Open Source AWS Cognito Alternative

Why choose an open-source AWS Cognito alternative

Cognito is a managed identity service tied to AWS: user pools, hosted UI, and social login integrations, billed per monthly active user (MAU) once free-tier limits are exceeded. That works well inside an AWS-centric stack, but it locks authentication logic to Cognito's configuration model and AWS's infrastructure, and per-MAU pricing scales with user growth regardless of how simple the auth requirements are. A self-hosted authentication service removes both the platform lock-in and the per-user billing.

What to look for

An authentication replacement needs to cover the login methods actually in use, whether email/password, passwordless (OTP or magic links), or social OAuth, plus session management that handles token refresh and revocation correctly, since session bugs are a common source of security issues in custom auth code. Multi-factor authentication and multi-tenancy matter for some products and not others, so it's worth checking whether those sit in the free tier or behind a separate paid license before assuming feature parity with a managed service.

SuperTokens as an AWS Cognito alternative

SuperTokens runs as a standalone HTTP microservice sitting between an app's backend and its database, handling sign-up, sign-in, password reset, social OAuth, and session lifecycle, with your own database storing all user data rather than Cognito's user pool. It supports email/password, passwordless (OTP and magic links), and social/OAuth login out of the box, and the self-hosted core is free with no user limit, unlike Cognito's per-MAU pricing once free-tier thresholds pass. Multi-factor authentication, multi-tenancy, and account linking are available as optional paid add-ons on top of the free core, both for self-hosted and managed deployments.

Because session management and login logic run in a separate microservice rather than inside application code, teams get the correctness of a managed auth provider's session handling without routing user credentials through AWS specifically. SuperTokens' managed cloud option offers 5,000 free MAU before usage-based pricing applies, for teams that want the hosted convenience without self-hosting the microservice.