what-is-amazon-cognito.html -
Pre-built UI components Yes verified 2026-07-30
A ready-to-use user interface (UI) for authentication operations like sign-in, sign-out and password management. The managed login pages act as a web front end for authentication services.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cognito/latest/developerguide/cognito-user-pools-managed-login.html -
RBAC / permissions Yes verified 2026-07-30
The permissions for each user are controlled through IAM roles that you create. You can define rules to choose the role for each user based on claims in the user's ID token.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cognito/latest/developerguide/role-based-access-control.html -
Open source No verified 2026-07-30
Cognito is a paid, proprietary AWS managed service billed per MAU; no source code or open-source license is published for it.
Amazon Cognito user pools has tiers of features that have different per-user costs.
https://aws.amazon.com/cognito/pricing/ -
Generous free tier (MAUs) Yes verified 2026-07-30
Free tier applies to the Lite and Essentials pricing tiers only; the Plus tier has no free tier.
Amazon Cognito user pools has a free tier of 10,000 monthly active user (MAU) per month per account or per AWS organization.
https://aws.amazon.com/cognito/pricing/
FAQ
Yes. FusionAuth, Zitadel and Auth0 have a free tier or are fully free. Free-tier limits in the comparison table are verified and dated.
Ory, Zitadel and Keycloak — every license claim links its source.