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How does this differentiate from other open source identity solutions like KeyCloak or Ory? I wish there was more collaboration in this space, especially singe

How does this differentiate from other open source identity solutions like KeyCloak or Ory? I wish there was more collaboration in this space, especially singe we’re talking security and these projects need pen testing, bug bounties, and more infrastructure to be considered „production grade“.

wvv 3y ago
There is a comparison chart available: https://supertokens.com/pricing#comparison-chart https://supertokens.com/pricing#comparison-chart
- aweheel 3y ago
  Putting user satisfaction in the chart and not backing it with sources (I know at least a handful of companies who are very satisfied with e.g. KeyCloak) does not instill lots of confidence in the product differentiation. And what does customizability mean? KeyCloak has a rich Plugin system. Other than that it seems to be quite equal, if you discount the more difficult things in Auth like providing standardized APIs, OAuth2 APIs and SCIM.
  - advaitruia 3y ago
    Yes, its a very subjective point. We've mentioned the source (if you hover) and it is based on our internal user research and conversations with users of these products. By no means is it perfect and there are many many satisfied customers of each of the other products. Your point is taken though and maybe we will edit that point out or try to add further nuance. I do believe however that broadly speaking, that reviews of keycloak lean towards it being relatively harder to use and maintain than Firebase. Arguably the reviews of Cognito are more mixed than "Low"
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    It's tricky to make these marketing charts objective. It would be good to have a real comparison somewhere.
- Lacerda69 3y ago
  There is no comparison to Ory there AFAICT.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  Quite a confusing comparison, especially against Keycloak. From what I can tell the open source part doesn't seem to do anything Keycloak doesn't do, but many of Keycloak's features aren't on the list. The chart also assumes you're using the hosted solution (as 2FA isn't even available on the open source version according to that same page). If that's the case, it should compare against any hosted Keycloak provider, because SLA and management are readily available. I suppose the table could also compare the open source versions, but that wouldn't be very advantage to SuperTokens with major features still marked "coming soon". I'm not sure why Keycloak wouldn't offer "UI and backend customisability". The theme guide shows quite a lot of customisation (https://www.keycloak.org/docs/latest/server_development/#theme-types https://www.keycloak.org/docs/latest/server_development/#the...) to the point where you can restructure the HTML itself. One thing Keycloak lacks is an easy to use API, using complex OpenID/OAuth/etc. APIs and two language specific libraries instead. That seems like a much more sensible option to distinguish between these products. As someone currently using Keycloak (and not experiencing any problems with it after setup) this comparison just isn't very convincing.
  - griffiths 3y ago
    And when you include Keyclokify[1] the UI customisability is a breez. This comparison really isn't giving the full picture and capability of Keycloak. [1] https://www.keycloakify.dev/ https://www.keycloakify.dev/
    - rishabhpoddar 3y ago
      Right. Makes sense. I think what we had originally intended to communicate is the ease of customisability, in which case, we feel that Keycloak's UI customisation is more difficult to do.
    - jeroenhd 3y ago
      Wow, this is pretty cool, thanks for linking this!
  - crumpled 3y ago
    If you ignore the subjective lines two and three of the comparison table, keycloak looks objectively better. And it has an Apache 2.0 license for the whole product. Honestly, thanks for putting keycloak on my radar. I see the supertokens team in this thread doing nothing to make me think that they intend to stop misleading people.
- wmfiv 3y ago
  To add on to the comment about Keycloak, the comparison to AWS Cognito has a couple issues as well. - The comparison suggest Cognito is more expensive. Cognito pricing starts at 50,000 MAUs for free. That's 10x the size of the SuperTokens free tier. It then tiers from $0.0055 down to $0.0025. That's 1/3 to almost 1/10 of the SuperTokens hosted open source option. MAUs who use SAML or OIDC are another $0.015. That's still equal to or less than the SuperTokens hosted open source version where SAML isn't even available. - Multi-tenancy is a complex topic. But a common pattern using Cognito is to create a User Pool per tenant which provides a lot of flexibility depending on the number of tenants you anticipate.
- hangonhn 3y ago
  Saying that GDPR is not needed because Keycloak is self-hosted is just outright wrong, which makes me wonder if the creators understands GDPR and how valid their claims to support GDPR is.

