Descope
Identity journeys for customers and AI agents
By Descope Inc. · 4.0/5 Value-Position score (estimate)
Positioning guardrails
Best for
- B2C and B2B product teams that need passwordless customer authentication with visual, no-code flows
- Enterprises replacing home-grown or legacy CIAM and wanting SSO, SCIM, multi-tenancy and fine-grained authorization
- Teams building AI agents and MCP servers that need identity, consent and scope-based access control
- Startups that want a free tier and days-to-weeks implementation instead of months
Ideal size: 10–500 people · Product-led startup to enterprise with in-house engineering
Not for
- Organizations looking only for employee/workforce identity management rather than customer identity
- Teams with no in-house development capacity to integrate flows, SDKs or APIs
- Buyers who require a flat, all-inclusive price with no usage-based overages
Value metrics scorecard
Time-to-Value
Days to a few weeks
~7 days to first production value
Total Cost of Ownership
$9,588/yr
Starts at $2,988 · Usage-based tiers billed annually: Free Forever $0, Pro from $249/mo, Growth from $799/mo, Enterprise custom; overages billed per MAU, tenant and SSO connection.
Implementation Friction
2/5
Engineering + admin effort required
Value-Position score
out of 5 · model estimate
Full cost breakdown
Mandatory implementation fee
None
Seat tiers
No seat minimum; allowances per tier (Free 7,500 MAUs / 10 tenants; Pro 10,000 MAUs / 35 tenants; Growth 25,000 MAUs / 100 tenants).
Add-on costs
- Additional MAUs $0.05 each, tenants $1 each, SSO connections $50 each (Pro and Growth)
- FedRAMP High add-on available to Growth and Enterprise at extra cost
- Premium support add-on and dedicated CS engineer on Enterprise
- SMS/voice delivery packages and extended audit retention add-ons
Company & support
Who is behind Descope, and how your team gets help once it is live.
Company
- Founded
- 2022 · 4 yrs in business
- Headquarters
- Not recorded
How you get support
- PhoneNot listed
- EmailPaid plans
- Live chatNot listed
- Support portal / ticketsPaid plans
- Community forumAll plans
- Help centre / docsAll plans
- Dedicated account managerEnterprise only
- In person / on-siteNot listed
- Hours
- Not recorded
- Response time
- Not stated
Free Forever includes community support (AuthTown Slack, #ask-a-descoper). Pro adds web and email support; Enterprise adds premium support and a dedicated CS engineer. Uptime SLAs: 99% on Free, 99.99% on Pro and above.
“Not listed” means the vendor’s public pages don’t mention that channel, not that it is unavailable. Ask about it during evaluation.
Market position
Where Descope sits against its closest alternatives. Pick any two of cost, speed, friction and buyer score, and up to 9 companies to compare.
Quadrant view
Typical annual cost × Time-to-value
The lines cross at the median of the solutions shown, so about half sit on each side of each line. A dashed ring marks an outlier pinned to the edge; hover for its value.
Companies on the chart 6 / 10
- Descope
- Detectify
- Sonatype
- Infisical
- Remote
- Rivermate
Add or change companies
Up to 10 companies including Descope. Listed closest first.
Stack fit signal
Compatibility with standard B2B ecosystems.
Ships an official MCP server. Connects to Claude Code, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT connectors and Cursor out of the box.
AI & MCP readiness
What Descope ships in AI, and what it asks of your ecosystem.
Compliance attestations
* IAPP AIGP certifies individuals, not products. It means named staff hold the credential — not that the platform does.
Bottom line
Descope is a customer and agentic identity platform (CIAM) for B2C and B2B apps. Visual no-code flows, SDKs and APIs cover passwordless login, passkeys, SSO, MFA, SCIM, fine-grained authorization and identity federation, plus authentication and consent for AI agents and MCP servers. Free Forever tier; Pro from $249/mo and Growth from $799/mo billed annually, with usage-based MAU, tenant and SSO-connection overages.
Frequently asked questions
How quickly can we put Descope into production?
Descope is built around visual flows plus SDKs and APIs, and the vendor states teams set up and migrate in days and weeks rather than months or years. Published customer stories include adding strong MFA in four days and a customer SSO onboarding done in about 15 minutes. A realistic pilot on the Free Forever tier can start immediately.
What does Descope cost for a mid-market application?
Free Forever is $0 (7,500 MAUs, 10 tenants, 3 SSO connections). Pro starts at $249/mo and Growth at $799/mo, both billed annually. Overages are usage based: about $0.05 per additional MAU, $1 per additional tenant and $50 per additional SSO connection. Enterprise pricing is custom, and FedRAMP High is a paid add-on for Growth and Enterprise.
Which compliance certifications does Descope support?
Descope's pricing page lists SOC 2 reports on the Pro tier and above, HIPAA BAA on Growth and above, and states that Descope is FedRAMP High Authorized as an extra-cost add-on for Growth and Enterprise. Multi-region data residency is listed for Growth. Buyers should confirm the current scope and reports directly with the vendor during procurement.
Does Descope support AI agents and MCP servers?
Yes. Descope markets an Agentic Identity Hub plus identity for AI agents and MCP servers, covering authorization, consent, scope-based access control, credential management and DCR security. A Descope MCP Server is available, and machine-to-machine exchanges, monthly active consents (MACs) and monthly active tokens (MATKs) are metered and billed as separate usage dimensions.
Can we replace an existing CIAM without downtime?
Descope positions itself for both rip-and-replace and augmentation, and lists zero-downtime SSO migration together with SCIM provisioning on the Growth tier. Identity federation and OIDC federated authentication let you add passwordless login without replacing your current IdP, which lowers migration risk for large user bases.
What support is included at each tier?
Free Forever includes community support through AuthTown (a Slack community with an active ask-a-descoper channel) plus documentation. Pro adds web and email support with a 99.99% uptime SLA. Enterprise adds a premium support add-on and a dedicated customer success engineer. No 24/7 support commitment or response-time SLA is stated on the published pages.