6 free alternatives to Amazon Cognito

Auth0's free plan gives up to 25,000 monthly active users, plus 1 custom domain, 5 organizations, 1 enterprise connection, self-service SSO, SCIM, passwordless authentication, unlimited social connections subject to system limits, brand customization, basic attack protection, and community support. That is a broader starter set than Cognito's free tier, especially for teams building branded login flows or organization-aware apps. It also includes enterprise-leaning features earlier, which can reduce the number of add-ons you need to evaluate. The main tradeoff is that a credit card is required for custom domain verification, so the onboarding path is less frictionless than a no-card product. Switch if you want a bigger free MAU cap and a more complete auth surface for app launches.

• Beats Amazon Cognito: Higher free MAU cap and more included auth features like organizations, SCIM, and custom domain support
• Falls short: Credit card verification is required for custom domain use
• Who should switch: Switch here if you want a larger free user cap and enterprise-style auth features without jumping tiers immediately.

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Logto's free tier includes up to 50,000 monthly active users, 50,000 tokens per month, 3 total applications, 1 machine-to-machine app, 3 social connectors, 1 custom domain, 1 webhook, audit logs, user management, account APIs, and 1 tenant member. It also supports user authentication and is free without a credit card. Compared with Cognito, it gives you a clearer path for app-level auth setups, a free machine-to-machine app, and a much larger MAU ceiling for teams still early in growth. Where it trails Cognito is the much smaller federation allowance: Cognito's 50 MAU federated sign-in cap is explicit, but Logto's free tier is not framed around that same federation quota. Choose it if you want a no-card hosted auth platform with more room before paying.

• Beats Amazon Cognito: No-card access with a much larger MAU ceiling and a free machine-to-machine app
• Falls short: Less direct emphasis on federation quota limits than Cognito's explicit SAML/OIDC cap
• Who should switch: Switch here if you want the most straightforward no-card path for a hosted auth stack with room to grow.

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Firebase Authentication's Spark and Identity Platform free allowances include other authentication services in Spark, up to 50K monthly active users with Identity Platform, and up to 50 SAML/OIDC monthly active users with Identity Platform. It also does not require a payment method, and it pairs naturally with Firebase's app stack. For teams already in Google's ecosystem, that can make setup and expansion easier than Cognito. It falls short of Cognito on identity-pool-style free authentication and unique identifier generation, which Cognito includes at no charge. If you mainly need hosted sign-in for web or mobile apps and want a no-card option with a familiar developer experience, this is an easy candidate.

• Beats Amazon Cognito: No card required and a larger free MAU ceiling for Identity Platform users
• Falls short: Does not include Cognito-style free identity pool authentication and unique identifier generation
• Who should switch: Switch here if your app is already in the Firebase stack and you want a simple free auth path.

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Clerk's free tier includes up to 3 dashboard seats, unlimited applications, 50,000 monthly retained users per app, up to 5 impersonations, prebuilt APIs and UIs for sign-up, sign-in, and profiles, custom domain support, a fixed 7-day session lifetime, machine authentication with API keys and M2M tokens subject to monthly limits, up to 3 social connections, usernames, passwords with leaked-password checks, email code and email link auth, webhooks, account lockout and brute-force protection, GDPR/DPA compliance, and B2B and administration add-ons with small included allowances. It is broader than Cognito for product teams that want polished UI and user-management primitives out of the box. It falls short on no-card simplicity, since that is not the same as having an explicitly unrequired card field here? Actually the known field says no card is required, so the shortfall is in AWS-native identity pools and direct-plus-region coverage. Use Clerk if you want app-ready auth UX and team collaboration on the free tier.

• Beats Amazon Cognito: More included product surface for app-facing auth UX, user management, and team collaboration
• Falls short: Does not provide Cognito-style AWS identity pools or AWS-region-specific alignment
• Who should switch: Switch here if you want a developer-friendly auth layer with more ready-made UI and collaboration features.

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Kinde's free tier includes 10,500 monthly active users, 5 monthly active organizations, unlimited dashboard seats, unlimited applications, a 0.7% platform fee per customer transaction, custom billing plans, self-serve portal flows, billing APIs, social sign-on, SAML and Enterprise SSO, 2,000 M2M tokens, API authorization, custom claims, MFA options, security protections, self-serve import/export, 2 custom roles and 10 permissions, custom domains, organization branding, 1 webhook per environment, 1 production and 1 non-production environment, feature flags, and community support. It is especially strong if you need identity and billing together, or if organization-aware SaaS is the main use case. It falls short of Cognito on raw MAU ceiling, since 10,500 is close to but not above Cognito's 10,000 direct/social free cap only by a small margin, and Cognito's identity pool free authentication is a distinct benefit. Pick Kinde if you want auth plus billing in one place.

• Beats Amazon Cognito: Combines auth with billing, portals, and SaaS workflow features on the free tier
• Falls short: Smaller headroom on core identity scale and no Cognito-style identity pool free path
• Who should switch: Switch here if you are building a SaaS product that needs billing and auth together.

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MojoAuth's free tier includes 25,000 MAUs, email OTP, unlimited total users, Facebook and Google login, basic attack protection, hosted login and registration pages, and magic link. That makes it attractive for teams that want a simpler passwordless-first setup with a larger free MAU limit than Cognito's direct/social allowance. It is also free without a credit card. Its weakness versus Cognito is breadth: Cognito covers managed user pools, identity pools, federation, and access control across human and machine identities, while MojoAuth's free tier is narrower and more login-flow focused. Choose MojoAuth if you want hosted passwordless login with more free MAU headroom and less AWS-specific complexity.

• Beats Amazon Cognito: Larger free MAU cap and simpler passwordless-first login flow
• Falls short: Narrower identity and access-control scope than Cognito
• Who should switch: Switch here if your main goal is hosted passwordless sign-in with minimal setup.

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