Why Logto is a strong choice for teams migrating from Firebase, AWS Cognito, or Auth0
Discover why SaaS teams migrate from Firebase, AWS Cognito, and Auth0 to Logto. Learn about pricing, flexibility, and a real case study with SpacetoCo.
Product & Design
The auth migration question
Identity is core infrastructure. For startups and SaaS platforms, Firebase Authentication, AWS Cognito, or Auth0 often serve as the first choice. They’re quick to adopt, well-documented, and battle-tested at small to medium scale.
But as products grow, adding multi-tenancy, enterprise SSO, more complex RBAC, and compliance requirements, teams often find themselves constrained by pricing, vendor lock-in, and lack of flexibility. At that stage, the decision to migrate becomes less about convenience and more about long-term scalability, cost, and control.
The breaking points with legacy providers
Google Firebase
- Hard to decouple: Deeply tied into the Firebase ecosystem; difficult to swap out identity without unraveling other dependencies.
- Limited customization: Great for early-stage apps, but quickly restrictive for teams that need enterprise SSO, fine-grained RBAC, or multi-tenant SaaS.
AWS Cognito
- Front-end pain: Requires heavy customization just to deliver a modern sign-in flow.
- Outdated UI: Often described as looking “like it was built in 2001.”
- Trust issues: A clunky user experience undermines customer confidence.
- Hidden costs: Labeled as “free,” but operational overhead and developer time make it expensive to maintain.
Auth0 (Post-Okta Acquisition)
- Hidden support costs: Critical features locked behind expensive support contracts.
- Slow response times: Support often can’t keep pace with urgent production needs.
- Account merging headaches: Relies on outdated third-party plugins.
- High price, low flexibility: Tens of thousands of dollars annually for a solution that still lacks agility.
- Unresolved issues: Core problems linger in public forums for over a decade without fixes.
Why teams look beyond their current provider
| Concern | Where Firebase / AWS / Auth0 Fall Short | How Logto Fits |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing & Scale | MAU-based billing (Auth0 especially) grows fast and becomes unpredictable at scale. Firebase/AWS add hidden infra costs. | Logto avoids pure MAU pricing; charges are tied to tokens and add-ons. Predictable at scale, with generous free quotas and a self-hosting option. |
| Customization | Firebase/Cognito are rigid; Auth0 allows customization but through proprietary rules/hooks that increase lock-in. | Logto supports custom JWT claims, granular authorization, multi-tenant orgs, and extensible flows, without being tied to proprietary frameworks. |
| Developer Experience | Cognito’s APIs are notoriously complex; Firebase is simple but too limited; Auth0’s extensibility can become brittle. | Logto is API-first, lightweight, and developer-friendly. Features like impersonation, personal access tokens, and org support are included by default. |
| SaaS & Multi-Tenant Needs | These platforms weren’t built natively for SaaS multi-tenancy. Workarounds are messy. | Logto ships with “Organizations” and enterprise SSO as core features, making it ideal for SaaS platforms. |
| Vendor Lock-in | Proprietary platforms make migration painful. | Logto is open source, self-hostable, and designed to reduce lock-in risks. |
| Future Growth | New demands (AI apps, plugins, B2B SaaS) often require identity models the incumbents don’t evolve fast enough to support. | Logto emphasizes adaptability, modularity, and SaaS-first evolution. |
Migration challenges and mitigation
Even with a clear destination, identity migration isn’t trivial. Common risks include:
- Password hash compatibility → solved with lazy migration (re-hash on first login).
- Session/token differences → plan for old tokens to expire gracefully.
- Role/permission mapping → align old data models to Logto’s org + RBAC model.
- Audit and compliance → confirm Logto’s logging, retention, and governance capabilities.
- User experience continuity → aim for zero unnecessary password resets.
The safest path is phased rollout: start with a pilot group, test in staging, and have rollback options.
A practical roadmap on auth solution migration
- Audit requirements: login methods, MFA, SSO, tenants, compliance.
- Validate fit: confirm Logto covers must-have features and pricing works at your scale.
- Choose migration strategy: bulk import, lazy migration, or hybrid.
- Test thoroughly: staging, load testing, penetration tests.
- Cut over carefully: gray release + monitoring of login success/failure rates.
- Optimize after migration: clean legacy systems, refine RBAC/org policies, and leverage Logto’s extensibility.
Why Logto makes sense?
All of these advantages are theoretical until tested in practice. That’s where real-world stories matter.
SpacetoCo, a platform for booking community spaces, faced the same challenges many SaaS teams encounter: growing beyond the limits of conventional identity providers, needing multi-tenant support, and looking for a more predictable pricing model. By adopting Logto, they were able to gain both flexibility and long-term control over their identity infrastructure. Check our case study
Their journey shows why Logto isn’t just a drop-in replacement for Firebase, AWS Cognito, or Auth0: it’s a platform designed for SaaS teams building for scale, sustainability, and the future potential growth.
Check our migration guide or sign up Logto Cloud