Is Auth0 free? What it actually costs in 2026
Yes, there is a free tier — with limits.
Free plan covers up to 25,000 monthly active users (MAUs) with core login features, 1 Enterprise Connection, and 5 Organizations. Paid B2C plans start at Essentials ($35/month for 500 MAUs, scaling with usage) and Professional ($240/month for 500 MAUs); B2B plans start substantially higher — Essentials at $150/month and Professional at $800/month — because they meter Enterprise SSO connections and Organizations more aggressively. Enterprise tiers are quote-based. Verified directly against auth0.com/pricing, July 2026.
When paying is still the right call
If your team doesn't want to run or patch an identity server, or you need Auth0/Okta's compliance certifications (SOC 2, HIPAA BAAs, ISO 27001) and enterprise support SLAs out of the box, the managed service is genuinely the right call — self-hosting authentication is one of the few places where an operational mistake (a misconfigured SSO connection, an unpatched CVE) has outsized security consequences, and Auth0's team absorbs that risk for you.
What you are locked into
User accounts, sessions, and social/enterprise connection configs live in Auth0's cloud tenant. Auth0 supports standard protocols (OAuth2, OIDC, SAML) and offers user-data export, but migrating a live user base to a different auth system still requires a password-reset flow for most users (since password hashes are not portable) and reconfiguring every connected SSO/social provider — a real, if manageable, migration cost.
If you would rather not pay: Keycloak
Keycloak
The mature, CNCF-backed open-source identity and access management server.
Free / self-host (Docker image or standalone distribution); commercial support available via Red Hat build of Keycloak (RHBK) for enterprises that want a support contract.
See all 5 Auth0 alternatives comparedCompare the free options head-to-head
Pricing is verified against the vendor's published figures and dated above. Vendors change prices — confirm current numbers with Okta, Inc. before you commit. More authentication & identity decisions on Macrostack.