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.

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:

• Platforma365
• Podd

Further Reading

If this guide helped you, you might also want to read our comprehensive guide on Custom SaaS Development.