WorkOS
Your app, enterprise ready — APIs and building blocks for SSO, user management, directory sync and enterprise features.
By WorkOS · 4.3/5 Value-Position score (estimate)
Positioning guardrails
Best for
- B2B SaaS product teams that need enterprise SSO, SCIM provisioning and audit logs without building them in-house
- Startups and scale-ups whose enterprise deals stall on IT requirements such as SAML, SCIM and admin onboarding
- Engineering-led teams that want auth, user management and RBAC from one developer-first API with modern SDKs
- AI and agent platforms that need OAuth authorization for MCP servers and scoped agent identities
- Companies that want a self-serve Admin Portal so corporate IT admins can configure SSO without support tickets
Ideal size: 10–500 people · Engineering-led SaaS scale-up adding enterprise features
Not for
- Consumer apps with no enterprise buyer and no SSO or directory-provisioning requirement
- Teams wanting a no-code, fully managed identity product with no developer involvement
- Organizations that must self-host or run authentication entirely on-premises
- Buyers optimising purely for the cheapest password auth at very large consumer scale
- Companies looking for a packaged line-of-business application rather than infrastructure APIs
Value metrics scorecard
Time-to-Value
1–2 weeks
~14 days to first production value
Total Cost of Ownership
$12,000/yr
Starts at $0 · Usage-based pay-as-you-go: free tiers (AuthKit free to 1M monthly active users), per-connection pricing for SSO and Directory Sync, plus optional annual credits with pre-pay discounts and SLA.
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 minimums. SSO and Directory Sync are billed per enterprise connection ($125 each, volume discounts from 16 connections); AuthKit is priced by monthly active users.
Add-on costs
- Custom domain for AuthKit, Admin Portal and email sender: $99/mo
- Radar bot and fraud protection: first 1,000 checks free, then $100/mo per 50k checks
- Audit Logs log streaming: $125/mo per SIEM connection; event retention $99/mo per million events stored
- Scale support plan: $1,000/mo, adds private Slack channel, video calls and response SLAs
- AuthKit beyond the free tier: $2,500/mo per additional 1M monthly active users
Company & support
Who is behind WorkOS, and how your team gets help once it is live.
Company
- Founded
- Not recorded
- Headquarters
- Not recorded
How you get support
- PhoneNot listed
- EmailAll plans
- Live chatPaid plans
- Support portal / ticketsAll plans
- Community forumNot listed
- Help centre / docsAll plans
- Dedicated account managerEnterprise only
- In person / on-siteNot listed
- Hours
- 24/7
- Response time
- Scale: P1 1 business hour, P2 3 business hours. Enterprise: P1 1 hour with 24x7x365 response SLAs.
Email support, in-product web support, API status notifications and docs/example apps are included for all accounts. Scale adds video calls, a private Slack channel and technical onboarding guidance; Enterprise adds a dedicated technical account manager and quarterly architecture reviews. Business…
“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 WorkOS 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.
Companies on the chart 6 / 10
- WorkOS
- Crossbeam
- Momentum
- Lago
- AgencyZoom
- Juro
Add or change companies
Up to 10 companies including WorkOS. 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 WorkOS ships in AI, and what it asks of your ecosystem.
AI features shipped
Atlas, WorkOS's AI coworker, works in Slack to answer questions and automate tasks. Agent Auth gives AI agents scoped, revocable identities, and Agent Registration lets agents sign in via auth.md. WorkOS also ships a hosted Management MCP server and Pipes MCP for agent access to third-party data. Sources do not name underlying model providers or state training-data practices.
Your data & models
- Trains on your data
- Not recorded — ask the vendor
- Runs on
- Not recorded
- AI pricing
- Not recorded
In your ecosystem
- AI connection
- Official MCP server
- Model key
- Not recorded
- AI usage audit
- Not recorded
Compliance attestations
* IAPP AIGP certifies individuals, not products. It means named staff hold the credential — not that the platform does.
Bottom line
WorkOS is a developer-first API platform that makes an app enterprise ready: single sign-on (SAML/OIDC), Directory Sync (SCIM/HRIS), AuthKit user management, RBAC, Audit Logs, Admin Portal, Vault and MCP auth. Engineering teams add these as building blocks instead of building enterprise identity in-house, and integrations typically go live in days. Pricing is usage-based with free tiers (AuthKit free to 1M monthly active users) and per-connection pricing for SSO and Directory Sync.
Frequently asked questions
How does WorkOS pricing work?
Pricing is usage-based per product. AuthKit is free to 1 million monthly active users, then $2,500/mo per additional 1M. SSO and Directory Sync are $125 per connection per month, with discounts from 16 connections. Audit Logs cost $125/mo per SIEM log-streaming connection plus $99/mo per million events stored. The Scale plan is $1,000/mo, and annual credits add pre-pay discounts and a 99.99% uptime SLA.
How quickly can we be in production?
WorkOS is self-serve with free staging environments and no credit card required to start; the vendor describes deploying in minutes. Customers report rolling out SSO in less than a week and shipping audit log storage, querying and export in days. Guided migration and onboarding is available on the Scale and Enterprise plans.
What compliance certifications and commitments does WorkOS offer?
WorkOS states it is SOC 2 certified and GDPR compliant, offers to sign HIPAA business associate agreements for customers on enterprise plans, and publishes a Trust Center with compliance documentation and a subprocessor list. A PCI DSS self-attestation via SAQ-D was announced in December 2025. No ISO 27001 or FedRAMP claim appears in the sources reviewed.
Does WorkOS support MCP and AI agents?
Yes. AuthKit can act as an OAuth 2.1 compatible authorization server for MCP servers, and WorkOS ships a hosted Management MCP server that exposes hundreds of operations so agents can manage a workspace through OAuth-scoped tools. Agent Auth gives AI agents their own scoped, revocable identity, and Pipes MCP gives agents time-limited access to third-party data connections.
Do we have to replace our existing authentication stack?
No. WorkOS products can be adopted piecemeal: SSO, Directory Sync, Audit Logs and Admin Portal can be layered onto an existing auth stack through a single integration. WorkOS Connect can also run as standalone middleware to provide only MCP OAuth flows, so no user migration is needed.
What support is included and what do the SLAs look like?
All accounts get email support, in-product web support, API status notifications and docs while Scale ($1,000/mo) adds private Slack channel access, video calls and technical onboarding. Enterprise adds a dedicated technical account manager, quarterly architecture reviews and 24x7x365 response SLAs. Published targets are a one business hour P1 response on Scale and one hour around the clock on Enterprise.