Why Not Build Your Own
Security: bugs = breach.
Complexity: MFA, social login, SSO.
Compliance: SOC 2, GDPR.
Time: months to get right.
Just don’t.
Auth0 – Enterprise Standard
Now Okta company.
Feature-rich, mature.
Every auth pattern supported.
Complex to configure.
Cost: free up to 7500 users, then $150+/mo.
From our workA first product live in 4 weeksSign-up, payments and the core feature, ready for real users. FutureSelf is one of the products we built.How it works →Clerk – Modern Developer Experience
Great DX for React/Next.js.
Beautiful pre-built UI.
Organizations, users, sessions.
Recent (2020s) but well-designed.
Cost: 10K MAU free, then $25+/mo.
Supabase Auth
Part of Supabase platform.
Row-level security integration.
Postgres-based.
Free for small use.
Cost: included in Supabase plan.
Firebase Auth
Google’s offering.
Great mobile SDKs.
Wide integrations.
Cost: 50K MAU free, then usage-based.
Older but reliable.
Cognito (AWS)
Integrated with AWS.
Cheap at scale.
UX not as polished.
Cost: 50K MAU free.
KeyCloak – Self-Hosted
Open source.
Enterprise features.
Complex to run.
Free but ops burden.
Features to Consider
Social login: Google, GitHub, etc.
MFA: TOTP, SMS.
SSO: SAML, OIDC.
User management UI.
Multi-tenant/organizations.
Passwordless (magic links).
Session Management
JWT vs opaque tokens.
Refresh tokens.
Session invalidation.
Cross-device sessions.
All good providers handle.
User Profile Storage
Where does user data live?
Provider’s DB vs your DB.
Sync approach.
Data ownership.
Migration if switching providers.
Multi-Tenant Support
Organizations.
Roles and permissions.
Invitation flows.
Clerk excellent here.
Auth0 also strong.
Compliance
SOC 2 certified?
GDPR compliant?
HIPAA capable?
Data residency options.
Enterprise auth requires these.
Integration Effort
SDKs for your stack.
React, Next.js, Vue, mobile.
OpenAPI/OIDC standards.
Documentation quality varies.
Migration Between Providers
Painful.
Users need to re-verify or re-register.
Data mapping.
Choose carefully upfront.
Cost Modeling
Users active per month (MAU) – main metric.
Advanced features often extra.
Enterprise features gated.
Compare total cost over time.
Our Recommendation
Consumer app, React/Next: Clerk.
Enterprise B2B: Auth0.
Postgres-heavy app: Supabase Auth.
AWS-native: Cognito.
Mobile-first: Firebase Auth.
Compliance-heavy: Auth0 or Cognito.
Based on Real Projects
This guide is based on our work with:
Further Reading
If this guide helped you, you might also want to read our comprehensive guide on Custom SaaS Development.
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