Keycloak vs Auth0 vs Okta in 2026: Which IAM Platform Should You Choose?

Choosing an Identity and Access Management (IAM) platform is one of the most consequential infrastructure decisions you will make. The platform you pick will touch every application, every user login, every API call, and every compliance audit for years to come. In 2026, three platforms dominate the conversation: Keycloak, Auth0, and Okta.

I have deployed and managed all three in production environments ranging from startup MVPs to enterprise systems handling millions of authentications per day. This guide is the comparison I wish I had when I started evaluating these platforms.

If you want a broader view that includes ForgeRock and Ping Identity, see Comparing ForgeRock, Ping, Auth0, and Keycloak. For a structured evaluation framework with weighted scoring, see IAM Platform Evaluation Framework. For a deep two-way comparison of Auth0 and Keycloak specifically, see Auth0 vs Keycloak: Complete Comparison Guide.

Platform Overview

Keycloak

Keycloak is an open-source IAM solution originally developed by Red Hat (now part of IBM). First released in 2014, it was donated to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) in 2023 and reached CNCF Incubating status. Keycloak is built on Quarkus (replacing the older WildFly base) and provides a full-featured identity provider out of the box.

Philosophy: Complete control over your identity infrastructure. You own the deployment, the data, and the customization. Zero licensing fees.

For a hands-on introduction, see Getting Started with Keycloak.

Auth0

Auth0, founded in 2013 and acquired by Okta in 2021, positions itself as the developer-friendly identity platform. Despite being owned by Okta, Auth0 operates as an independent product line with its own SDKs, documentation, and pricing model. Auth0 targets developers who want to add authentication quickly without building identity infrastructure from scratch.

Philosophy: Authentication should be a solved problem. Developers should spend zero time on login pages and token management.

Okta

Okta, founded in 2009, is the enterprise IAM market leader. It went public in 2017 and acquired Auth0 in 2021 for $6.5 billion. Okta Workforce Identity targets employee identity (SSO for internal apps), while Okta Customer Identity (CIC, powered by Auth0 technology) targets consumer-facing applications.

Philosophy: Enterprise-grade identity as a service with deep integrations into the corporate IT ecosystem.

Feature Comparison

Single Sign-On

All three platforms support SAML 2.0 and OpenID Connect for SSO. The difference lies in the integration catalog. Okta leads with over 7,000 pre-built application integrations in its OIN (Okta Integration Network), making it the fastest path to connecting enterprise SaaS apps. Auth0 provides a smaller but well-maintained catalog. Keycloak requires manual configuration for each integration, though common ones like Google Workspace, AWS, and Salesforce are well-documented by the community.

Multi-Factor Authentication

Auth0 and Okta both offer managed push notification MFA through their mobile apps, which is the smoothest user experience. Keycloak supports TOTP (Google Authenticator, Authy) and WebAuthn/FIDO2 natively. Push notifications require custom integration with a third-party service. All three support conditional MFA policies, but Auth0’s adaptive MFA with risk scoring and bot detection is the most sophisticated out-of-the-box option.

Authentication Flows and Customization

This is where Keycloak genuinely shines. Its Authentication Flow engine lets you build arbitrarily complex login sequences using a visual editor or JSON configuration. You can chain any combination of authenticators, add custom SPI (Service Provider Interface) implementations in Java, and modify every step of the process.

Auth0 uses Actions (Node.js-based serverless functions) that execute at specific points in the authentication pipeline. This is powerful but constrained to Auth0’s defined trigger points.

Okta uses Event Hooks and Inline Hooks for customization, plus the newer Okta Identity Engine (OIE) which provides more flexible policy-based flows.

Pricing Analysis

Pricing is often the deciding factor, and the three platforms have fundamentally different models.

Keycloak Pricing

Keycloak itself is free and open source under the Apache 2.0 license. Your costs are:

• Infrastructure: $200-2,000/month for a production HA cluster (3+ nodes, database, load balancer)
• DevOps Time: 0.25-1 FTE for ongoing maintenance, upgrades, monitoring
• Optional Support: Red Hat Build of Keycloak (included with Red Hat SSO subscription, ~$8,000-15,000/year) or third-party consulting

Example: 100,000 MAU on Keycloak

• 3-node Kubernetes cluster: ~$800/month
• Managed PostgreSQL: ~$200/month
• DevOps engineer (25% allocation): ~$2,500/month
• Total: ~$3,500/month ($42,000/year)

Auth0 Pricing

Auth0 uses a tiered model based on Monthly Active Users (MAU):

• Free: Up to 25,000 MAU (limited features, no SLA)
• Essentials: From $35/month (up to 500 external MAU, basic features)
• Professional: From $240/month (up to 1,000 external MAU, more advanced features)
• Enterprise: Custom pricing (unlimited MAU, SLA, dedicated support)

Example: 100,000 MAU on Auth0

• Professional plan at this scale: ~$2,000-4,000/month
• Enterprise plan (negotiated): ~$3,000-6,000/month
• Total: ~$24,000-72,000/year

Machine-to-machine (M2M) tokens are billed separately, which catches many teams off guard.

