Amazon Cognito vs Better Auth: Features, Pricing and User Reviews 2026
Compare features, pricing, reviews, and more to make an informed decision
Amazon Cognito
Amazon Cognito is a cloud service that adds secure user sign-up, sign-in, and access control to web and mobile apps.
Better Auth
Better Auth is a free, open-source authentication framework for TypeScript that works with any framework and includes everything you need.
Amazon Cognito
Amazon Cognito is a cloud service that adds secure user sign-up, sign-in, and access control to web and mobile apps.
Better Auth
Better Auth is a free, open-source authentication framework for TypeScript that works with any framework and includes everything you need.
Amazon Cognito
User pools for managing accounts
Social login with Google, Facebook, Apple
Enterprise federation via SAML and OIDC
Passwordless authentication options
Multi-factor authentication support
Advanced security and threat detection
Customizable login pages
AWS service access control
Email and SMS verification
Lambda triggers for custom workflows
Mobile and web SDK support
Compliance with security standards
Better Auth
Multiple authentication methods including email, social, and passwordless
Framework-agnostic design working with all major frameworks
Two-factor authentication and passkey support
Organization and team management features
50+ social sign-in providers supported
Built-in rate limiting and security features
Open source and completely free
Automatic database management
Type-safe TypeScript implementation
Active community and regular updates
Amazon Cognito
Amazon Cognito uses pay-as-you-go pricing based on monthly active users (MAUs). A user counts as active when they sign in during the month. The service offers three pricing tiers:
Free Tier: Get 10,000 MAUs free every month for users signing in directly, plus 50 free MAUs for enterprise federation. This never expires and works for both new and existing customers.
Lite Tier: Starts at free for the first 10,000 users, then $0.0055 per MAU for users 10,001 to 100,000. Prices decrease as volume grows, reaching $0.0025 per MAU above 10 million users.
Essentials Tier: Costs $0.015 per MAU above 10,000 users. Includes standard security features and is the default for new accounts.
Plus Tier: Costs $0.02 per MAU with no free tier. Includes advanced security like threat detection, compromised credential monitoring, and risk-based authentication. This tier can save up to 60% compared to adding security features separately.
Enterprise federation through SAML or OIDC costs $0.015 per MAU above 50 users across all tiers.
Better Auth
Better Auth is completely free to use with no costs or limitations. As an open-source project released under the MIT License, you can use it in any project including commercial applications without paying anything.
There are no usage limits, user caps, or features locked behind paid tiers. Every feature mentioned in the documentation is available to all users. This includes advanced capabilities like two-factor authentication, organization management, and all authentication methods.
The project is supported by the developer community and backed by Y Combinator. While the core framework remains free, the team behind Better Auth is building optional infrastructure services for scaling, but these are separate from the core library.
You can self-host everything on your own servers with complete control over your user data and no recurring subscription fees.
