Auth0 pricing guide details
Pricing Overview
Auth0 uses a monthly active user (MAU) pricing model across four tiers. The Free plan is $0/month and supports up to 25,000 monthly active users. Essentials is $35/month for up to 500 monthly active users and includes features such as one custom domain, Pro Multi-Factor Authentication, role-based access control per organization, 10 organizations, audit-log streaming, separate production and development environments, and standard support. Professional is $240/month for up to 500 monthly active users and includes everything in Essentials plus existing user-database logins, Enterprise Multi-Factor Authentication, enhanced attack protection, and optional machine-to-machine tokens. Enterprise pricing is not publicly listed; contact sales. It includes custom user and SSO tiers, a 99.99% SLA, enterprise rate limits, enterprise administration and support, with advanced security features and private deployment available as add-ons.
Auth0 offers monthly and yearly billing options. Its pricing page also lists special pricing programs for startups and nonprofits.
Plan Comparison
| Feature | Free | Essentials | Professional | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $0 | From $35/mo | From $240/mo | Custom |
| External MAU included | 25,000 | 500 | 1,000 | Custom |
| Social connections | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Custom domains | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| User roles | No | Basic | Advanced | Advanced |
| MFA | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Bot detection | Basic | Basic | Advanced | Advanced |
| SSO integrations | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Breached password detection | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| SLA guarantee | No | No | No | 99.99% uptime |
| Dedicated support | Community | Standard | Standard | Dedicated |
| Private cloud deployment | No | No | No | Yes |
| Fine-Grained Authorization | Limited | Limited | Yes | Yes |
| SCIM provisioning | No | No | No | Yes |
| Enterprise connections (SAML) | No | No | Yes | Yes |
The jump from Free to Essentials is primarily about custom domains and production-grade support. Moving to Professional adds the security features most B2B applications require: MFA, SSO, and role-based access control. Enterprise adds compliance certifications, SLA guarantees, and deployment flexibility that regulated industries demand.
Hidden Costs and Considerations
Auth0's MAU-based model means costs scale directly with your user base, and several factors can push costs beyond the base plan price:
- MAU overages: Once you exceed your plan's included MAU, per-user overage charges apply and can accumulate quickly for apps experiencing rapid growth.
- Add-on features: Adaptive MFA, Enterprise connections (SAML, ADFS), and Attack Protection carry additional per-MAU costs on lower tiers.
- Machine-to-machine tokens: M2M API calls are metered separately and can generate unexpected charges for microservice architectures that make frequent server-to-server calls.
- Phone/SMS MFA: SMS-based verification incurs per-message fees on top of the base plan price, which adds up for global user bases.
- Tenant environments: Production, staging, and development tenants each count toward your subscription, so multi-environment setups increase the effective cost.
Cost Estimates by Team Size
Below are estimated monthly costs for a B2C application at different MAU levels on Auth0, assuming standard authentication features without premium add-ons:
| MAU Level | Recommended Plan | Estimated Monthly Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | Free | $0 | Well within Free tier limits |
| 10,000 | Free | $0 | No cost unless you need paid features |
| 25,000 | Free | $0 | Maximum Free tier capacity |
| 50,000 | Essentials | $3,500/mo (B2C) | MAU overage charges apply beyond 500 included |
| 100,000 | Professional | Quote only | Includes MFA and SSO capabilities |
| 500,000 | Professional | Quote only | Volume pricing reduces per-user cost |
| 1,000,000+ | Enterprise | Custom (typically $5,000/mo+) | Annual contract, negotiable terms |
The Free tier covers most early-stage applications comfortably with its 25,000 MAU limit. Costs begin to rise meaningfully once you cross that threshold and need paid-tier features like MFA or custom domains. At scale, Enterprise pricing is negotiable and typically involves annual contracts with committed MAU volumes. Companies with over 1 million MAU should expect to engage Auth0's sales team for a tailored quote that factors in specific feature requirements and support levels.
How Auth0 Pricing Compares
| Feature | Auth0 | Firebase Auth | AWS Cognito | Clerk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier MAU | 25,000 | 50,000 | 50,000 | 10,000 |
| Paid starting price | $35/mo | — | — | — |
| MFA included | Professional ($240/mo) | Free (SMS extra) | Free | All paid plans |
| SSO/SAML | Professional+ | Not included | Included | — |
| Custom domains | Essentials+ | Not included | Not included | All paid plans |
| Enterprise SLA | Enterprise only | Google Cloud SLA | AWS SLA | Enterprise only |
| Pricing model | MAU tiers | Pay-per-MAU | Pay-per-MAU | MAU tiers |
| Bot detection | Built-in | Not included | Built-in | Basic |
| Fine-Grained Authorization | Yes (FGA) | No | Limited | No |
Firebase Auth and AWS Cognito offer free MAU limits of 50,000 each and pure pay-per-use pricing, making them economical at low to moderate volumes. However, Auth0 provides a significantly richer feature set out of the box, including advanced bot detection, breached password alerts, Fine-Grained Authorization (FGA), and a visual Actions pipeline for customizing auth flows without code changes.
Clerk targets developer experience with simpler pricing and pre-built UI components, but it lacks Auth0's enterprise depth around compliance, private deployment, and SCIM provisioning. For B2B SaaS applications that need SSO, SCIM, and compliance certifications to close enterprise deals, Auth0's Professional and Enterprise tiers remain the most complete package despite carrying a higher price point. The trade-off is clear: Auth0 costs more but reduces the engineering effort needed to build enterprise-grade identity features from scratch.