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Supabase vs Auth0

2023-11-24

15 minute read

What is Supabase Auth?

Supabase Auth is part of a larger open-source offering by Supabase. Supabase Auth functions as a standalone solution or integrates seamlessly with other Supabase products. At its core, Supabase Auth uses Postgres and leverages Postgres' built-in Auth functionality wherever possible.

What is Auth0?

Auth0 is a standalone identity and access management platform that offers a range of authentication and authorization solutions. Auth0 has been acquired by Okta and together they aim to widen their digital identity use cases.

Supabase Auth Highlights

Seamless Integration

It’s likely that your application will require other dev building blocks like storage, realtime and serverless functions. By integrating these features into a single platform, Supabase simplifies your stack and ensures a cohesive developer experience.

This User Management Example with React shows how Supabase Auth works together with other Supabase components such as Database, Storage and REST API via Postgrest.

Database native auth

Row Level Security needs to be defined only once to implement authentication and authorization rules across the entire application stack. RLS is enforced on the database level, securing access to storage objects, REST API calls and Edge Functions, etc.


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create policy "Users can only view their own documents."
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on docs for select
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using ( (select auth.uid()) = user_id );

The RLS policy above will be enforced, no matter if you use the REST API, edge functions or other methods of accessing your data.

Developer Experience

Supabase is designed to be simple to integrate to web and mobile applications. Developer experience is a key focus on the company and the products are geared towards making developers as productive as possible.

Supabase Auth has pre-built UI components and SDKs for various platforms (like React, Vue, Flutter, etc.), which significantly speeds up the development process. This allows developers to focus on more on the unique aspects of their application.


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const { user, session, error } = await supabase.auth.signIn({
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email: 'example@email.com'
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})

Sign-in via magic link in a few lines of code.

Auth0 Highlights

Wide range of framework coverage

Auth0 is more agnostic towards programming languages and frameworks. Auth0 doesn’t focus on web and mobile application to the same depth as like Supabase, however, offers a wider potential range of possible integration.

For example, PHP and Java are officially supported by Auth0. As well as Spring Boot and .NET framework.

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Authentication

Auth0's M2M authentication capabilities are suitable for scenarios where applications need to communicate securely with other services and APIs. This opens up use-cases where it’s more important to distinguish between device identities than user identities.

Auth0 simplifies authenticating service-to-service interactions, ideal for microservices architectures and IoT networks.

Anomaly Detection

While both platforms provide secure infrastructure and measures to protect their services from abuse, Auth0 has an anomaly detection service build on top, to notify users, if for example a login-attempt has been made at an unusual time. Notifying users of login attempts can alert them to potential account takeover attempts.

Pricing

The pricing structures of the two platforms differ significantly:

Supabase AuthAuth0
Transparent PricingPricing not publicly available
Free for up to 50,000 MAUFree for up to 7,500 MAU
$0.00325 per MAU$0.07 per MAU
Option to self-hosting for freeOnly paid private cloud deploys

Cost comparison

Overall, Supabase Auth has a more generous free plan quota, while also charge significant lesser per monthly active user (MAU).

Read more: Good Tape migrates to Supabase Auth for a 60% cost reduction.

Price transparency

Supabase prices are predictable, as they are laid out open at a fixed price of $0.00325 per MAU. Auth0 list their MAU at $0.07, however, prices are not publicly available beyond 20,000 MAU, unless you schedule a call with Auth0’s sales team.

Feature comparison

FeatureSupabaseAuth0
SSO✅ SAML only
MFA✅ TOTP only
Passwordless
Machine-to-machine
Custom SMTP Provider
Custom Email Templates
Custom Domains
Account Linking✅ Automatic linking by same email✅ Manual linking
Retrieving logs✅ Can be viewed and queried🔸 Can be retrieved but not queried
Refresh token rotation
Bot Detection (Captcha)
Rate-limiting
Email
Phone✅ (twilio, messagebird, vonage, textlocal)
Passwordless (magiclinks / sms otp)
OAuth2
OIDC✅ (google, apple, azure)
SSO
SAML
MFA

Final Thoughts

Both solutions have their strengths and are well-suited for different use-cases. Supabase Auth stands out for its transparent pricing, tight integration, and developer-friendly approach. Supabase is ideally geared for web and mobile developers. Auth0, on the other hand, excels in a wider range of applications from frameworks like .NET and Spring Boot to Machine-2-Machine use-cases.

Ultimately, your choice should align with your project's specific requirements and budget. Whether you opt for Supabase Auth or Auth0, both can help you secure user authentication effectively in your applications.

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