What sets Logto apart from Auth0 and our perspective on it

Introduction

What is Auth0

Auth0, established in 2013, is a cloud-based platform that empowers developers with tools and services to easily incorporate authentication and identity management functionalities into their applications. It holds a prominent position as the industry leader in customer identity access management.

What is Logto

The idea behind Logto was sparked by a straightforward motivation of our founder Gao, tried out both Okta and Auth0 but grew frustrated with the cumbersome developer experience and high costs. He firmly believes that numerous other developers and teams encounter similar challenges. That's why we consider Logto as an alternative to Auth0, a more modern and trendy solution.

Logto vs. Auth0

TL;DR

😄 We prioritize the needs of Auth0's overlooked users

We specifically cater to users who may be overlooked by Auth0, including developers and startups in need of digital solutions.

😄 Our product embraces open-source

Besides the cloud version, we at the same time maintain a reputable, community driven open-source version.

😄 Competitive developer experience for our targeted users

We take a meticulous approach to determine which features to build. We avoid mindlessly delivering features for every use case, as this can leave end users feeling trapped or confused. By following this principle and guided by community’s voice, we can ensure the best developer experience and provide a more intuitive, lightweight product.

😄 Auth0: High cost upfront (prepaid); Logto: Pay for actual usage, save money (pay-as-you-go).

Our pricing is transparent and reasonable with pay-as-you-go and tiered pricing. This offers significant cost savings compared to Auth0. It is also a mental relief since the prepaid plans from Auth0 requires you to predict user traffic every month.

What would be the cost if we have 10,000 monthly active users within the similar SKU as other alternatives in the market?

😄 Our near-term roadmap to embrace the new era

Our upcoming product lines include organization, enterprise SSO, focusing on providing the best identity model for Software as a Service (SaaS). We already gained enough best practice and opinions as we use our own identity model and architecture design to build our own cloud service.

In addition, we’ve committed to provide more robust support for AI companies. We have recently partnered with some AI companies, which serves as a valuable companion for developing AI applications and plugins.

We prioritize the needs of Auth0's overlooked users

Logto is to address the following problems in a better way to cater the needs of Auth0 overlooked users. As developers or businesses seeking for identity solutions, they may come across the following situations:

If you find yourself falling into any of these groups, great! This is precisely what we aim to solve for you. Auth0 hasn't addressed these scenarios perfectly due to:

1. Unreasonable and untransparent pricing, with surprisingly low MAU limit for non-enterprise plans.
2. Complex products and feature sets that jam together with limited customization.

Logto is here to address these issues in a more effective manner, focusing on areas that many other products tend to overlook.

Our product embraces open-source

Logto provides both an open-source and cloud version, ensuring that you always have a free open-source option available forever. This sets us apart from Auth0 and other alternatives in the market. Open-source is deeply ingrained in our DNA, fostering a fantastic culture at Logto.

As a result, Logto is scalable and ideal for growth, offering flexibility and customization. Our community and team efforts have powered our growth, and within just one year, we have accomplished the following:

1. 26 connectors
2. 11 languages for localization
3. 12 development frameworks
4. Everything you can do in our interactive and developer-friendly (so called “low-code”), known as the console, is achievable through our management API.

Simultaneously, we maintain a transparent approach while building our product and uphold high standards of code quality. Our guides and SDKs are designed to be user-friendly, allowing anyone to effortlessly follow along without any difficulties. The simplicity and inclusivity has resonated with developers worldwide.

Logto has helped us to include authentication fast and easily. If you are looking for an authentication layer this is the solution. The code is clear and easy to customize if you need it. Easy to deploy on mainstream cloud solutions. We are using it in production without any problems.

-- Ufuk Arslan, Co-founder of Mobilist

Modern developer experience

An easy-to-use tool at a glance

By comparing the interface and supported features of Logto with Auth0, you will gain a clear understanding of our philosophy and points of differentiation. To illustrate this, let's examine a native application settings page as an example.

Simplicity is a result of a meticulous decision-making process. We carefully select and prioritize features based on the needs of our target users, aiming to deliver the best possible developer experience.

Here are our layers and infrastructure:

Furthermore, Logto is an excellent choice for authentication in AI and other lightweight products. We encourage you to explore our tutorials, which demonstrates how Logto supports ChatGPT plugins.

✍️ Implement ChatGPT plugins user authentication with Logto

✍️ Simplify Outline authentication with Logto

Easy integration

Ensuring a smooth and user-friendly integration process is important for creating an excellent developer experience. Logto provides in-context guides to help developers efficiently integrate Logto with their application.

We have been using Logto as THE authentication system and it has truly been a game changer. The integration was seamless and it significantly improved the user experience by providing a secure and efficient way to log in. Overall, we highly recommend Logto for any organization looking to enhance their authentication system.

-- André König, CEO at openformation.io

Here's a quick comparison of our integration guides with Auth0:

Config Driven Development (CDD)

We incorporate Config Driven Development into our engineering and product development process because it helps ensure a consistent and excellent developer experience.

Let's consider connectors as an example.

Connectors play a crucial role in Logto by enabling end-users to utilize passwordless sign-up, sign-in, and social sign-in. Logto offers users the ability to set up or create their own connectors.

