WorkOS vs Frontegg

At a glance

Choose WorkOS when your app already has login and the job is adding SAML SSO, SCIM directory sync and audit logs fast enough to close an enterprise deal. Choose Frontegg when you want the identity layer itself: login, tenants and sub-accounts, roles and entitlements, and a self-serve admin portal for your customers' admins. The split is layer, not quality. For a small B2B team with a handful of enterprise customers, Frontegg's free tier is also the cheaper start.

Where each wins

Pricing reality (checked 2026-11-05)

WorkOS pricing is a public ladder. SSO and Directory Sync are each billed per connection per month: $125 for connections 1 to 15, $100 for 16 to 30, $80 for 31 to 50, $65 for 51 to 100, custom above that. AuthKit is free to 1 million monthly active users, then $2,500 a month per additional million. Audit log streaming is $125 a month per SIEM connection, a custom domain $99 a month, and staging environments are free.

Frontegg pricing has two plans. Pay as you go is $0 a month for 7,500 monthly active users, 5 enterprise connections (SSO/SCIM), unlimited organizations, a custom domain and hosted login, in one environment. Enterprise is custom and adds multiple environments, a 99.99% uptime SLA and premium support. The page shows usage sliders but no per-unit overage rates.

Worked example at list price: five enterprise customers who each want SSO and SCIM, and 5,000 monthly active users. On WorkOS that is 5 SSO plus 5 Directory Sync connections, $1,250 a month. On Frontegg it may fit the free plan, but the page does not say whether one customer's SSO and SCIM count as one connection or two, so confirm before you budget. The math flips toward WorkOS's transparency once you pass Frontegg's free allowance and need a quote.

Ownership changes

Both are private. WorkOS acquired the fine-grained authorization startup Warrant in April 2024 (terms undisclosed), and that technology is now WorkOS FGA, which WorkOS documents as extending its RBAC system. Frontegg has no recorded acquisitions.

Deployment and architecture

WorkOS sits beside your existing session layer: you redirect to it for SSO, receive a profile, and keep your own users table, or adopt AuthKit as the hosted front end. Frontegg is the user store and session system, with embeddable login and admin components. That is the real switching cost: removing WorkOS means rebuilding connections; removing Frontegg means migrating users, tenants and roles.

Migration notes

WorkOS publishes migration guides for Auth0, Cognito, Clerk, Descope, Firebase, Stytch and others, but none named for Frontegg. Frontegg's migration API imports bcrypt, scrypt, Firebase and pbkdf2 hashes in batches of up to 1,000 users and has a dedicated Auth0 route. Either way, enterprise SSO connections are the hard part, because each customer's IdP has to point at the new endpoint.

Who should pick which

Pick WorkOS if login is solved, enterprise SSO and SCIM are the gap, and you want a published price for every connection. Pick Frontegg if you are early, want tenants, roles and customer admin from one vendor, and can live with quote-based pricing past the free tier. Neither fits consumer scale. See Auth0 vs WorkOS, Frontegg vs Auth0, WorkOS vs SSOJet and the best CIAM for B2B SaaS.