Yes, Amazon Cognito has a permanent free tier alongside its paid plans.
About
Amazon Cognito is an AWS identity and access management service that helps organizations implement secure authentication and authorization for customer applications, AI agents, microservices, and APIs. It provides managed user pools and identity pools to support sign-in, access control, and federation across human and machine identities.
The service is designed to help teams launch branded sign-up and sign-in experiences quickly while maintaining enterprise-grade security and scalability. It supports social login, SAML and OIDC federation, passwordless authentication, passkeys, token customization, and machine-to-machine authorization for modern application architectures.
- Managed customer identity and access management for web and mobile apps
- Support for human users, AI agents, and machine identities
- Social, SAML, and OIDC federation options
- Passwordless sign-in with passkeys, SMS, and email one-time codes
- Advanced security features such as adaptive authentication and compromised credential detection
- Machine-to-machine authorization and higher API quota add-ons
Free Tier Value
This free tier is perpetual and has no expiration, but it is capped by monthly active users rather than being unlimited. At the cheapest paid rate shown for direct/social sign-in, 10,000 free MAUs are worth about $150/month, while the 50 MAU federation allowance is only about $0.75/month; the identity-pool allowance adds practical value but no published dollar quota. A credit card is required to create the account, and the free tier is strong but still gated by usage caps and tier restrictions, so the feature set is high but not complete.
What's included in the free tier
Verified
- Up to 10,000 monthly active users per month for direct sign-ins or social identity providers on Lite or Essentials tiers.
- Up to 50 monthly active users per month for SAML 2.0 or OIDC federated sign-ins, regardless of tier.
- Free identity pool authentication and unique identifier generation at no charge.
- Indefinite free tier availability for existing and new AWS customers, with no 12-month expiration.
- No free tier for Plus tier direct sign-ins.
- No free tier for machine-to-machine token requests.
- Not available in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions.
See Amazon Cognito pricing for current limits.
Paid plans
Lite
- monthly active users
- 10,000 free MAUs per month for direct/social sign-in
- monthly active users
- 50 free MAUs per month for SAML 2.0 or OIDC federation
- monthly active users
- $0.0055 per MAU above the free tier
- monthly active users
- First 50,000 MAUs free for eligible existing/new Lite accounts
- Basic user registration, authentication, and management
- Social identity and SAML/OIDC provider integration
- Password-based authentication
- Custom runtime actions with Lambda triggers
- Customize managed login page with CSS
- 99.9% service level agreement
Essentials
- monthly active users
- 10,000 free MAUs per month for direct/social sign-in
- monthly active users
- 50 free MAUs per month for SAML 2.0 or OIDC federation
- monthly active users
- $0.015 per MAU above the free tier
- monthly active users
- Free tier available indefinitely
- Comprehensive authentication and access control
- Managed Login and passwordless login options
- Passkeys via email or SMS
- Customize access tokens
- Disallow password reuse
- 99.9% service level agreement
Plus
- monthly active users
- No free tier for direct/social sign-in
- monthly active users
- 50 free MAUs per month for SAML 2.0 or OIDC federation
- monthly active users
- $0.020 per MAU above the free tier
- Enhanced security for elevated-risk applications
- Risk-based adaptive authentication
- Compromised credentials detection
- Export authentication event logs
- Includes all Essentials features
- 99.9% service level agreement
Pricing extracted from Amazon Cognito's pricing page. Always verify current pricing before committing.
Common questions
Is Amazon Cognito free forever?
Yes. Amazon Cognito has a permanent free tier alongside its paid plans, though the allowance typically resets each month.
What happens when you exceed Amazon Cognito's free tier?
You move to a paid plan. Amazon Cognito's cheapest paid plan is Lite at $0.0055 / month.
What is Amazon Cognito's free tier worth?
Amazon Cognito's free tier is worth about $150 per month. That maps to an FTV score of 69/100. The FTV score is explained at freetier.co/ftv.
