Comparison
Authreads as a WorkOS alternative
How Authreads differs from WorkOS: tenant isolation at the data layer and machine identity, versus enterprise federation — and where WorkOS is clearly the better answer.
The short answer
Authreads and WorkOS, in one paragraph
WorkOS is built around enterprise federation — getting your B2B product through the SSO and directory-sync requirements an enterprise buyer puts in front of it. Authreads is built around the tenant boundary itself and around machine identity. If the deal in front of you is blocked on SAML, WorkOS answers that today and Authreads does not.
What WorkOS is built around: A B2B-focused platform built around the requirements enterprise buyers ask for — enterprise single sign-on, directory synchronisation and audit logging — packaged as APIs for application teams.
We describe what an alternative is built around, never its pricing, its limits or whether it supports a given feature today — those change on their schedule, not ours, and a wrong claim here would cost more than this page earns. The positioning above was last checked against WorkOS's own public documentation on . Check their current documentation before making a decision on it.
Being fair about it
Where WorkOS is the better choice
Listed first, and meant literally. If one of these is your situation, take it as advice.
- Enterprise federation, unambiguously. SAML and directory synchronisation are their core product; ours are planned. If an enterprise contract is waiting on SSO, this is not a close comparison.
- Enterprise-buyer readiness, including the compliance documentation those buyers ask for at signature.
- Breadth of connector work — the long tail of identity-provider quirks that only shows up in production and takes years to absorb.
Where we differ
What Authreads is built around instead
Design decisions with real costs attached. They are the reason to look at us, and the reason not to.
Our limits
What we cannot do today
Same typeface as everything else on this page. A comparison that hides this section is not worth reading.
- SAML for enterprise federation and SCIM for automated provisioning are planned, not available. See /roadmap, which states every capability as Available, In progress or Planned with nothing in between.
- Directory synchronisation (SCIM) is planned. If provisioning and de-provisioning must be automated from a customer's directory today, we cannot do that yet.
- Authreads holds no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification today and does not claim one. If your procurement process requires an audit report at signature, that is a hard blocker and we would rather you know now.
- We publish no customer names, customer count or uptime SLA, because none can be stated honestly yet. Several alternatives can point at years of production scale; we cannot.
Every capability on this site appears on /roadmap in one of three states — Available, In progress, or Planned — with no dates and no internal phase numbers.
The short version
Consider Authreads if…
Tenant isolation and machine identity are your hard requirements, and enterprise SSO is something you will need later rather than something a contract is blocked on this quarter.
Questions people ask before switching
Does Authreads support SAML?
Not today. SAML is on the roadmap as Planned, which on this site means exactly that — not built, no date. If SAML is a requirement now, a platform that already has it is the right answer and we will tell you so on the first call rather than the third.
What about SCIM provisioning?
Also planned, also not built. Tenant and user management through the management API is available today, which covers programmatic provisioning from your own systems but is not the same as syncing from a customer's directory.
Can we use both?
Some teams do end up with federation in one place and their tenant model in another, and it is a legitimate architecture. It is also more moving parts. Worth a conversation about where the boundary actually sits before committing to it.
Compare something else
Authreads as an Auth0 alternative
Your product serves many customers, one tenant reading another's data would be the worst thing that could happen to you, and you would rather that be impossible than configured.
Authreads as a Clerk alternative
You are past the first-login problem and into the harder one: many tenants, per-tenant policy, and machine traffic that needs credentials of its own.
Authreads as a Stytch alternative
The authentication methods you need are ones we already support, and the difficulty is the tenant model behind them.
Authreads versus a self-hosted identity server
You have counted the real cost of operating identity — upgrades, availability, on-call, key rotation — and would rather spend that attention on your own product.
Authreads versus building authentication yourself
You have more than one tenant, a security review coming, and a product that is not an identity product.
Tell us what you're actually deciding between
We will tell you honestly when another platform is the better answer for what you're building. That happens more often than a comparison page usually admits.