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Auth0 vs AWS IAM: What are the differences?
Developers describe Auth0 as "Token-based Single Sign On for your Apps and APIs with social, databases and enterprise identities". A set of unified APIs and tools that instantly enables Single Sign On and user management to all your applications. On the other hand, AWS IAM is detailed as "Securely control access to AWS services and resources for your users". AWS Identity and Access Management.
Auth0 belongs to "User Management and Authentication" category of the tech stack, while AWS IAM can be primarily classified under "Cloud Access Management".
Some of the features offered by Auth0 are:
- User and Password support with verification and forgot password email workflow
- Painless SAML Auth with Enterprises
- Integration with 20+ Social Providers
On the other hand, AWS IAM provides the following key features:
- Manage IAM users and their access - You can create users in IAM, assign them individual security credentials (i.e., access keys, passwords, and Multi-Factor Authentication devices) or request temporary security credentials to provide users access to AWS services and resources.
- Manage IAM roles and their permissions - You can create roles in IAM, and manage permissions to control which operations can be performed by the entity, or AWS service, that assumes the role. You can also define which entity is allowed to assume the role.
- Manage federated users and their permissions - You can enable identity federation to allow existing identities (e.g. users) from your corporate directory or from a 3rd party such as Login with Amazon, Facebook, and Google to access the AWS Management Console, to call AWS APIs, and to access resources, without the need to create an IAM user for each identity.
"JSON web token" is the top reason why over 47 developers like Auth0, while over 21 developers mention "Centralized powerful permissions based access" as the leading cause for choosing AWS IAM.
9GAG, Splunk, and Obama for America Campaign 2012 are some of the popular companies that use AWS IAM, whereas Auth0 is used by Binary.com, Cofounders Pte Ltd, and Vizzbuzz. AWS IAM has a broader approval, being mentioned in 132 company stacks & 48 developers stacks; compared to Auth0, which is listed in 121 company stacks and 53 developer stacks.
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?
Auth0I 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 token68
- Integration with 20+ Social Providers31
- It's a universal solution20
- SDKs20
- Amazing Documentation14
- Heroku Add-on11
- Enterprise support8
- Extend platform with "rules"7
- Great Sample Repos7
- Azure Add-on4
- Passwordless3
- Easy integration, non-intrusive identity provider3
- 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)14
- Poor support7
- Status page not reflect actual status4
- Rapidly changing API3
Cons of AWS IAM
- Cloud auth limited to resources, no apps or services1
- No equivalent for on-premise networks, must adapt to AD1
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