Amazon Cognito vs WorkOS

Overview

Amazon Cognito

Stacks616

Followers917

Votes34

WorkOS

Stacks15

Followers36

Votes23

Amazon Cognito vs WorkOS: What are the differences?

Introduction:

1. Data storage: Amazon Cognito is primarily used for managing user authentication and authorization, storing user profiles, and managing user sessions. On the other hand, WorkOS focuses on provisioning, syncing, and managing directory services such as Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, and does not offer data storage capabilities for user profiles.

2. Integration capabilities: Amazon Cognito seamlessly integrates with various AWS services such as AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, and Amazon S3, enabling developers to build serverless applications. In contrast, WorkOS integrates with major identity providers like Google, Microsoft, and Apple to offer Single Sign-On (SSO) and other authentication services.

3. Customization options: Amazon Cognito provides a wide range of customization options for user authentication, including multi-factor authentication, password policies, and email/SMS verification. WorkOS, on the other hand, specializes in providing developer-friendly SDKs and APIs to streamline the integration of identity-related functionalities into applications.

4. Scalability: Amazon Cognito is designed to handle millions of users and scale automatically based on demand, making it suitable for applications with high user bases. WorkOS, although scalable, is more focused on providing a platform that simplifies the integration of identity-related services rather than managing scalability at the same level as Amazon Cognito.

5. Pricing model: Amazon Cognito follows a tiered pricing model based on the number of monthly active users, with a free tier available for small applications. WorkOS, on the other hand, offers a pay-as-you-go pricing structure based on the number of API calls made to its services, making it suitable for applications that require flexibility in terms of pricing.

6. Support and documentation: Amazon Cognito benefits from comprehensive documentation and strong community support due to its association with AWS, offering a wide range of resources for developers. WorkOS, while offering detailed documentation, may have a smaller community footprint compared to Amazon Cognito, potentially affecting the availability of resources and community support.

In Summary, Amazon Cognito and WorkOS differ in data storage, integration capabilities, customization options, scalability, pricing model, and support/documentation.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs

CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on Amazon Cognito, WorkOS

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.

297k views297k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Amazon Cognito	WorkOS
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.	Start selling to enterprise customers with just a few lines of code.
Manage Unique Identities;Work Offline;Store and Sync across Devices;Seamless Guest Access;Safeguard AWS Credentials;Control Access to AWS Resources	Single Sign-On (SSO/SAML); Directory Sync (SCIM); Audit Trail (SIEM); Access Control (RBAC/IAM)
Statistics
Stacks 616	Stacks 15
Followers 917	Followers 36
Votes 34	Votes 23
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 Hard to find expiration times for tokens/codes 1 Different Language SDKs not compatible	Pros 3 Integration with Enterprise Identity Providers 3 Amazing Developer Support 3 Passwordless Authentication 3 SDKs 3 SSO integration in under an hour
Integrations
No integrations available	Microsoft Azure G Suite Python Node.js Golang Ruby Workday Gusto Azure Active Directory

What are some alternatives to Amazon Cognito, WorkOS?

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

Firebase Authentication

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,

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 WorkOS: What are the differences?

Introduction:

In Summary, Amazon Cognito and WorkOS differ in data storage, integration capabilities, customization options, scalability, pricing model, and support/documentation.

Amazon Cognito vs WorkOS

Overview