About SuperTokens
SuperTokens is an open-source authentication provider positioned as an alternative to Auth0, Firebase Auth and AWS Cognito. It adds secure login and session management to your apps, with SDKs for popular languages and frameworks such as Node.js, Go, Python, React and React Native.
Its architecture has three building blocks: a frontend SDK that manages session tokens and renders login UI widgets, a backend SDK that provides the APIs for sign-up, sign-in, sign-out and session refreshing, and the SuperTokens Core, an HTTP service in Java that implements the authentication logic and database operations used by the backend SDK. The feature list spans passwordless and social sign-in, email and phone with password, session handling, MFA, multi-tenant organizations with enterprise SSO, user roles, authentication between microservices, and a dashboard for managing users.
You can self-host the core to keep user data in your own database, or use the vendor's managed offering. The repository's license is listed as 'Other' on GitHub, because enterprise features sit under a separate license, so check which features you need. It suits teams that want to own authentication without building it from scratch.
Key features
- Email-password, passwordless and social login
- Session management with token refresh
- Multi-factor authentication support
- Multi-tenancy and enterprise SSO
- User roles and microservice authentication
- User management dashboard
Good fit for
- →Replacing Auth0 or Firebase Auth
- →Adding login to a custom web or mobile app
- →Multi-tenant B2B authentication
- Built with
- Java
- Tags
- authentication
- session-management
- mfa
- sso
- auth0-alternative
- java
- multi-tenancy
- self-hosted
- identity
SuperTokens: questions and answers
- What is SuperTokens used for?
- SuperTokens is an open-source authentication provider offering login, session management, MFA and multi-tenancy through frontend and backend SDKs and a Java core service. It is a good fit for replacing Auth0 or Firebase Auth, adding login to a custom web or mobile app and multi-tenant B2B authentication.
- Is SuperTokens open source?
- Yes. SuperTokens is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at supertokens/supertokens-core and is written mainly in Java.
- Is SuperTokens free?
- Yes. SuperTokens is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence. A managed cloud version is also available.
- Can I self-host SuperTokens?
- Yes. SuperTokens can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
- What is SuperTokens an alternative to?
- SuperTokens is an open-source alternative to Auth0, Amazon Cognito, Firebase and Stytch. Other open-source alternatives to Auth0 include Logto, ZITADEL and Authgear.
- Is SuperTokens actively maintained?
- Yes. The most recent commit to SuperTokens was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v12.2.0, published on 4 September 2026. The project has 15k stars on GitHub.
Open-source alternatives to SuperTokens
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Logto
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🧑🚀 Authentication and authorization infrastructure for SaaS and AI apps, built on OIDC
MPL-2.0vs Auth0★ 15k
ZITADEL
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ZITADEL - Identity infrastructure, simplified for you.
AGPL-3.0vs Auth0★ 15k
Authgear
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Open source Auth0/Keycloak alternative. Passkeys, SSO, MFA, passwordless, biometric login.
Apache-2.0vs Auth0★ 2.1k
Hanko
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Open source, privacy-first, and built to scale. Hanko is the fastest way you integrate pas
OSSvs Auth0★ 9k
Hexclave
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Deploy your frontend, backend, and database together with Hexclave Deploy. Automatic scali
OSSvs Auth0★ 6.9k
Authorizer
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Your data, your control. Fully open source, authentication and authorization. No lock-ins.
Apache-2.0vs Auth0★ 2.1k
SaaS alternatives to SuperTokens
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Auth0
Auth & Identity
Auth0 is an authentication and authorization platform that lets developers add login, single sign-on and access control to apps with SDKs and quickstarts.
SaaS
Amazon Cognito
Auth & Identity
AWS user pools and identity federation for app sign-up and sign-in
SaaS
Firebase
Backend as a Service
Firebase is Google's mobile and web app development platform, bundling authentication, databases, hosting, messaging and analytics as a managed backend.
SaaS
Stytch
Auth & Identity
Authentication and authorization APIs for passwordless login, MFA and B2B SSO
SaaS
Clerk
Auth & Identity
Drop-in sign-in, user management and organization components for web apps
SaaS
Descope
Auth & Identity
Drag-and-drop authentication flows with passwordless login and SSO
SaaS

