--- title: "FoxAuth compared with Auth0 — FoxAuth" description: "Auth0 is a managed identity service billed per monthly active user. FoxAuth is a server you run yourself or use on a free cloud plan." canonical: "https://foxauth.dev/compare/auth0/" lastmod: "2026-10-18T12:52:27+03:00" --- Compare FoxAuth compared with Auth0 Auth0 is a managed identity service billed per monthly active user. FoxAuth is a server you run yourself or use on a free cloud plan. Last checked 2026-10-16 against the linked sources. Auth0 changes. Where its documentation did not say, this page says so instead of guessing. Found something out of date? Tell us at hello@foxauth.dev. The short answer Auth0 is the better pick when you want identity as a service with an SLA this week, with social connections and a FAPI certification you can hand to a reviewer. FoxAuth is the better pick when the data has to live in your own database, when the per-user bill is the problem, or when you need the banking-grade profiles without an Enterprise add-on. Choose Auth0 if… →You do not want to run anything, and you need an SLA today. →You need social and enterprise connections working this week. →You want certified FAPI conformance and a support organisation with a status page. →You need a managed service with a support contract, and your budget is smaller than an engineer keeping a server healthy. Choose FoxAuth if… →Your cost grows with your user count and you would rather it grew with your infrastructure. →A regulator or a contract requires identity data to stay in your own database. →You need DPoP, PAR, CIBA or mTLS without an Enterprise plan and an add-on. →You want an AI agent administering the instance through the same audited path a human uses. Side by side Every row has a verdict and the reason for it ●Built in ◐Behind a flag, preview or add-on ○Not available ?Not documented —Not applicable Row verdicts: 6 FoxAuth ·4Auth0 · 3 even ·4 different goals. A count is not a recommendation. The rows that matter to you are the ones that count. DimensionFoxAuthAuth0Verdict Getting started and operations Hosting model●Self-hosted container, imported as a library, or a free plan on FoxAuth Cloud with limits and no SLA yet.●Managed multi-tenant cloud, or Private Cloud on AWS or Azure. Self-hosting is not documented.Different goals Both can be run for you. Auth0's cloud has an SLA and no self-hosted form; FoxAuth Cloud has no SLA yet, and FoxAuth can also run in your own infrastructure.What their docs say Private Cloud is described as "A dedicated, managed cloud service". Runtime and code●TypeScript on Bun. The whole server is code you can read and fork.—Auth0's runtime. Customisation is done in Actions, since the server itself is Auth0's.Different goals One is software you own; the other is a service you configure. Where the data lives●Your own PostgreSQL or MongoDB database.○Auth0's store. Customer-operated storage is not documented.FoxAuth Identity data stays in a database you control. Social and enterprise connections◐Google, Microsoft, Apple and GitHub by name; any other OIDC provider by hand. Per project, behind federation.enabled. Entra ID, Okta or any SCIM 2.0 directory provisions users and groups (scim.enabled); no SAML or AD/LDAP connections. On the FoxAuth Cloud free plan, the four named providers only.●A catalogue of social and enterprise connections out of the box.Auth0 Auth0's catalogue runs to dozens, SAML and AD/LDAP included; four named providers, hand configuration and SCIM provisioning do not. Operations burden◐Self-hosted, you run a database and a container and apply upgrades. On FoxAuth Cloud we do, with no SLA yet.●None. Uptime, upgrades and scaling are Auth0's.Auth0 If running a database is not something your team wants to take on, the managed service is probably the right call. Maturity◐1.1.0, the fifteenth tagged release (October 2026); 1.0.0 was the first stable one.●Established product, support organisation, status page, years of certifications.Auth0 The honest asymmetry. Protocol coverage PKCE for every client (OAuth 2.1)●Mandatory for every client. Exact redirect matching; no Implicit or password grant.◐Documented for public clients. A requirement for every client is not documented.FoxAuth OAuth 2.1 behaviour is the default.What their docs say PKCE is documented for "applications that cannot store a client secret, such as native or single-page apps". DPoP (RFC 9449)◐Including server nonces, behind dpop.enabled.◐Supported, enabled per resource server; a nonce is required.Even Both implement it with nonces.What their docs say "Auth0 supports mTLS sender constraining and Demonstrating Proof-of-Possession (DPoP)" and "requires your DPoP HTTP header to have a nonce value". Pushed Authorization Requests (RFC 9126)◐Behind par.enabled, in every install.◐Enterprise Plan with the Highly Regulated Identity add-on.FoxAuth Included with the server; there is no Enterprise add-on to buy.What their docs say "you must have an Enterprise Plan with the Highly Regulated Identity add-on". FAPI profiles◐Profile behaviours behind fapi.enabled. No conformance certification.●Certified FAPI provider; FAPI 1 Advanced compliance on the Enterprise Plan with the add-on.Auth0 A certification you can hand to a reviewer.What their docs say "Auth0 is a certified FAPI provider." CIBA◐Behind ciba.enabled, in every install.◐Enterprise Plan or an add-on; email notifications need a paid add-on.FoxAuth Included in every install. mTLS (RFC 8705)◐Client authentication and certificate-bound tokens, behind mTLS.enabled.◐Enterprise Plan with the Highly Regulated Identity add-on.FoxAuth Ships with the server; there is no Enterprise add-on. Dynamic client registration◐RFC 7591 and RFC 7592 management, each behind its own flag, any grant type.