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Auth0

1.3K
2K
+ 1
214
Devise

412
231
+ 1
56
OmniAuth

307
150
+ 1
9

Auth0 vs Devise vs OmniAuth: What are the differences?

Introduction

Auth0, Devise, and OmniAuth are all popular authentication and authorization solutions used in web development. While they serve a similar purpose, there are key differences between them that can influence the choice of developers. In this article, we will explore these differences and highlight the unique features of each solution.

  1. Integration Process: Auth0 provides a powerful and comprehensive authentication platform that can be integrated into a website or application with ease. It offers support for various protocols and frameworks, making it compatible with different technology stacks. On the other hand, Devise and OmniAuth are Ruby gems that focus on providing authentication functionalities specifically for Ruby on Rails applications. They require a more manual configuration process and may have limited compatibility with other frameworks.

  2. Ease of Use: Auth0 simplifies the authentication process by offering pre-built UI components and customizable login flows. It provides an intuitive dashboard for managing users, roles, and permissions, making it easy to set up and manage user authentication. Devise and OmniAuth, being gems specifically designed for Ruby on Rails, require more manual configuration and customizations for implementing authentication features. While they offer flexibility, they may require more development effort compared to Auth0.

  3. Authentication Options: Auth0 supports a wide range of authentication methods, including social logins (such as Google and Facebook), multi-factor authentication, and biometric authentication. It also provides support for authentication protocols like OAuth2 and OpenID Connect. Devise, on the other hand, primarily focuses on username/password authentication and does not provide built-in support for social logins or other advanced authentication methods. OmniAuth acts as a bridge between different authentication providers and allows for integrating multiple authentication options, but it does not provide the same level of out-of-the-box functionality as Auth0.

  4. Security Features: Auth0 emphasizes security and provides built-in features like password hashing, encryption, and secure token handling. It also offers anomaly detection and threat intelligence to protect against common security threats. Devise and OmniAuth, being Ruby gems, rely on the security practices implemented within the Ruby on Rails framework. While Ruby on Rails provides strong security measures, developers need to ensure proper implementation and customization for specific security requirements.

  5. Scalability and Maintenance: Auth0 is a cloud-based service that is designed to handle authentication and authorization for applications at scale. It provides reliability, scalability, and high availability out of the box. Devise and OmniAuth, being gems installed within the application's codebase, require developers to manage and maintain the authentication functionality themselves. This includes handling scalability, updates, and security patches as the application evolves.

  6. Community and Support: Auth0 has a large and active user community and provides comprehensive documentation, SDKs, and libraries for various platforms and languages. It also offers professional support and a service-level agreement for enterprise customers. Devise and OmniAuth, being open-source projects, have a community of contributors and developers, but the support may be more limited compared to a commercial service like Auth0. Community support and available resources can influence the development process and overall reliability of the selected authentication solution.

In summary, Auth0 offers a comprehensive and scalable authentication platform with broad compatibility and advanced features, while Devise and OmniAuth are Ruby-specific solutions that provide flexibility and customization options for Ruby on Rails applications. The choice between these solutions depends on specific project requirements, development expertise, and the need for out-of-the-box functionality versus customization options.

Advice on Auth0, Devise, and OmniAuth

Hey all, We're currently weighing up the pros & cons of using Firebase Authentication vs something more OTB like Auth0 or Okta to manage end-user access management for a consumer digital content product. From what I understand so far, Something like Firebase Auth would require more dev effort but is likely to cost less overall, whereas OTB, you have a UI-based console which makes config by non-technical business users easier to manage. Does anyone else have any intuitions or experiences they could share on this, please? Thank you!

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Replies (1)

Hey, we've had implemented Firebase auth in less than two days. Their doc is amazing and I don't understand why you think that it will take more effort than Auth0. Prices are really good (free, except if you use more than 10k/sms month).

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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!

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Replies (1)
Micha Mailänder
CEO & Co-Founder at Dechea · | 4 upvotes · 84K views
Recommends
on
Auth0Auth0FaunaFauna
at

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

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Needs advice
on
Auth0Auth0
and
PassportPassport

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?

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Replies (1)
Recommends
on
Auth0Auth0

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!

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Decisions about Auth0, Devise, and OmniAuth
Ryan Wans

Using Auth0 and JWT with a simple session management server is easy and takes care of a lot of the hassle of setting up authentication. We feel safe having Auth0 handle and store our user data knowing their databases are way more secure than anything we could have setup ourselves. They also provide great tools like WebHooks and action events to pull critical metadata to our API when we need it.

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Brent Maxwell
Migrated
from
Amazon CognitoAmazon Cognito
to
Auth0Auth0

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.

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Pros of Auth0
Pros of Devise
Pros of OmniAuth
  • 69
    JSON web token
  • 31
    Integration with 20+ Social Providers
  • 20
    It's a universal solution
  • 20
    SDKs
  • 15
    Amazing Documentation
  • 11
    Heroku Add-on
  • 8
    Enterprise support
  • 7
    Great Sample Repos
  • 7
    Extend platform with "rules"
  • 4
    Azure Add-on
  • 3
    Easy integration, non-intrusive identity provider
  • 3
    Passwordless
  • 2
    It can integrate seamlessly with firebase
  • 2
    Great documentation, samples, UX and Angular support
  • 2
    Polished
  • 2
    On-premise deployment
  • 1
    Will sign BAA for HIPAA-compliance
  • 1
    MFA
  • 1
    Active Directory support
  • 1
    Springboot
  • 1
    SOC2
  • 1
    SAML Support
  • 1
    Great support
  • 1
    OpenID Connect (OIDC) Support
  • 33
    Reliable
  • 17
    Open Source
  • 4
    Support for neo4j database
  • 2
    Secure
  • 6
    Easy Social Login
  • 3
    Free

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Cons of Auth0
Cons of Devise
Cons of OmniAuth
  • 14
    Pricing too high (Developer Pro)
  • 7
    Poor support
  • 4
    Rapidly changing API
  • 4
    Status page not reflect actual status
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      What is Auth0?

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

      What is Devise?

      Devise is a flexible authentication solution for Rails based on Warden

      What is 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.

      Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

      What companies use Auth0?
      What companies use Devise?
      What companies use OmniAuth?

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      What tools integrate with Auth0?
      What tools integrate with Devise?
      What tools integrate with OmniAuth?

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      Blog Posts

      Sep 29 2020 at 7:36PM

      WorkOS

      PythonSlackG Suite+17
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      What are some alternatives to Auth0, Devise, and OmniAuth?
      Stormpath
      Stormpath is an authentication and user management service that helps development teams quickly and securely build web and mobile applications and services.
      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.
      Okta
      Connect all your apps in days, not months, with instant access to thousands of pre-built integrations - even add apps to the network yourself. Integrations are easy to set up, constantly monitored, proactively repaired and handle authentication and provisioning.
      Firebase
      Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications. Simply add the Firebase library to your application to gain access to a shared data structure; any changes you make to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds.
      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.
      See all alternatives