CIAM
CIAM (customer identity and access management) is the sign-up, login, profile and consent layer for an application's customers, not the IAM system that manages employee access. It covers self-service registration, social and passkey login, MFA, account recovery, consent records and, for B2B SaaS, per-customer tenants with enterprise SSO and SCIM. CIAM optimizes for conversion, branding and consumer-scale user volumes; it is not identity governance, privileged access or identity verification (document and selfie checks), though many CIAM platforms integrate with verification vendors.
The difference from workforce IAM is not scale, it is who bears the cost of friction. A workforce user will complete whatever login you require because it is their job; a customer abandons. That inverts the design: progressive registration instead of full profiles, social and passkey options instead of mandated MFA, and consent and preference management as first-class features because the data is regulated. CIAM also owns the fraud surface that workforce identity mostly does not.
CIAM is usually priced per monthly active user, and most developer-focused platforms publish free tiers: our pricing transparency index verified free tiers from 5,000 to 1,000,000 MAU on 30 October 2026.
See also: what is CIAM, CIAM vs IAM, best CIAM platforms, progressive profiling, consent management, CIAM vendors
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