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AWS IAM vs Auth0: What are the differences?
Introduction
AWS IAM (Identity and Access Management) and Auth0 are both widely used identity and access management solutions. While they both serve the same purpose of managing user identities and controlling access to resources, there are several key differences between the two.
Integration Complexity: AWS IAM is tightly integrated with the AWS ecosystem and primarily designed for managing access to AWS resources. It requires users to have an AWS account and can be more complex to set up and configure for non-AWS services. On the other hand, Auth0 is a standalone identity platform that can easily integrate with various applications and platforms, offering a more flexible and customizable solution.
User Experience: AWS IAM focuses on providing granular access control for users, groups, and roles within the AWS services. It offers a comprehensive set of access policies and permissions, but the user interface can be complex and overwhelming for managing large-scale identity and access management. Auth0, on the other hand, provides a more user-friendly interface and offers features like Single Sign-On (SSO), social logins, and multi-factor authentication, making it easier for developers and administrators to handle user identities.
Authentication and Authorization: AWS IAM primarily focuses on user authentication and resource authorization within the AWS ecosystem. It provides features like AWS SDKs, API keys, and temporary security credentials for accessing AWS resources. Auth0, on the other hand, is designed to handle user authentication and authorization across multiple platforms and applications. It supports various authentication protocols like OAuth, OpenID Connect, and SAML, allowing seamless integration with different systems.
Scalability: AWS IAM is built to handle high-scalability and performance requirements due to its integration with AWS infrastructure. It can handle large numbers of users, groups, and roles within the AWS ecosystem. Auth0, being a standalone identity platform, is also designed to handle scalability but offers more flexibility in terms of scaling across different applications and platforms.
Managed Services vs. Self-hosting: AWS IAM is a managed service provided by Amazon Web Services. It is fully maintained and operated by AWS, ensuring high availability and reliability. Auth0, on the other hand, provides a cloud-based identity platform but also offers self-hosted options for organizations that require more control over their identity infrastructure. This allows organizations to choose between a fully managed service or hosting it on their own infrastructure.
Pricing Model: AWS IAM is included as part of the AWS pricing structure and is billed based on the usage of other AWS services. Auth0, on the other hand, follows a separate pricing model based on the number of active users and additional features used. This allows organizations to choose a pricing plan that aligns with their specific needs and usage patterns.
In Summary, AWS IAM and Auth0 differ in terms of integration complexity, user experience, authentication and authorization capabilities, scalability, managed services/self-hosting options, and pricing models.
We need to migrate our authentication system to an external solution. We have a Vue.js frontend and a set of Services (mostly in Python) that talk to each other through APIs. This platform is multitenant, having all tenants in the same DB (MongoDB) and discriminating between them with a parameter value. So I'll be grateful if someone can share their experiences with any of these three options!
If these three are your options, I would recommend going with Auth0. They have all functionality available as developer API (Okta e.g. not) so you can manage your instance with Infrastructure as code and can also easily add functionalities relatively easily with the API. They are also really powerful if we're talking about ABAC (Attribute based access control). You can also enrich your access token with custom claims from your MongoDB, that can be probably really useful, as you said that you're dealing with multi tenancy.
We're using Auth0 in combination with Fauna Fauna is a database, so it would challenge you're mongodb. But Faunadb is the first database that implemented a full end user ABAC system directly in the database. (And also a lot easier than the ABAC systems from Okta or Auth0). This helps us, to use Auth0 only as identity platform and doing all the authorization with enriched claims over Fauna. With that you can skip in a lot of the cases you're backend, and you can request directly from the frontend your database (Blazing fast). Also, you can replace in some years Auth0 a lot easier with some upcoming cheaper (Auth0 was bought by Okta for a hilarious price) and "easy to use" passwordless identity provider like Passage.id
Currently, Passport.js repo has 324 open issues, and Jared (the original author) seems to be the one doing most of the work. Also, given that the documentation is not proper. Is it worth using Passport.js?
As of now, StackShare shows it has 29 companies using it. How do you implement auth in your project or your company? Are there any good alternatives to Passport.js? Should I implement auth from scratch?
I would recommend Auth0 only if you are willing to shell out money. You can keep up with their free version only for a very limited time and as per our experience as a growing startup where budget is an issue, their support was not very helpful as they first asked us to sign a commercial agreement even before helping us t o find out whether Auth0 fits our use case or not! But otherwise Auth0 is a great platform to speed up authentication. In our case we had to move to alternatives like Casbin for multi-tenant authorization!
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 Auth0
- JSON web token70
- Integration with 20+ Social Providers31
- It's a universal solution20
- SDKs20
- Amazing Documentation15
- Heroku Add-on11
- Enterprise support8
- Great Sample Repos7
- Extend platform with "rules"7
- Azure Add-on4
- Easy integration, non-intrusive identity provider3
- Passwordless3
- It can integrate seamlessly with firebase2
- Great documentation, samples, UX and Angular support2
- Polished2
- On-premise deployment2
- Will sign BAA for HIPAA-compliance1
- MFA1
- Active Directory support1
- Springboot1
- SOC21
- SAML Support1
- Great support1
- OpenID Connect (OIDC) Support1
Pros of AWS IAM
- Centralized powerful permissions based access23
- Straightforward SSO integration3
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Cons of Auth0
- Pricing too high (Developer Pro)15
- Poor support7
- Rapidly changing API4
- Status page not reflect actual status4
Cons of AWS IAM
- Cloud auth limited to resources, no apps or services1
- No equivalent for on-premise networks, must adapt to AD1