We implemented Auth0 for our B2B SaaS platform about 18 months ago. At the time, the pricing was competitive for the feature set, especially around enterprise SSO connections and custom domains. Our MAU has grown steadily, and we're now hitting the higher tiers of our contract.
The bill is starting to feel heavy for what we're actually using. The per-user cost scales linearly, but I'm not convinced the value scales at the same rate. We're primarily using:
* SAML/WS-Fed connections to a handful of major IdPs
* Custom domains
* Basic MFA
* The Actions framework for some minor post-login logic
We aren't using their newer advanced features, AI threat detection, or extensive orchestration. The "platform" fee feels increasingly like bloat.
I'm re-evaluating the market and need perspective from others on long-term costs. For a B2B app with, say, 5-10k monthly active users, is Auth0 still the fair-priced workhorse it was marketed as, or have the Okta acquisition and product shifts changed that calculus?
Specifically:
* Have you seen aggressive price increases at renewal?
* Are you effectively using newer features to justify the cost, or are you also on the "legacy" core feature set?
* For comparable core IAM needs (B2B, SSO, MFA), what alternatives are you seriously considering? I'm looking at vendors like FusionAuth, WorkOS, and even rolling with Keycloak.
VendorNegotiator
You're hitting on exactly what we're nervous about. We're about to pull the trigger on an auth provider for our team app, and the linear scaling per user is the big red flag for a B2B tool. It feels like you're penalized for your own app's success, especially when you're just using the core features.
Have you looked at any of the newer, developer-centric options? I'm curious if their pricing models are any better for your use case, or if you just end up trading one set of headaches for another. The "platform fee bloat" is a real concern when you just need the workhorse features.
Small team, big decisions
That linear scaling penalty is the core issue for B2B, where user growth directly reflects client acquisition rather than just more logins. You're right to be nervous.
The developer-centric alternatives often advertise usage-based models, but you must audit what constitutes a "billable event." One vendor's "authenticated session" might count every token refresh, effectively recreating the per-user cost under a different name. The platform fee bloat can just shift to being a cost for monitoring and managing that usage volatility.
The trade-off isn't just pricing headaches. It's often a reduction in enterprise readiness, like less granular audit logging or weaker support for legacy IdP protocols. You're usually trading a predictable, high bill for a potentially lower but unpredictable one, alongside increased operational overhead.
null
We've been on a similar trajectory. The renewal increase last year was substantial, around 22%, justified by "platform investment" and our growth. We use nearly the same feature set as you - core enterprise SAML, custom domains, Actions - and felt the same bloat.
The pivot we made, which you might consider, was to renegotiate by threatening a partial migration. We moved our low-security, internal tool logins to a cheaper OSS solution, keeping Auth0 only for our primary B2B client-facing portal. This gave us leverage to cap the per-user price increase for the remaining seats, effectively creating a two-tier auth system. It's more engineering overhead, but the savings were significant.
Have you had any direct conversations with your account manager about decoupling the platform fee from your core user count? In my experience, they have some flexibility if you anchor the discussion to your actual feature consumption.
IntegrationWizard
Ran the numbers last quarter for a similar app at 8k MAU. Renewal quote was 28% higher. The account manager cited "increased platform value" but couldn't point to any new features we used.
You're paying for the kitchen when you only need the stove. The core SAML/WS-Fed and custom domains haven't gotten cheaper for them to run, but your bill scales as if they're delivering net-new value.
We're testing a swap for the core protocols. The newer dev options are cheaper, but you lose the enterprise polish. Missing IdP-specific SAML quirks, slower support escalation. Is that worth a 40% cost cut? Maybe.
Benchmarks don't lie.