◐Disabled for all tenants by default; third-party clients only, authorization_code and refresh_token only, rate-limited.FoxAuth Full RFC 7591 and 7592 without the restrictions. Administration and agents Admin console and API●Built-in console and the same management API behind it. A change that could lock people out or break applications is previewed with counts before it applies.●The Dashboard, and a Management API that covers everything the Dashboard does.Even Both give you a UI and an API for the same operations.What their docs say "anything that can be done through the Auth0 Dashboard can also be done through this API". Administration by an AI agent (MCP)◐The server itself is the MCP resource: every console operation as a tool, bar a few withheld on purpose, the console's own checks and audit trail, two-call confirmation. Behind mcp.enabled.●A separate Auth0 MCP Server that calls the Management API, authenticated with the Device Authorization flow.Even Both exist. Ours runs inside the server through the console's code path; theirs is a separate component in front of the API.What their docs say The Auth0 MCP Server "connects AI agents to your Auth0 tenant". Licence and cost Licence●FSL-1.1-ALv2, source-available; each release becomes Apache 2.0 after two years.—A proprietary service; no source licence applies.Different goals Source you can read and fork, versus a service agreement. Pricing model●Free to self-host, every feature included, with no charge per user. Monthly active users are counted per project and per owning team, so an instance run for others can report them. The free plan on FoxAuth Cloud allows 1,000,000 monthly active users per project and two projects; paid cloud plans are in development. Support by agreement.◐Free up to 25,000 monthly active users, then per-MAU plans; regulated-industry features need Enterprise and an add-on.Different goals A fixed infrastructure cost versus a bill that grows with your users.What their docs say Plans are "priced by Monthly Active Users (MAUs) and differ between B2C and B2B"; the free plan covers "Up to 25,000 monthly active users". Migrating Auth0 can export users and clients, and its Management API can list both. On the FoxAuth side, clients are created through the admin API or dynamic registration and users in a project. Password hashes do not port, so plan a reset-on-first-login window. Features, flag by flag What self-hosting costs Questions What people ask before they switch Can I migrate from Auth0 to FoxAuth? Users, clients and their metadata port over. FoxAuth stores end users in projects you provision through the admin console, the management API or, from an enterprise directory, SCIM 2.0, and OAuth clients can be created there or by dynamic client registration. What does not port is anything written in Auth0's own extension model: Rules, Actions and Hooks have no equivalent and are rewritten as override seams, of which FoxAuth exposes 31, each resolved at call time. Budget the migration by how much logic lives in Actions; the user count has little to do with it.Does FoxAuth support social logins like Google and GitHub? Google, Microsoft, Apple and GitHub are recognised by name: FoxAuth tells you what to do at the provider, shows you the exact callback address to register, and asks only for the values that provider issues — two for Google and GitHub, three for Microsoft, four for Apple. Any other provider speaking OpenID Connect can be configured by hand, per project. Two caveats worth knowing before you compare: you still register the application at the provider yourself, because none of them lets a third party do it for you, and four recognised providers is not the connection catalogue Auth0 ships, which runs to dozens and includes SAML and AD/LDAP enterprise connections FoxAuth does not speak. Microsoft Entra ID and Okta can instead provision users and groups into FoxAuth over SCIM.Is FoxAuth cheaper than Auth0? The bill has a different shape, and it is not uniformly smaller. FoxAuth is free to self-host under FSL-1.1-ALv2; what it costs you is a database, a container and the engineering time to keep them healthy, so the cost grows with infrastructure and is indifferent to monthly active users. FoxAuth Cloud also has a free plan, capped at 1,000,000 monthly active users per project, with no SLA yet. Auth0 bills per monthly active user. At small scale that is usually the cheaper option, and at large scale it is what teams tend to come to us about.Do I get FAPI, DPoP and PAR without an enterprise plan? FoxAuth implements DPoP (RFC 9449), PAR (RFC 9126), mTLS (RFC 8705), CIBA, RAR (RFC 9396) and JARM, and each one is a feature flag on the instance you run. There is no plan tier and no add-on. All of them ship switched off and are turned on per deployment. Sources What we read https://auth0.com/docs/get-started/authentication-and-authorization-flow/authorization-code-flow-with-pkce https://auth0.com/docs/secure/highly-regulated-identity https://auth0.com/docs/get-started/applications/configure-par https://auth0.com/docs/secure/sender-constraining/configure-sender-constraining https://auth0.com/docs/secure/sender-constraining/demonstrating-proof-of-possession-dpop https://auth0.com/docs/get-started/authentication-and-authorization-flow/client-initiated-backchannel-authentication-flow https://auth0.com/docs/get-started/applications/dynamic-client-registration https://auth0.com/docs/deploy-monitor/deploy-private-cloud https://auth0.com/docs/api/management/v2 https://auth0.com/docs/get-started/auth0-mcp-server https://auth0.com/pricing Try it yourselfAll features