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Auth0 vs Microsoft Active Directory comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.3
Auth0 delivers 300% ROI, reducing password issues and development costs while enhancing security and efficiency for enterprises.
Sentiment score
5.0
Microsoft Active Directory enhances productivity by streamlining user management and access control, providing significant time and cost savings.
The solution is really time-saving since I don't need to create users in each server or system manually, and user access control is streamlined.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.3
Auth0's customer service is praised for rapid responses and assistance, though smaller accounts face challenges in accessing support.
Sentiment score
5.7
Microsoft Active Directory support quality varies; users experience mixed results influenced by representatives' skills and response times.
The support staff are engineers, not just frontline personnel, ensuring expert assistance.
Their support is excellent.
Support documents are available on the internet in every language.
Sometimes support takes long to engage and resolve, extending over weeks or even months.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Auth0 offers strong scalability with mostly positive user feedback, though some faced issues resolved by a MongoDB structural update.
Sentiment score
6.0
Microsoft Active Directory is scalable, adaptable for diverse users, and effective for organizations of all sizes with Azure integration.
The tool is very scalable and meets our customers' needs.
Microsoft Active Directory scales effectively; I don't foresee any issues with that at all.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.9
Auth0 is praised by users for its stability, high availability, reliable performance, and excellent documentation with high ratings.
Sentiment score
6.2
Microsoft Active Directory is stable and reliable, with high ratings, minor issues, praised scalability, and requires proactive growth planning.
With multiple domain controllers, stability is ensured.
I've been working with Microsoft Active Directory for over 3 years, and we've had no problems.
 

Room For Improvement

Auth0 users seek improved authorization, pricing, customization, administration flexibility, IoT integration, and enhanced Management API for user data.
Microsoft Active Directory requires improved integration, security, synchronization, usability, scalability, and support to better serve organizational needs.
By default, the user profile does not contain the name, first name, or address, which I would expect.
A reduction of 20-25% would be great.
Exporting and verifying group memberships require command line scripts, which isn't simple.
There are some features that need improvements in terms of ease of use and frequency of updates.
Sometimes, it can be overly complicated, and when you apply Group Policy in an Active Directory environment, sometimes those settings apply and sometimes they don't.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise users have mixed opinions on Auth0 pricing; some find it clear and valuable, others see it as costly.
Active Directory costs differ by organization, often moderate to high, with cloud solutions like Azure reducing expenses for some.
The cost of the solution itself was cost-effective enough that I didn't even need to compare it with EntraID.
I consider Microsoft Active Directory expensive because if you buy this thing bundled with the Windows Directory Server, you get five user licenses for about a thousand euros, or a little bit less than this.
For the cloud solution in our region, the pricing of Microsoft Active Directory is very high.
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing with Microsoft Active Directory is straightforward; you just buy the server and then have to buy the user CALs.
 

Valuable Features

Auth0 excels in security, scalability, and integration, offering seamless authentication with extensive customization and compliance with major standards.
Microsoft Active Directory provides integration, scalability, access control, and security, making it vital for large organizations seeking efficient management.
The most valuable feature of Auth0 is its customizability.
The most important feature for me was the ease of use, as it needed to be easy to integrate into my platform.
One valuable feature is the centralized creation of IDs.
Having active deployment and well-configured systems helps me manage tasks and easily oversee thousands of users.
I can control all the devices in my domain by just changing the group policies in one place.
 

Categories and Ranking

Auth0
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Access Management (4th), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (1st)
Microsoft Active Directory
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
Active Directory Management (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Auth0 is 7.5%, down from 9.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Active Directory is 3.2%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Auth07.5%
Microsoft Active Directory3.2%
Other89.3%
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

Featured Reviews

Serge Wautier - PeerSpot reviewer
Simplified integration with helpful support and decent pricing
Auth0 is used as an identity provider for our new SaaS platform to manage the identity of users Auth0 is cost-effective because it provides all the features we need, and it was very easy to integrate into our platform. The documentation is comprehensive, and their support team is highly helpful.…
Giovanni Baruzzi - PeerSpot reviewer
Mature technology delivers consistent capability and enhances centralized user management
I think Microsoft Active Directory could be more intuitive. My impression of the integration of Microsoft Active Directory with third-party applications is that it can be made better. It's not the tendency of Microsoft to use a standard, but to modify it to their needs. This is catastrophic if you have to integrate other applications that use the same standard. This creates a major problem, so you have to be very careful and implement step by step, knowing that the partner is Microsoft. I would leave Microsoft Active Directory as it is and build possibly interfaces. For example, there is a provisioning protocol standard named SCIM. It seems that Microsoft Active Directory does not yet have a SCIM interface, which is a problem.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise20
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Auth0?
It is very scalable because it provides a new environment for companies based on their number of users and other factors. The tool can take a lot of users.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Auth0?
The cost of the solution itself was cost-effective enough that I didn't even need to compare it with EntraID.
What needs improvement with Auth0?
The pricing should be lower. A reduction of 20-25% would be great.
What do you like most about Microsoft Active Directory?
The solution is easy to install and has good reliability.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Active Directory?
I think Microsoft Active Directory could be more intuitive. My impression of the integration of Microsoft Active Directory with third-party applications is that it can be made better. It's not the ...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Active Directory?
My usual use case for Microsoft Active Directory is to share groups of authorization among many different applications. The other use case for Microsoft Active Directory is the authentication of us...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Airbnb 2. Accenture 3. Adidas 4. Atlassian 5. Audi 6. Baidu 7. BlackRock 8. Cisco 9. CocaCola 10. Dell 11. eBay 12. FedEx 13. Fiat Chrysler 14. Ford 15. Google 16. Groupon 17. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 18. IBM 19. Intel 20. LinkedIn 21. Mastercard 22. Mercedes Benz23. Microsoft 24. Nike 25. Oracle 26. PayPal 27. Pinterest 28. Qualcomm 29. SAP 30. Spotify 31. Tesla 32. Toyota
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Find out what your peers are saying about Auth0 vs. Microsoft Active Directory and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.