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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.
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.
Pros of Amazon Cognito
- Backed by Amazon14
- Manage Unique Identities7
- Work Offline4
- MFA3
- Store and Sync2
- Free for first 50000 users1
- It works1
- Integrate with Google, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, SAML1
- SDKs and code samples1
Pros of WorkOS
- Passwordless Authentication3
- Don't have to rip out existing user management schema3
- SDKs3
- Amazing Developer Support3
- Integration with Enterprise Identity Providers3
- SSO integration in under an hour3
- Transparent pricing2
- High Uptime1
- SCIM1
- Great Documentation1
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Cons of Amazon Cognito
- Massive Pain to get working4
- Documentation often out of date3
- Login-UI sparsely customizable (e.g. no translation)2
- Docs are vast but mostly useless1
- MFA: there is no "forget device" function1
- Difficult to customize (basic-pack is more than humble)1
- Lacks many basic features1
- There is no "Logout" method in the API1
- Different Language SDKs not compatible1
- No recovery codes for MFA1
- Hard to find expiration times for tokens/codes1
- Only paid support1
Cons of WorkOS
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What is Amazon Cognito?
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