Okta Pricing

Okta has different pricing for Workforce Identity and Customer Identity:

Workforce Identity (employee SSO):

• SSO: $2/user/month
• Adaptive MFA: $3/user/month
• Lifecycle Management: $4/user/month
• Full package: ~$8-15/user/month

Customer Identity (CIAM, powered by Auth0):

• Similar to Auth0 pricing tiers
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Example: 5,000 employees on Okta Workforce

• SSO + MFA: $5/user/month = $25,000/month
• With Lifecycle Management: $9/user/month = $45,000/month
• Total: $300,000-540,000/year

Pricing Summary

The crossover point where Keycloak becomes cheaper than managed services is typically around 10,000-50,000 MAU, assuming you already have DevOps capacity. Below that threshold, the operational overhead of self-hosting often exceeds the licensing cost savings.

Developer Experience

Keycloak

• SDKs: Official Java adapter. Community-maintained adapters for Node.js, Python, Go, .NET. Quality varies.
• Documentation: Comprehensive official docs but can be dense. Community resources (blog posts, Stack Overflow) are extensive.
• Local Development: Run with docker run -p 8080:8080 quay.io/keycloak/keycloak:latest start-dev and you have a full IdP in seconds.
• API: Full Admin REST API for automation. Well-documented and consistent.
• Customization: Java SPIs for deep customization. FreeMarker templates for login themes. New Account Console in React.

The developer experience is powerful but requires more IAM knowledge upfront. You need to understand OIDC/SAML concepts, realm configuration, and client setup.

For production deployment patterns, see Keycloak High Availability.

Auth0

• SDKs: First-class SDKs for React, Angular, Vue, Next.js, iOS, Android, Flutter, and more. Maintained by Auth0 engineering.
• Documentation: Excellent. Quickstarts for every framework. Interactive API explorer. Clear tutorials.
• Local Development: No local instance available. You use a cloud-based development tenant (free).
• API: Management API and Authentication API, both well-documented with Postman collections.
• Customization: Actions (Node.js serverless functions) for pipeline customization. Universal Login for branded experiences.

Auth0 has the best developer onboarding experience of the three. Most developers can go from zero to working login in under 30 minutes.

Okta

• SDKs: Official SDKs for Java, .NET, Node.js, Go, Python, and more. Well-maintained.
• Documentation: Extensive but can be overwhelming. The distinction between Classic Engine and Identity Engine documentation creates confusion.
• Local Development: No local instance. Uses cloud-based developer tenant (free for up to 100 MAU).
• API: Comprehensive REST APIs. Good Terraform provider for infrastructure-as-code.
• Customization: Event/Inline Hooks. Okta Expression Language for attribute mapping. Sign-In Widget for frontend customization.

Okta’s developer experience is solid for workforce scenarios but heavier for CIAM. The product complexity (Classic vs. OIE, Workforce vs. CIC) can create confusion.

Scalability and Performance

Keycloak

Keycloak scales horizontally with Infinispan-based clustering. A properly configured cluster handles tens of thousands of authentications per second. Key considerations:

• Database: PostgreSQL or MySQL in production. The database is the bottleneck, not Keycloak itself.
• Session replication: Infinispan distributed caches for session data. Configure cross-datacenter replication for global deployments.
• Token processing: Keycloak’s token endpoint handles 1,000-5,000 requests per second per node depending on hardware and token complexity.

You own the scaling. This is both the power and the burden.

Auth0

Auth0 runs on AWS across multiple regions. Performance characteristics:

• Rate limits: Free tier has strict rate limits. Professional tier allows higher throughput. Enterprise gets custom limits.
• Token endpoint: Shared infrastructure means performance depends on your tier. Enterprise customers get dedicated infrastructure.
• Global deployment: Auth0 provides multi-region deployment with automatic failover for Enterprise customers.
• Edge network: Auth0 uses CDN for Universal Login page delivery.

You do not control the scaling, but Auth0’s infrastructure team handles it for you.

Okta

Okta has one of the largest identity clouds globally:

• Uptime SLA: 99.99% uptime SLA for Enterprise customers.
• Global presence: Data centers in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.
• Rate limits: Published and generous for Enterprise tiers. Can be a constraint on lower tiers.
• Cell-based architecture: Okta uses a cell-based architecture for isolation and scalability.

Okta’s scale is proven. It handles billions of authentications annually across its customer base.

Enterprise Features

Compliance and Certifications

For regulated industries, this section matters enormously. Auth0 and Okta carry their own compliance certifications, which means your auditors can reference their SOC 2 reports instead of you building that compliance posture yourself. With Keycloak, you inherit the full compliance burden: you must demonstrate that your deployment, infrastructure, and operational practices meet the required standards.

