Better Auth vs Picus Security

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.

Picus Security is a cybersecurity company founded in Ankara, Turkey, in 2013 that now operates globally with headquarters in San Francisco. It pioneered breach and attack simulation (BAS), a category that tests whether an organization's security controls actually stop real attacks, and is regularly cited among the leaders of the security validation market.

The Picus Security Validation Platform safely simulates thousands of attack techniques, malware, ransomware and data exfiltration scenarios against firewalls, IPS, web application firewalls, email gateways, endpoint protection and SIEM. It shows which attacks were blocked, logged or missed, and supplies vendor-specific prevention signatures and detection rules mapped to MITRE ATT&CK to close the gaps. Attack path validation emulates an attacker moving through Active Directory and the internal network, and detection rule validation checks SIEM rules for health and coverage. The threat library is updated as new campaigns appear. Pricing is enterprise and quote-based.

Picus fits security operations teams, red and purple teams and CISOs at mid-size and large enterprises who want continuous evidence that controls work, often as part of a continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) program. It is not a vulnerability scanner or a penetration testing service, and smaller companies without dedicated security staff will struggle to act on its findings. AttackIQ, Cymulate and SafeBreach are the main BAS competitors, while Pentera focuses on automated penetration testing.