25 July 2023

Top Authentication Solutions for Next.js: A Comprehensive Review

Blazity

Dive into our detailed review of the top authentication solutions for Next.js. We cover industry leaders like Auth0, AWS Cognito, Clerk, Frontegg, and more, discussing their key features, customization options, and how they can enhance your application's security.

Bartłomiej Stefański

Head of Engineering

1. Auth0 - 🥇

Auth0 is a popular authentication solution that has been in the market since 2013. It offers a wide range of features, including SSO, MFA, and user management. Its deep customization options allow developers to incorporate their branding and third-party software integration. This section provides an overview of Auth0's features, pricing, and IaC support.

Release date	2013
Next.js Support	Yes (200k NPM downloads / week)
Customizable UI	✅
SSO	✅
MFA	✅
Passwordless	✅
OIDC Compliant	✅
User Management	✅
Custom Domains	✅
Email Templates	✅
Open Source	❌

Pricing

Plan	Price / month	MAU (Monthly Active Users)
Free	$0	up to 5000 MAU
Hobby	$25	Unlimited
Business	$99	Unlimited

How customizable is it?

Auth0 enables deep customization of user authentication experiences. This includes branding of login pages, incorporation of custom logic, and third-party software integration. It offers libraries for advanced adjustments and supports the customization of additional authentication pages like Password Reset and MFA. Furthermore, through its Authentication and Management APIs, developers have the flexibility to access and manage account functionalities directly.

IaC support:

There’re official plugins available for Pulumi and Terraform:

2. Clerk - 🥈

Clerk is a tool for managing user logins that started in 2019. It has many helpful features like SSO (single sign-on), MFA (multi-factor authentication), and a UI (user interface) that you can change to suit your needs. You can also change Clerk's look to match your app's design. This part will give you more information on Clerk's features, how much it costs, and how it works with Infrastructure as Code (IaC).

Release date	2019
Next.js Support	Yes (34k NPM downloads / week)
Customizable UI	✅
SSO	✅
MFA	✅
Passwordless	✅
OIDC Compliant	✅
User Management	✅
Custom Domains	✅
Email Templates	✅
Open Source	❌

Pricing

Plan	Price / month	MAU (Monthly Active Users)
Free	$0	up to 5000 MAU
Hobby	$25	Unlimited
Business	$99	Unlimited

How customizable is it?

Clerk provides extensive customizability for its components, ensuring they integrate seamlessly with your application. You can apply the 'appearance prop' either globally or to specific elements like SignUp, SignIn, UserProfile, and UserButton, allowing you to modify themes, layout, and styling. This means you can change the primary color, font, or adjust the location of social sign-in buttons and the logo. Moreover, Clerk offers different styling methods, including CSS Modules, Tailwind CSS, Inline CSS Objects, and Global CSS. Internationalization support also means you can display translated UI strings, catering to diverse audiences.

Code

1import { SignIn } from '@clerk/nextjs';
2
3const SignInPage = () => (
4  <SignIn
5    appearance={{
6      elements: {
7        formButtonPrimary: 'bg-slate-500 hover:bg-slate-400 text-sm normal-case'
8      }
9    }}
10  />
11);
12
13export default SignInPage;

IaC Support

There’s an integration with Terraform available:

https://registry.terraform.io/modules/dvargas92495/clerk/aws/latest

3. Frontegg - 🥉

Frontegg is a robust authentication and user management solution that offers extensive customization capabilities. It seamlessly integrates with Next.js applications and provides flexible pricing options. Frontegg also supports Infrastructure as Code (IaC) through official Terraform integration and unofficial Pulumi integration. In this section, we will explore Frontegg's customization features, pricing plans, and IaC support.

Release date	2019
Next.js Support	Yes (2,5k NPM downloads / week)
Customizable UI	✅
SSO	✅
MFA	✅
Passwordless	✅
OIDC Compliant	✅
User Management	✅
Custom Domains	✅
Email Templates	✅
Open Source	❌

Pricing

Plan	Price / month	MAU (Monthly Active Users)
Freemium	$0 for 30 days	N/A
Starter	$99	0 multi-user accounts & 1000 users
Growth	$799	100 multi-user accounts & 5000 users

How customizable is it?

Frontegg provides comprehensive customization options for authentication components. You can choose between hosted and embedded login setups. Embedded login integrates the login box into your code, while hosted login places the box on Frontegg's servers.

The platform allows developers to write their own styles, text, and code flows, offering control over styling and messaging. The styling architecture works on a top-down basis, facilitating both global and specific component customizations.

