Amazon Cognito vs Auth0 comparison

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Amazon Cognito

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 2024

Auth0 and Amazon Cognito are competing products in the identity management space. Based on user reviews, Auth0 generally has the upper hand in ease of deployment and customer service, while Amazon Cognito is preferred for its comprehensive feature set and tighter integration with other AWS services.

Features: Auth0 is praised for its extensive out-of-the-box authentication options, third-party integrations, and customizable login pages. Amazon Cognito offers seamless integration with AWS services, advanced security features, and high scalability.

Room for Improvement: Auth0 users point out that the documentation can be complex, the platform occasionally has performance issues, and there are concerns about pricing for large-scale applications. Amazon Cognito users report that initial setup is complicated, the service lacks adequate customer support channels, and detailed help documentation is insufficient.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Auth0 is known for its straightforward deployment process and strong, responsive customer service. Amazon Cognito, while rich in features, has a steeper learning curve for deployment, and its customer support is often criticized as slow or unhelpful.

Pricing and ROI: Auth0 users find the pricing model to be more flexible and the platform to deliver better ROI by reducing dev time for authentication solutions. Amazon Cognito has a more predictable pricing structure, but some users feel it can become costlier than anticipated. Its close integration with AWS services might offer long-term cost benefits for existing AWS users.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Cognito vs. Auth0 Report (Updated: March 2025).

Amazon Cognito vs. Auth0

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Cognito

Ranking in Access Management

6th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Auth0

Ranking in Access Management

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Single Sign-On (SSO) (5th), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Cognito is 6.4%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Auth0 is 10.1%, down from 14.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Access Management

Featured Reviews

Wojciech Doganowski

Solutions Architect & PMO at AS TV Play Baltics/TV3 Group

International setup localization challenges drive custom development while outsourcing credential management enhances security

We are using it in an international setup where we have multiple services running in multiple countries. Cognito localizes only regarding language, but the service is localized in each country. Cognito has the possibility to render the login screen and all the customer flows related to managing the account. Still, it's useless in an international setup. They are unable to localize these screens, so we had to write our own screens and just use the Cognito API. I hope they will fix this soon because it's useful to rely on already prepared flows for all the account management. As it doesn't work with different languages, rewriting it is quite complicated. Additionally, maybe they could find another step in the price so there is not such a significant jump from the basic to extended functionality. Some flexibility would be helpful.

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Serge Wautier

CTO at Lambda-X Ophthalmics

Simplified integration with helpful support and decent pricing

Auth0 is used as an identity provider for our new SaaS platform to manage the identity of users Auth0 is cost-effective because it provides all the features we need, and it was very easy to integrate into our platform. The documentation is comprehensive, and their support team is highly helpful.…

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The features most valuable to us are the ability to integrate with various IDPs and the capability to sync with multiple applications."

"The most valuable features of Amazon Cognito are OTP validation and email validation."

"The multi-factor authentication setup has room for improvement."

"What is quite valuable is that we can outsource storage of the credentials to AWS, and they manage it quite securely."

"The solution is proto connective and integrates well with other AWS services."

"I rate Amazon Cognito nine out of ten."

"Cognito speeds up our development and saves us time."

"One of the key benefits of this software is its ease of integration with a wide range of applications, including mobile apps and web applications. This simplifies the process of integration, and it can be seamlessly incorporated with Azure, Kubernetes, and other software systems."

More Amazon Cognito pros

"The valuable features are that it is extremely secure and that it's developer-friendly."

"It is very scalable because it provides a new environment for companies based on their number of users and other factors. The tool can take a lot of users."

"If we had to develop our own and manage it, it would take years of development and maintenance. In those terms, it’s definitely beneficial."

"It has a lot of customization and out-of-the-box features."

"The most important feature for me was the ease of use, as it needed to be easy to integrate into my platform."

"It supports identity federation, FSO and multi-tenancy."

"It offers stronger security and flexibility with API keys, which are generated on runtime."

"The most important feature for me was the ease of use, as it needed to be easy to integrate into my platform."

More Auth0 pros

Cons

"What I found generally lacking in AWS is privileged access management (PAM)."

"There is room for improvement in Amazon Cognito."

"Amazon Cognito could be improved by making it easier for us to add more data to the token, allowing customization of JWT. It requires a complex program to customize the token currently, however, the UI could support this configuration better."

"In a future release, we would like to have different methods to validate the characteristic of a user. For example, we would like to use biometric data to analyze the behavior of users."

"I would rate its scalability as five out of ten. Moving users between different pools or accounts creates new identities, which means IDs stored in our database must also be changed."

"Amazon Cognito could improve by simplifying the configuration."

"Cognito has the possibility to render the login screen and all the customer flows related to managing the account. Still, it's useless in an international setup. They are unable to localize these screens, so we had to write our own screens and just use the Cognito API."