wvv 3y ago

There is a comparison chart available: https://supertokens.com/pricing#comparison-chart https://supertokens.com/pricing#comparison-chart

aweheel 3y ago
Putting user satisfaction in the chart and not backing it with sources (I know at least a handful of companies who are very satisfied with e.g. KeyCloak) does not instill lots of confidence in the product differentiation. And what does customizability mean? KeyCloak has a rich Plugin system. Other than that it seems to be quite equal, if you discount the more difficult things in Auth like providing standardized APIs, OAuth2 APIs and SCIM.
- advaitruia 3y ago
  Yes, its a very subjective point. We've mentioned the source (if you hover) and it is based on our internal user research and conversations with users of these products. By no means is it perfect and there are many many satisfied customers of each of the other products. Your point is taken though and maybe we will edit that point out or try to add further nuance. I do believe however that broadly speaking, that reviews of keycloak lean towards it being relatively harder to use and maintain than Firebase. Arguably the reviews of Cognito are more mixed than "Low"
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  It's tricky to make these marketing charts objective. It would be good to have a real comparison somewhere.
Lacerda69 3y ago
There is no comparison to Ory there AFAICT.
jeroenhd 3y ago
Quite a confusing comparison, especially against Keycloak. From what I can tell the open source part doesn't seem to do anything Keycloak doesn't do, but many of Keycloak's features aren't on the list. The chart also assumes you're using the hosted solution (as 2FA isn't even available on the open source version according to that same page). If that's the case, it should compare against any hosted Keycloak provider, because SLA and management are readily available. I suppose the table could also compare the open source versions, but that wouldn't be very advantage to SuperTokens with major features still marked "coming soon". I'm not sure why Keycloak wouldn't offer "UI and backend customisability". The theme guide shows quite a lot of customisation (https://www.keycloak.org/docs/latest/server_development/#theme-types https://www.keycloak.org/docs/latest/server_development/#the...) to the point where you can restructure the HTML itself. One thing Keycloak lacks is an easy to use API, using complex OpenID/OAuth/etc. APIs and two language specific libraries instead. That seems like a much more sensible option to distinguish between these products. As someone currently using Keycloak (and not experiencing any problems with it after setup) this comparison just isn't very convincing.
- griffiths 3y ago
  And when you include Keyclokify[1] the UI customisability is a breez. This comparison really isn't giving the full picture and capability of Keycloak. [1] https://www.keycloakify.dev/ https://www.keycloakify.dev/
  - rishabhpoddar 3y ago
    Right. Makes sense. I think what we had originally intended to communicate is the ease of customisability, in which case, we feel that Keycloak's UI customisation is more difficult to do.
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    Wow, this is pretty cool, thanks for linking this!
- crumpled 3y ago
  If you ignore the subjective lines two and three of the comparison table, keycloak looks objectively better. And it has an Apache 2.0 license for the whole product. Honestly, thanks for putting keycloak on my radar. I see the supertokens team in this thread doing nothing to make me think that they intend to stop misleading people.
wmfiv 3y ago
To add on to the comment about Keycloak, the comparison to AWS Cognito has a couple issues as well. - The comparison suggest Cognito is more expensive. Cognito pricing starts at 50,000 MAUs for free. That's 10x the size of the SuperTokens free tier. It then tiers from $0.0055 down to $0.0025. That's 1/3 to almost 1/10 of the SuperTokens hosted open source option. MAUs who use SAML or OIDC are another $0.015. That's still equal to or less than the SuperTokens hosted open source version where SAML isn't even available. - Multi-tenancy is a complex topic. But a common pattern using Cognito is to create a User Pool per tenant which provides a lot of flexibility depending on the number of tenants you anticipate.
hangonhn 3y ago
Saying that GDPR is not needed because Keycloak is self-hosted is just outright wrong, which makes me wonder if the creators understands GDPR and how valid their claims to support GDPR is.