Our connectors are designed to be highly flexible, allowing users easily install or develop their own custom ones. To simplify the process, we have implemented a solution called "Dynamic Form" inspired by Config Driven Development (CDD).

By adopting this approach and following our configuration guide, developers can save a significant amount of effort. This approach also offers greater customization and flexibility. For instance, if users desire a custom social connector, it can be achieved in Logto but not in other solutions.

To learn more about our approach and practices, refer to this article:

✍️ How we support an array of diverse connectors

More customization but out-of-the-box

In the market, you'll find various solutions that either offer extensive customization but lack out-of-the-box convenience, or provide out-of-the-box functionality but with limitations. However, Logto strikes a balance between the two.

When it comes to authentication, having an end-to-end user flow is essential. We offer a ready-to-use UI flow that developers and startups can quickly adapt to their needs. We consider this a necessity.

Our sign-in experience, including both configuration and end-user interface, offers greater flexibility and customization compared to Auth0. Auth0 may offer extensive customization options for less critical features, but Logto addresses this issue by providing overarching branding, custom CSS capabilities, and the flexibility to layer your authentication methods.

Furthermore, we extend the open-source mindset to our UI and Product Design. We make our user flow and UI components accessible to everyone. To delve deeper into this topic, I recommend checking out this article for more information:

🎨 From code to canvas: Logto makes sign-in experience design open-source

Auth0: High cost upfront (prepaid); Logto: Pay for actual usage, save money (pay-as-you-go)

Auth0 is a prominent company in the industry that primarily caters to enterprise clients. However, their pricing strategies can be burdensome for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). In our previous article, we discussed and concluded several points regarding this matter. I recommend reading that article for further details:

🎉 Logto unveiled a new pricing model to tackle startup hurdles behind the scenes

Accessible and reasonable

A fundamental principle we abide by is to ensure our pricing is competitive compared to other options in the market. It should not be more than what potential clients are expecting to pay. This chart illustrates a few examples.

To illustrate with an example, if we consider 10,000 monthly active users (MAU), our pricing is up to 80% less than Auth0.

Meanwhile, our team had been puzzled by a mystery for quite some time: why is the price the same for users who sign in once and those who sign in every day of the month? Tiered MAU price can guarantee the integrity and reasonability of the final bill of the customers.

Naturally, the unit price is charged for each tiered MAU. In the case of Hobby and Pro plans, the following unit prices apply.

• For Tier 1 MAU (Occasional MAU), the Unit Prices are $0.008 for the Hobby plan and $0.024 for the Pro plan.
• For Tier 2 MAU (Frequent MAU): the Unit Prices are $0.012 for the Hobby plan and $0.032 for the Pro plan.
• For Tier 3 MAU (Almost daily MAU): the Unit Prices are $0.016 for the Hobby plan and $0.048 for the Pro plan

If you're curious to know what tiered MAU means, take a look at our pricing model:

💰 Logto pricing model

Predictable and transparent

We've often heard from customers that the billing process can feel like a mystery, leading to unexpected costs. They want to be sure of exactly what they're paying for and prevent sudden, high bills. This clarity should be a consistent part of the customer experience, not just found on a pricing document somewhere hidden in the help center.

Predictable

Before making a purchase, we offer predictability by providing a pre-invoice calculator. This tool will assist developers and businesses in budgeting planning by providing minimum and maximum cost estimates.

While in use, in console, since we also offer a pay-as-you-go strategy, we display your upcoming bill in time:

Transparent

By displaying the complete formula in our billing process, every variable and unit price is clearly shown in the bill. With our pricing model and formula, users can even perform the calculations themselves, ensuring clarity and understanding.

Logto vs. other alternatives

Logto is better at supporting more frameworks (vs. Clerk)

Clerk is also a modern authentication tool, but it has targeted within the React and web ecosystem and lacks support for authorization (access control) features.

For example, they lack support popular languages for Flutter, Go, iOS and Android.

Logto is better at flexible system architecture (vs. Clerk, Ory)

Additionally, Clerk and Ory organization-project-app system architecture makes it challenging to implement multi-app centralized identity systems and build multi-tenancy SaaS-like apps.

To gain more insights on centralized identity systems and our thoughts on multi-app considerations, check out this article:

🤔️ Why you need a centralized identity system for a multi-app business

Logto is better at out-of-the-box authentication (vs. Ory, SuperTokens)

Ory is an open-source project that focuses on authentication as well. However, it has its own unique perspectives in terms of engineering and lacks an out-of-the-box authentication solution. Our migrated clients have informed us that Ory utilizes session-based solutions called Kratos and Hydra (OIDC provider), but they lack a clear example demonstrating how they work together. This limitation hinders developers from quickly starting their development process.

Logto is better at supporting authorization + user management (vs. Clerk, Stytch)

Both Clerk and Stytch fall short in terms of providing sufficient support for authorization and user management.

Logto strictly adheres to open-standards (vs. SuperTokens)

Logto meticulously adheres to the battle-tested open standard known as OpenID Connect, built on OAuth 2.0. This protocol provides a solid foundation for our services, offering both flexibility and scalability, also better production experience.

Closing

We have outlined our product's perspectives and positioning. Take a look at your requirements and business situation, and select the best solution that meets your needs.