---
source_url: "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38870591"
title: "Have you tried WorkOS? (I work there.) Makes it super easy to add SAML/SCIM to y... | Hacker News"
mirrored_at: 2026-08-22T13:03:07.212Z
host: news.ycombinator.com
cited_in_42a: true
mirror_canonical: "https://index.42a.ai/news.ycombinator.com/item__q__id_38870591"
---

> **Original source:** https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38870591

  

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Not yet, I’ll give it a look next time I hack on my site. “Stripe for auth” is exactly what I’m looking for, and I know I still have a lot of auth head bashing left before I ship.

I’ll say though, my personal “customer demographic” ATM is more along the lines of someone who wants to get working user signups and auth and then never think about it again - so mentioning SAML/OIDC building blocks is a bit of a turn off for me. The reason is that I’m a solo dev trying to ship a browser-based multiplayer game, which I assign a low (maybe 5%) probability of ever becoming something with multiple people working on/turning into a real business - so I need auth, but would prefer to spend as much time as possible on the game itself, and don’t have anybody to farm the work out to.

But I’m happy to give workos a shot to see if it makes my life easier.

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WorkOS is pretty tailored to folks building B2B apps where individuals will later be part of a team. (Think Dropbox, Figma, Asana, etc.)

It's less of a fit for B2C products where user identity won't ever be associated with a company (like ecommerce, a game, or a dating app).

The reason is that B2C apps actually have pretty different needs in terms of user identity. For example, most consumer apps will optimize for faster/higher conversion during signup and less security.

But if WorkOS works for your use case, then you should definitely use it. Our free tier includes 1,000,000 MAUs, which is significantly higher than Auth0/Clerk/Stytch/etc. which start charging you around 10,000.

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Disclosure: I work for FusionAuth, an auth provider with a free community option.

If I were in your shoes I'd probably use a library built into whatever framework you are using. Auth servers are powerful but are another architectural component you have to manage (even if it is a SaaS, there's still config to manage).

Not sure what you are building it in, but if I were building it in rails, I'd use devise. If JS, maybe nextauth or passport.js.

When you do this you have to accept certain risks (what if your user data gets breached, what if you want to add more functionality) but based on the little you've shared, I think a local solution is perfectly fine.

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I had a look at this recently and the pricing was pretty wild. Am I right in understanding that the connection charge is effectively per organisation?

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How does AuthKit compared to Auth0? Any major differences?

Also what if you have an existing email-based account system which works fine - can you use AuthKit to add additional sign in methods like social without replacing your existing system?

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The open-source nature of AuthKit is pretty different. You can build your own complete custom UI with the React components. Or build your own components from scratch and still use the WorkOS backend.

Outside of that, it's pretty much a drop-in replacement for Auth0. We also have more features, like native SCIM provisioning and a streaming events API to keep your app's database in sync.

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WorkOS looks interesting from a features perspective but license model based on number of connected organisations is so high it will mean most SMBs (my clients) can't afford it.

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Our customers typically just bundle our pricing within their own team/enterprise plan and pass through the cost. IT admins even within SMB orgs are happy to pay a couple hundred dollars a month more for the enhanced security of SAML auth. And small teams realistically don't need SAML, so you can add a minimum requirement on the number of "seats" (assuming that's how you bill).

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Fair points. But SAML doesn't cost much incrementally for each added customer org, yet it enables an SMB to simplify account lifecycle management. Important from a security perspective of course. Most SAAS do put it as an "enterprise" feature but it's a barrier to SMB security best practices.

A more complex yet rationale model would be a small incremental fee per user under the SAML.

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I thought so too and we actually tried that first. After talking to about a hundred customers, I heard them resoundingly prefer per-org pricing because the flat cost is predictable within their own deal structure. I think the reason is that user counts can vary dramatically and b2b saas businesses are primarily driven/measured by the number of customers, not end users.