StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. Utilities
  3. Authentication
  4. Cloud Access Management
  5. AWS IAM vs Auth0

AWS IAM vs Auth0

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

AWS IAM
AWS IAM
Stacks1.2K
Followers819
Votes26
Auth0
Auth0
Stacks1.4K
Followers2.1K
Votes215

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.

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

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)
or
Manual

Advice on AWS IAM, Auth0

Vaibhav
Vaibhav

Jul 17, 2020

Needs advice

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?

220k views220k
Comments
Brent
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
Santiago
Santiago

Dec 9, 2020

Needs adviceonVue.jsVue.jsPythonPythonMongoDBMongoDB

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!

29.5k views29.5k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

AWS IAM
AWS IAM
Auth0
Auth0

It enables you to manage access to AWS services and resources securely. Using IAM, you can create and manage AWS users and groups, and use permissions to allow and deny their access to AWS resources.

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

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.
User and Password support with verification and forgot password email workflow; Painless SAML Auth with Enterprises; Integration with 20+ Social Providers; SDKs for all platforms mobile and web; Token-based authentication for APIs
Statistics
Stacks
1.2K
Stacks
1.4K
Followers
819
Followers
2.1K
Votes
26
Votes
215
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 23
    Centralized powerful permissions based access
  • 3
    Straightforward SSO integration
Cons
  • 1
    No equivalent for on-premise networks, must adapt to AD
  • 1
    Cloud auth limited to resources, no apps or services
Pros
  • 70
    JSON web token
  • 31
    Integration with 20+ Social Providers
  • 20
    SDKs
  • 20
    It's a universal solution
  • 15
    Amazing Documentation
Cons
  • 15
    Pricing too high (Developer Pro)
  • 7
    Poor support
  • 4
    Status page not reflect actual status
  • 4
    Rapidly changing API
Integrations
No integrations available
Amazon S3
Amazon S3
Salesforce Sales Cloud
Salesforce Sales Cloud
Parse
Parse
Firebase
Firebase
Ruby
Ruby
PHP
PHP
Laravel
Laravel
Python
Python
Java
Java
Spring
Spring

What are some alternatives to AWS IAM, Auth0?

Stormpath

Stormpath

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

Keycloak

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

Devise is a flexible authentication solution for Rails based on Warden

Firebase Authentication

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,

Amazon Cognito

Amazon Cognito

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.

WorkOS

WorkOS

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

OAuth.io

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

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

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

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.

Related Comparisons

Postman
Swagger UI

Postman vs Swagger UI

Mapbox
Google Maps

Google Maps vs Mapbox

Mapbox
Leaflet

Leaflet vs Mapbox vs OpenLayers

Twilio SendGrid
Mailgun

Mailgun vs Mandrill vs SendGrid

Runscope
Postman

Paw vs Postman vs Runscope