Head to head
Amazon Cognito vs Firebase Authentication
Both platforms are scored with the same methodology and the same category rubric. Nothing on this page is influenced by advertising.
44/100Higher score | 41/100 | |
|---|---|---|
| Category rank | #9 | #7 |
| Confidence | High confidence | High confidence |
| External Reputation | 79 | 80 |
| AI Authority | 0 | 1 |
| Web Authority | 35 | 21 |
| Expert Assessment | 60 | 57 |
| TOP10 User Score | — | — |
| Pricing | Lite: $0.0055 per MAU above the free tier (first band), $0.0046 per MAU next band — AWS example 950,000 MAUs = $4,405/month · free tier: 10,000 MAU/month per account or AWS Organization on Lite and Essentials (does not expire); 50 MAU/month for SAML 2.0/OIDC federated users on any tier; identity pools free of charge; no free tier on Plus, none for M2M token requests, and none in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions | $0.0055 per MAU/month above 50,000 Tier 1 MAUs (Blaze plan, pay-as-you-go) · free tier: Spark plan: no payment method required; other authentication services (email, social, anonymous) included at no cost; Phone Auth listed as 'Not applicable'. With Identity Platform: 50,000 MAUs free and 50 SAML/OIDC MAUs free. |
| Pricing model | Usage-based (pay-as-you-go per monthly active user, plus per-token and per-RPS add-ons) | Usage-based (two plans: no-cost Spark and pay-as-you-go Blaze) |
| Best for | Engineering teams already running on AWS that are building consumer or B2C applications with social/direct sign-in, either below 10,000 MAU (free) or above roughly 500,000 MAU on Lite, and with in-house capacity to wire up Lambda triggers, IAM, KMS and SNS/SES. | Consumer-facing mobile or web products with standard email/social/phone sign-in needs, especially teams already committed to Firestore or the wider Firebase/Google Cloud stack, and startups whose user base fits inside the 50,000 free MAU allowance. |
| Avoid if | You sell B2B SaaS where every user arrives via a corporate SAML/OIDC IdP, need adaptive authentication on a small user base, provision an app client per tenant beyond 2,500, operate in GovCloud, have no AWS footprint or platform engineering capacity, or require a fixed predictable monthly invoice. | You sell enterprise SSO (SAML/OIDC billed at $0.015/MAU after 50 free users), need deep customization of login flows or fine-grained authorization, run high-volume SMS auth in expensive regions, require contractual data residency, a published SLA or a named compliance attestation, or have a hard multi-cloud portability mandate. |
| Markets | SMB, Enterprise, Startups, Consumer/B2C applications, Public sector (with GovCloud limitations) | Startups, SMB, Mobile and web app developers, Enterprise (via Identity Platform) |
| Founded | — | — |
| Headquarters | — | — |
A higher TOP SCORE means more of the evidence favours that platform on this methodology — it is not a recommendation, and it does not account for your specific requirements. Advertisers are never declared the winner of a comparison.