Announcing Stytch’s New Self-Serve Pricing: No Feature Gating, No Hard Caps, No Surprises

Every day, our Slack channel #alerts-competitor-calls lights up with unfiltered frustrations from sales prospects who’ve struggled with legacy auth providers. We see the same pain points on repeat: feature restrictions, unexpected caps, and hidden fees that force costly upgrades.

Here’s a look at what customers have said in recent weeks about our most common competitor (Auth0):

Clearly, customers don’t want gotchas, gimmicks, or gating from their authentication provider. Hearing these frustrations motivated us to overhaul pricing, and today, we’re thrilled to announce these changes. At a basic level, our new pricing enables transparent, unrestricted access from day one. But on a deeper level, we simply do what’s right for the customer.

Because authentication is core infrastructure, we partner with our customers for the long haul.

Behind Stytch’s New Pricing

The core pillars of our new pricing are:

1. No feature gating: Most competitors restrict critical functionality behind higher-cost plans. Stytch is different - we’ve removed all feature gates. From day one, every Stytch user has access to MFA, SSO, RBAC, SCIM, social logins, OTPs, passwordless auth, and more – if it’s an authentication acronym, it’s available in our free tier! We’re doing this because even small businesses deserve top-notch security.
2. No caps or cliffs: Auth0 and other vendors have hard caps. Customers cannot add a 9th SSO connection without talking to sales. Or, your 5,001st monthly active user (MAU) forces you into a tier that costs twice as much. Stytch offers a “pay for what you use” model with no hard caps. If you have 17,700 MAUs in a month, you’ll only get charged for 17,700 MAUs. If you surpass the amount of MAUs or SSO Connections included in the free tier, you’ll only pay for what you use, at transparent rates and without having to talk to sales.
3. No gotchas or gimmicks: We’re committed to clear, upfront pricing. Competitors like Auth0 present deceptively affordable starter plans that later pile on hidden fees or restrictive usage limits. What starts as a free plan can quickly balloon to tens of thousands of dollars simply because your user base grows or you need a feature like MFA. Our pricing structure is simple and transparent: you get access to all features, only pay for what you use, with no hidden fees.
4. Generous free tier: Our free tier offers significantly more than Auth0’s, and should be enough to fully support your business’s first few years of growth. Or, take advantage of our startup program: don’t pay a cent until your series A or three years of incorporation, whichever comes first.

Stytch vs. Auth0 pricing: A Comparison at Every Stage

Here’s a comparison of what you’d pay with Stytch vs. Auth0. Whether you’re just getting started or starting to hit your groove, we’re committed to being the more scalable & transparent provider.

You can calculate your costs on Stytch and find more information about our pricing model here.

What’s Wrong with Auth Pricing Today

In our view, the incumbent models of authentication pricing are broken for a few key reasons. We wanted to call out two specific examples of pricing tactics Auth0 uses - and how Stytch is different.

1. Auth0's Feature Gating

First, on the feature gating front. Let’s say you’re building a B2B app and were just accepted to YC. Initially, the Auth0 offering looks suitable. Right at the top of the page - there’s a free tier. Great. Then, 25,000 monthly active users, that’s awesome. And even if I did need some additional features, their first tier starts at only $150 a month, that seems reasonable.

But, as you dig deeper, you realize that MFA with OTP, a common authentication method you’ll definitely need, is buried as the last bullet in the Professional tier. Unfortunately, you’ll have to pay a minimum of $9,600 annually, and that’s only for 500 users 😢.

With Stytch, you get all features for free and won’t pay a cent in usage fees until you’ve reached 10,000 monthly active users. Importantly, the “gotcha” here with Auth0 is buried at the bottom of the page and you have to scour over hundreds of words in small font to parse out this information. It’s more likely you’ll miss this and later get saddled with a large bill unknowingly, which brings us to our next point.

2. How Auth0 obfuscates pricing to mislead developers

Our second example concerns SSO Connections. In September, Auth0 published a splashy blog that promotes, among other benefits, “Unlimited Okta Connections”.

This sounds generous, but unfortunately, this blog post is smoke and mirrors. The “Unlimited Okta Connections” only cover a specific, less-common OIDC setup that, according to our data, only make up 10% of enterprise connections. SAML connections, the much more common SSO type, are not included. And to figure out how much these more common SAML connections cost, you have to talk to sales!

Customers who don’t diligently fight through Auth0’s duplicitous advertising will end up with hidden fees and surprise bills. More information on this specific issue can be found here.

Growing with Stytch

We’re excited to redefine what pricing transparency means in authentication. At Stytch, we believe in empowering developers with straightforward, flexible pricing that grows with you: no locked-away features, no hard caps, and no hidden fees. We want to be an upfront and trustworthy partner to all developers, whether you are just starting out or scaling. With Stytch, you get access to all our features and only pay for what you use.

We’re here to make authentication simple, scalable, and headache-free.

Visit our pricing page for more details.

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