Free auth tiers compared: WorkOS, Kinde, Stytch and Descope
By Perq team (Avatar 8) · · comparison · auth · free tiers · dev tools
Offer details below are pulled from our dataset when the page is built, so they match the directory. Latest verification of offers in this post: .
Two auth platforms went public on Perq today: WorkOS AuthKit and Kinde. That makes four auth vendors with a free plan you can start on without applying to anything. The main difference between them is how many monthly active users (MAU) you get before you have to pay, and what else the free plan includes. We checked each figure on the vendor’s pricing page.
| Vendor | Offer (vendor wording) | Eligibility | Verified | Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WorkOS | AuthKit user management free up to 1 million monthly active users | Anyone | source ↗ · claim ↗ | |
| Kinde | Free plan: 10,500 monthly active users | Anyone | source ↗ · claim ↗ | |
| Stytch | Free: 10,000 monthly active users and AI agents | Anyone | source ↗ · claim ↗ | |
| Descope | Free Forever plan: 7,500 monthly active users, 3 SSO connections, 10,000 M2M exchanges | Anyone (hobbyists, tinkerers and solo builders) | source ↗ · claim ↗ |
MAU limits side by side
- WorkOS AuthKit: free up to 1 million monthly active users, by far the highest cap here. Social auth, MFA and RBAC are included. Enterprise SSO connections, custom domains and log streaming are billed separately.
- Kinde: 10,500 monthly active users on the Free plan, with email, SMS and social login, MFA, B2B organizations and a custom domain. No credit card required.
- Stytch: 10,000 monthly active users and AI agents, plus 5 SSO or SCIM connections and 1,000 M2M tokens.
- Descope: 7,500 MAUs on Free Forever, with 3 SSO connections and 10,000 M2M exchanges. There are no overages: you upgrade to go past the limits.
Which one to start with
- Expecting lots of consumer sign-ups: WorkOS’s 1 million MAU cap leaves the most headroom, as long as you don’t need the add-ons it bills separately.
- B2B apps that need SSO early: Stytch and Descope include SSO connections on the free plan (5 and 3). WorkOS bills enterprise SSO connections separately.
- Agents and machine-to-machine auth: Stytch counts AI agents in its free allowance, and both Stytch and Descope include M2M tokens or exchanges.
- Want a custom domain without paying: Kinde’s Free plan includes one.
If you are a funded startup, two application programs are worth a look too: Auth0 offers one year free to eligible startups, and Clerk has a startup discount for teams up to 1 year after launch.
| Vendor | Offer (vendor wording) | Eligibility | Verified | Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Auth0 | One year of Auth0 free | Eligible startups | source ↗ · claim ↗ | |
| Clerk | Startup discount (amount on application) | Up to 1 year after launch, up to $5M venture funding | source ↗ · claim ↗ |
Perq pack
Free plans and startup deals for user login, SSO, agent identity and secrets management, so a new app doesn't pay for auth or a vault on day one.
9 offers · 6 free tiers and 3 startup programs
Also public today
Seven more offers came out of embargo today. Subscribers got them yesterday. They cover databases, an AI gateway, scraping, webhooks, notifications, real-time analytics, and a credits program for agent platforms:
| Vendor | Offer (vendor wording) | Eligibility | Verified | Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aiven | Free plans for PostgreSQL, Valkey, Kafka and OpenSearch (1 CPU, 1 GB RAM, 1 GB storage) | Anyone | source ↗ · claim ↗ | |
| Portkey | Developer plan free forever: 10k recorded logs per month | Anyone (not for production workloads) | source ↗ · claim ↗ | |
| ScraperAPI | 7-day trial with 5,000 API credits | Anyone (new accounts) | source ↗ · claim ↗ | |
| Svix | Free plan: up to 50k webhook messages per month | Anyone | source ↗ · claim ↗ | |
| Novu | Free plan: 10,000 workflow runs / month | Anyone | source ↗ · claim ↗ | |
| Tinybird | Free plan: 10 GB storage, 1k requests per day | Anyone | source ↗ · claim ↗ | |
| Neon | Up to $25,000 in paid-tier credits plus sponsored free-tier infrastructure (Agent Plan) | Agent and app-generation platforms that provision databases for their users (application) | source ↗ · claim ↗ |
Neon’s Agent Plan is the only one that needs an application. It is for platforms that provision databases for their users. The others are free plans or trials you can start right away.
Want new offers a day before they show up on the site? Join early access.