Amazon Cognito vs Firebase Authentication

Overview

Amazon Cognito

Stacks616

Followers917

Votes34

Firebase Authentication

Stacks533

Followers610

Votes55

Amazon Cognito vs Firebase Authentication: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will discuss the key differences between Amazon Cognito and Firebase Authentication. Both services provide user authentication and management capabilities, but they have some distinct features and functionalities.

Integration with Cloud Services: Amazon Cognito is tightly integrated with other AWS services, allowing seamless access control and authorization for other cloud resources. On the other hand, Firebase Authentication is specifically designed for Firebase, offering easy integration with other Firebase services and features.
Scalability and Performance: Amazon Cognito is highly scalable and designed to handle millions of users, making it suitable for enterprise-level applications. Firebase Authentication also offers scalability but is primarily focused on mobile and web applications with a smaller user base.
Multi-Factor Authentication: Both Amazon Cognito and Firebase Authentication support multi-factor authentication, providing an extra layer of security. However, Firebase Authentication allows developers to use custom SMS providers, while Amazon Cognito only supports SMS verification through Amazon SNS.
User Management Capabilities: Amazon Cognito provides a range of user management capabilities, such as user registration, login, and account recovery. It also offers user profile customization and user attribute synchronization with other services. Firebase Authentication offers similar user management features but provides additional functionalities like user roles and permissions.
Authentication Providers: Amazon Cognito supports various authentication providers, including social media platforms like Facebook, Google, and Amazon. Firebase Authentication also offers social login capabilities, but it has a broader range of supported providers, including email/password, phone number, and even anonymous authentication.
Pricing Structure: Both services offer free tiers with limited usage, but their pricing structures differ. Amazon Cognito pricing is based on a pay-per-use model, charging for monthly active users and additional requests. Firebase Authentication offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where pricing is based on the number of user authentications and monthly active users.

In summary, Amazon Cognito offers greater integration with AWS services, scalability for enterprise applications, and customizable user attributes, while Firebase Authentication provides more diverse authentication providers, user roles, and a pricing structure based on user authentications.

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Advice on Amazon Cognito, Firebase Authentication

Brent

CEO at DEFY Labs

Mar 7, 2020

Decided

I started our team on Amazon Cognito because I was a Solutions Architect at AWS and found it really easy to follow the tutorials and get a basic app up and running with it.

When our team started working with it, they very quickly became frustrated because of the poor documentation. After 4 days of trying to get all the basic passwordless auth working, our lead engineer made the decision to abandon it and try Auth0... and managed to get everything implemented in 4 hours.

The consensus was that Cognito just isn't mature enough or well-documented, and that the implementation does not cater for real world use cases the way that it should. I believe Amplify has made some of this simpler, but I would still recommend Auth0 as it's been bulletproof for us, and is a sensible price.

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Detailed Comparison

Amazon Cognito	Firebase Authentication
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.	It provides backend services, easy-to-use SDKs, and ready-made UI libraries to authenticate users to your app. It supports authentication using passwords, phone numbers, popular federated identity providers like Google,
Manage Unique Identities;Work Offline;Store and Sync across Devices;Seamless Guest Access;Safeguard AWS Credentials;Control Access to AWS Resources	-
Statistics
Stacks 616	Stacks 533
Followers 917	Followers 610
Votes 34	Votes 55
Pros & Cons
Pros 14 Backed by Amazon 7 Manage Unique Identities 4 Work Offline 3 MFA 2 Store and Sync Cons 4 Massive Pain to get working 3 Documentation often out of date 2 Login-UI sparsely customizable (e.g. no translation) 1 Different Language SDKs not compatible 1 No recovery codes for MFA	Pros 12 Completely Free 8 Email/Password 8 Native App + Web integrations 7 Passwordless 6 Works seemlessly with other Firebase Services Cons 6 Heavy webpack

What are some alternatives to Amazon Cognito, Firebase Authentication?

Auth0

A set of unified APIs and tools that instantly enables Single Sign On and user management to all your applications.

Stormpath

Stormpath is an authentication and user management service that helps development teams quickly and securely build web and mobile applications and services.

Keycloak

It is an Open Source Identity and Access Management For Modern Applications and Services. It adds authentication to applications and secure services with minimum fuss. No need to deal with storing users or authenticating users. It's all available out of the box.

Devise

Devise is a flexible authentication solution for Rails based on Warden

WorkOS

Start selling to enterprise customers with just a few lines of code.

OAuth.io

OAuth is a protocol that aimed to provide a single secure recipe to manage authorizations. It is now used by almost every web application. However, 30+ different implementations coexist. OAuth.io fixes this massive problem by acting as a universal adapter, thanks to a robust API. With OAuth.io integrating OAuth takes minutes instead of hours or days.

OmniAuth

OmniAuth is a Ruby authentication framework aimed to abstract away the difficulties of working with various types of authentication providers. It is meant to be hooked up to just about any system, from social networks to enterprise systems to simple username and password authentication.

ORY Hydra

It is a self-managed server that secures access to your applications and APIs with OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect. It is OpenID Connect Certified and optimized for latency, high throughput, and low resource consumption.

Kinde

Simple, powerful authentication that you can integrate in minutes. Free your users from passwords with secure and frictionless one click sign up and sign in. Built from the ground up using the best in class security protocols available today.

Satellizer

Satellizer is a simple to use, end-to-end, token-based authentication module for AngularJS with built-in support for Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter authentication providers, plus Email and Password sign-in method. You are not limited to the sign-in options above, in fact you can add any OAuth 1.0 or OAuth 2.0 provider by passing provider-specific information during the configuration step.

Related Comparisons

Amazon Cognito vs Firebase Authentication: What are the differences?

Introduction

Integration with Cloud Services: Amazon Cognito is tightly integrated with other AWS services, allowing seamless access control and authorization for other cloud resources. On the other hand, Firebase Authentication is specifically designed for Firebase, offering easy integration with other Firebase services and features.
Scalability and Performance: Amazon Cognito is highly scalable and designed to handle millions of users, making it suitable for enterprise-level applications. Firebase Authentication also offers scalability but is primarily focused on mobile and web applications with a smaller user base.
Multi-Factor Authentication: Both Amazon Cognito and Firebase Authentication support multi-factor authentication, providing an extra layer of security. However, Firebase Authentication allows developers to use custom SMS providers, while Amazon Cognito only supports SMS verification through Amazon SNS.
User Management Capabilities: Amazon Cognito provides a range of user management capabilities, such as user registration, login, and account recovery. It also offers user profile customization and user attribute synchronization with other services. Firebase Authentication offers similar user management features but provides additional functionalities like user roles and permissions.
Authentication Providers: Amazon Cognito supports various authentication providers, including social media platforms like Facebook, Google, and Amazon. Firebase Authentication also offers social login capabilities, but it has a broader range of supported providers, including email/password, phone number, and even anonymous authentication.
Pricing Structure: Both services offer free tiers with limited usage, but their pricing structures differ. Amazon Cognito pricing is based on a pay-per-use model, charging for monthly active users and additional requests. Firebase Authentication offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where pricing is based on the number of user authentications and monthly active users.

Amazon Cognito vs Firebase Authentication

Overview

Amazon Cognito vs Firebase Authentication: What are the differences?