That said, Keycloak gives you something Auth0 and Okta cannot: complete data sovereignty. If your regulatory environment demands that no authentication data ever leaves a specific jurisdiction or network boundary, self-hosted Keycloak is the only option among these three.

Directory and Lifecycle Management

Okta dominates in the workforce identity space with its Universal Directory and Lifecycle Management features. Provisioning and deprovisioning users across hundreds of SaaS applications via SCIM, syncing from Active Directory and LDAP sources, and managing Joiner-Mover-Leaver workflows are core Okta capabilities that Auth0 and Keycloak do not match natively.

Keycloak supports LDAP/AD federation and custom User Storage SPIs, but automated lifecycle management requires custom development or third-party tools.

Migration Considerations

Migrating between IAM platforms is painful. Here is what to expect:

Migrating to Keycloak

• From Auth0/Okta: Export user data via API. Passwords cannot be exported (bcrypt hashes may be transferable from Auth0). Use Keycloak’s User Federation or bulk import.
• Gradual migration: Use Keycloak’s User Federation SPI to authenticate against the old system while transparently migrating users on login.
• Timeline: 3-6 months for a typical migration of 10,000-100,000 users.

Migrating to Auth0

• Bulk import: Auth0 supports importing users with existing password hashes (bcrypt, argon2, pbkdf2).
• Automatic migration: Configure a custom database connection that authenticates against your existing system and lazily migrates users.
• Timeline: 2-4 months with Auth0’s migration tooling.

Migrating to Okta

• Import tools: Okta provides CSV import and API-based bulk import.
• Password migration: Supports inline hooks for password migration on first login.
• AD/LDAP agent: For workforce migrations, the Okta AD agent handles synchronization.
• Timeline: 2-6 months depending on complexity.

For a deeper look at Keycloak-specific migration, see Auth0 vs Keycloak and ForgeRock vs Keycloak.

Decision Framework

After working with all three platforms across dozens of deployments, here is my recommendation framework.

Choose Keycloak If…

• You have DevOps capacity. You need at least one engineer comfortable with Kubernetes, database administration, and Java/Quarkus configuration.
• Data sovereignty is non-negotiable. Your data must stay within your network boundary or a specific jurisdiction with no exceptions.
• You are at scale. Above 100,000 MAU, the per-user pricing of managed services adds up fast. Keycloak’s infrastructure costs plateau while managed costs scale linearly.
• You need deep customization. Custom authentication flows, non-standard protocols, or integration with legacy systems that require Java SPI development.
• You want to avoid vendor lock-in. Keycloak uses standard protocols. Migrating away means your applications still speak OIDC/SAML.

Start with the Getting Started with Keycloak guide and plan your production deployment using the Keycloak High Availability architecture.

Choose Auth0 If…

• Speed to market is the priority. Auth0 gets you from zero to production login in days, not weeks.
• You are building consumer-facing applications. Auth0’s Universal Login, social connections, and adaptive MFA are purpose-built for CIAM.
• Your team is frontend-heavy. Auth0’s SDKs for React, Next.js, Vue, and mobile frameworks are best-in-class.
• You want minimal operational burden. No servers to manage, no databases to tune, no security patches to apply.
• Your MAU count is under 50,000. At this scale, Auth0’s pricing is competitive with the total cost of self-hosting.

Choose Okta If…

• Workforce identity is the primary use case. SSO for internal employees across hundreds of SaaS applications is Okta’s sweet spot.
• You need lifecycle management. Automated provisioning, deprovisioning, and role changes across your SaaS stack via SCIM.
• Compliance certifications matter. FedRAMP High, SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA BAA all included and maintained by Okta.
• You have a large IT organization. Okta’s admin console, reporting, and policy management are built for IT teams, not just developers.
• Integration breadth is critical. The Okta Integration Network with 7,000+ pre-built connectors eliminates custom integration work.

The Hybrid Approach

In practice, many organizations end up using more than one platform. A common pattern I see:

• Okta for workforce identity: Employee SSO, SaaS app management, lifecycle automation
• Auth0 or Keycloak for customer identity: Consumer-facing login, social sign-in, self-registration

This hybrid approach plays to each platform’s strengths. Okta manages the corporate identity backbone while a CIAM-focused solution handles customer-facing authentication with the flexibility and customization that consumer apps demand.

Final Thoughts

There is no universally correct answer. The right platform depends on your team’s skills, your compliance requirements, your budget, and your scale trajectory. What I can tell you from experience: changing IAM platforms after the fact is expensive and disruptive. Invest the time to evaluate properly now.

Start with a proof of concept. Deploy Keycloak in Docker, sign up for Auth0’s free tier, and create an Okta developer account. Build the same login flow on all three. The one that feels right for your team, your architecture, and your roadmap is the one you should choose.

For more IAM platform comparisons, explore our guide to ForgeRock, Ping, Auth0, and Keycloak.