Better Auth vs Okta

Better Auth is an open-source authentication and authorization library for TypeScript, distributed under the MIT license. Instead of sending users to a hosted identity service, it runs inside your own backend and stores users, sessions and accounts in your own database through adapters for Drizzle, Prisma, Kysely, MongoDB and plain SQL drivers. It is framework-agnostic, with integrations for Next.js, Nuxt, SvelteKit, Astro, Hono, Express and others, and typed clients for React, Vue, Svelte, Solid and vanilla JavaScript.

The core covers email and password, social OAuth providers and session management; a plugin system adds two-factor authentication, passkeys, magic links, email OTP, username login, organizations with teams and roles, admin tools, multi-session, API keys, JWT, an OIDC provider and more. A CLI generates the schema and migrations each plugin needs. The library is free with no per-user pricing; an optional managed service (free Starter, $20/month Pro) adds a dashboard.

Better Auth suits TypeScript teams that want control over user data and login flows without writing auth from scratch. The trade-off is responsibility: you handle hosting, security updates and email delivery, and the core ships no prebuilt UI components. Clerk and Auth0 provide hosted UI, dashboards and enterprise SSO for a per-user fee; Supabase Auth is convenient if you already use Supabase; Auth.js (NextAuth) is the older open-source option with fewer built-in features.

The project grew quickly in 2024 and 2025 as Lucia was deprecated.

Okta is an identity and access management company founded in 2009 in San Francisco by Todd McKinnon and Frederic Kerrest. It went public in 2017 and bought Auth0 in 2021 for about $6.5 billion. Its core job on the workforce side is to give every employee one secure login to all their apps, enforce multi-factor authentication, and create or remove accounts automatically as people join, move or leave.

Workforce Identity is sold per user per month, billed annually, with a $1,500 annual minimum. Starter ($6) covers SSO, MFA and Universal Directory; Essentials ($17) adds Adaptive MFA, lifecycle management, access governance and privileged access, with Core Essentials ($14) in between; Professional and Enterprise add Device Access, Identity Threat Protection, Identity Security Posture Management and API Access Management. Customer Identity starts at $3,000 a month, and a free Integrator plan allows 10 users in a non-production org.

Okta fits companies running dozens of SaaS apps that need central access control, audits and fast offboarding. It falls short for very small teams because of the contract minimum, and add-ons push real costs above list prices. Microsoft Entra ID is the natural rival for Microsoft-heavy shops, Keycloak is a free self-hosted option, and 1Password covers password sharing rather than full IAM.

Recent development: Okta for AI Agents reached general availability on April 30, 2026, registering AI agents as non-human identities with managed tokens and kill switches. Okta also pushes the Cross App Access (XAA) protocol through the IETF.