"The MFA related to the solution's side is nonexistent."

More Amazon Cognito cons

"I think they can do a better job in explaining what you're supposed to do next in order to correctly follow an idiomatic approach to using the solution beyond simply passing a JWT token to a server and having the server check then signature to validate the token."

"There are indeed areas where the product could improve. For instance, Okta offers various application configurations, enabling access management, which the tool could consider implementing."

"The tool's price should be improved."

"The Management API could be improved so it's easier to get user information."

"Better documentation for Salesforce integration is suggested."

"The product support for multi-tenancy could be improved."

"When they introduced the Organizations feature they did support different login screens per organization. However, they introduced a dependency between this feature and another called the New Universal Login Experience. The New Experience is a more lightweight login screen, but it is much less customizable. For example, today, we are able to fully customize our login screen and even control the background image according to the time of day. We have code to do that. But we are not able to write code anymore in the New Experience."

"If you’re not a developer, you need to spend time exploring more."

More Auth0 cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is bad so I rate it a two out of ten."

"The price of Amazon Cognito is low. The pricing model is based on the users."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten."

"The product is relatively inexpensive compared to other tools."

"The pricing of this solution is good compared to other solutions on the market."

"We pay $600 monthly per user for licences and there are no other additional costs."

"The price of the solution depends on the number of users using it."

"The price of Amazon Cognito is expensive. We are on an annual subscription."

"The tool is cheaper compared to competing solutions. Those alternatives tended to be more expensive. Consequently, Okta purchased it because it was considerably cheaper. The solution even offered some free services while still providing excellent functionality."

"I am pretty happy with the pricing model of Auth0. It is very clear for me. Considering our scale, the features that we are using, and additional features that we bought, we still find it great. If you split the costs for the whole year and calculate the number of people you needed to hire, it always comes out to be much lesser than what we would have spent on building our own solution."

"There are different price levels: B2B, B2C, and enterprise. The basic plan is about $1,500 per month."

"Pricing of Auth0 is a pain point. Their pricing model is very confusing, at least for an enterprise. I don't like their pricing model. I think it's too aggressive. It's not very cheap for a service that only does authentication."

"It is a relatively inexpensive product in the industry."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Cognito?

The most valuable feature of the solution is its swift authentication.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Cognito?

The basic functionality is reasonably priced, but the extended functionalities, especially the extended security, are quite expensive. There is a significant jump from the basic to the extended fun...

What needs improvement with Amazon Cognito?

What do you like most about Auth0?

It is very scalable because it provides a new environment for companies based on their number of users and other factors. The tool can take a lot of users.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Auth0?

The cost of the solution itself was cost-effective enough that I didn't even need to compare it with EntraID.

What needs improvement with Auth0?

There is no immediate need for improvement. However, better documentation for Salesforce integration is suggested. Multi-factor authentication could be considered for future research.

Microsoft Entra ID vs Amazon Cognito

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Product Reports

Amazon Cognito

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Overview

Amazon Cognito is a simple user identity and data synchronization service that helps you securely manage and synchronize app data for your users across their mobile devices. You can create unique identities for your users through a number of public login providers (Amazon, Facebook, and Google) and also support unauthenticated guests. You can save app data locally on users’ devices allowing your applications to work even when the devices are offline. With Amazon Cognito, you can save any kind of data in the AWS Cloud, such as app preferences or game state, without writing any backend code or managing any infrastructure. This means you can focus on creating great app experiences instead of having to worry about building and managing a backend solution to handle identity management, network state, storage, and sync.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Auth0 is a comprehensive identity management solution that securely authenticates and authorizes users on different platforms and applications. It offers seamless integration, easy configuration, and reliable performance for managing identity and access. Users appreciate its flexibility, scalability, and support for multi-factor authentication.

With robust documentation and excellent customer service, Auth0 enables developers to efficiently implement authentication and authorization processes. Its valuable features include easy integration, robust security, seamless single sign-on, and customizable authentication options. Auth0 also enhances organizational operations and productivity by streamlining processes, improving collaboration and communication, reducing errors, and facilitating seamless integration with existing systems.

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

1. Airbnb 2. Accenture 3. Adidas 4. Atlassian 5. Audi 6. Baidu 7. BlackRock 8. Cisco 9. CocaCola 10. Dell 11. eBay 12. FedEx 13. Fiat Chrysler 14. Ford 15. Google 16. Groupon 17. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 18. IBM 19. Intel 20. LinkedIn 21. Mastercard 22. Mercedes Benz23. Microsoft 24. Nike 25. Oracle 26. PayPal 27. Pinterest 28. Qualcomm 29. SAP 30. Spotify 31. Tesla 32. Toyota

Amazon Cognito vs. Auth0