Code

1import React from "react";
2import { FronteggProvider, FronteggThemeOptions } from "@frontegg/react";
3import contextOptions from './context-options';
4
5const themeOptions: FronteggThemeOptions = {
6  loginBox: {
7    socialLogins: {
8      buttonStyle: {
9        base: {
10          borderRadius: '0.5rem',
11          color: '#000',
12          background: '#fff',
13          border: '0.5px solid black'
14        }
15      },
16    },
17  }
18}
19
20const Provider = () => (
21  <FronteggProvider contextOptions={contextOptions} themeOptions={themeOptions}>
22	  <div />
23  </FronteggProvider>
24);
25
26export default Provider;

Key customization elements include palette, typography, spacing, shadows, transitions, breakpoints, and direction. Frontegg uses Material UI as a base for its components, with the option to override styles. Each component, like the login box or admin portal, has specific customization options. For embedded login, a custom domain setup is required to bypass modern browsers' third-party cookie restrictions. TypeScript is also supported for more detailed customization options.

IaC Support

Frontegg has official Terraform integration and unofficial but mature (relatively) Pulumi one:

4. PropelAuth

PropelAuth, released in 2021, is an authentication solution that offers a high level of customization through its React-based component library. It supports Next.js and provides a customizable UI, single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA), passwordless login, user management, custom domains, and email templates. Developers can create and embed their own signup and login pages, allowing for a tailored authentication experience. It is a promising but young product that small companies can find interesting.

Feature	Value
Release date	2021
Next.js Support	Yes (React SDK with 2,5k NPM downloads / week + express middleware)
Customizable UI	✅
SSO	✅
MFA	✅
Passwordless	✅
OIDC Compliant	⚠️ (n/a)
User Management	✅
Custom Domains	✅
Email Templates	✅
Open Source	❌

Pricing

Plan	Price / month	MAU (Monthly Active Users)
Free	$0	1000
Growth	$150	2500
Scale	$750	20,000

How customizable is it?

PropelAuth provides a customizable authentication integration through its React-based component library. Developers can create and embed their own signup and login pages, allowing for a seamless authentication experience. The library supports the customization of components, elements, and appearance, enabling developers to modify the authentication process to match their specific requirements. PropelAuth also offers enhanced customization for role-based access control and allows the storage of custom metadata in a similar fashion that Auth0 does.

IaC Support

PropelAuth does not currently offers any IaC tools support, so it might be challenging to implement infrastructure as a code with this solution.

5. AWS Cognito

AWS Cognito is a comprehensive solution for user management and authentication. It's highly scalable and customizable but may be complex to set up and manage. It's a good fit for large-scale applications and those already using AWS services. It also provides a generous free tier for small scale applications.

Release date	2014
Next.js Support	❌
Customizable UI	✅
SSO	✅
MFA	✅
Passwordless	✅
OIDC Compliant	✅
User Management	✅
Custom Domains	✅
Email Templates	✅
Open Source	❌

Pricing

Costs can swing this way and that, depending on a bunch of factors. It looks like Amazon gets a kick out of complex pricing setups, rather than simple tables. They seem to have a knack for making straightforward stuff intricate

Plan	Price / month	MAU (Monthly Active Users)
Free	$0	50,000
≤ 100k	$275-$550	50,000-100,000
≤ 1kk	$4600	100,000 - 1,000,000
≤ 10kk	$29,250	1,000,000 - 10,000,000
> 10kk	$25,000	10,000,000+

How customizable is it?

AWS Cognito provides customization options for the login and registration pages. You can customize the color scheme, logo, and background image. You can also customize the email templates. AWS Cognito also allows you to use your own custom login form. While Cognito ensures complete flexibility, it does so at the expense of increasing complexity.

IaC Support

AWS Cognito is supported by every widely-used IaC solution:

6. FusionAuth and KeyCloak

Both FusionAuth and KeyCloak offer comprehensive solutions for managing authentication, meeting requirements even in sophisticated enterprise contexts. However, there is scope for enhancing their customizability and the overall experience for developers.

For instance, while both platforms utilize FreeMarker, a template engine, for template modifications, it doesn't quite live up to expectations in terms of offering a seamless developer experience.

FusionAuth attempts to address this by providing shell scripts that facilitate local previews of FreeMarker changes. There is, however, a caveat. The architecture of the system accommodates only a single user at a given time, as modifications are automatically pushed to the cloud. In the context of current collaborative practices, this leaves room for improvement.

While the core of FusionAuth is not open source, several aspects of the system are, and they can be accessed here. KeyCloak operates under the Apache-2.0 license and is entirely open source. For further information, please visit this link.

In conclusion, although FusionAuth and KeyCloak provide robust authentication solutions, there are opportunities for enhancement in terms of customizability and fostering a more intuitive developer experience.

Wrapping Up

In this modern digital era, securing your applications should be a priority. Choosing the right authentication solution can significantly impact your application's security, user experience, and overall performance.

We hope our comprehensive review of these top authentication solutions for Next.js provides the information you need to make the right choice. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, but ultimately, the best fit will depend on your specific use case, infrastructure, and requirements.

Stay secure, and keep building!

Get a quote

Empower your vision with us today

“We are very happy with the outcomes and look forward to continuing to work with them on larger initiatives.”

Brian Grafola

CTO at Vibes

Trusted by