Pricing
IdentSphere is flat-rate, self-hosted, source-available. You pay for support, signed update channels, and premium modules — never per monthly active user.
The pricing below is the recommended starting structure for new deployments. All paid tiers include the same source-available license; the difference is support, premium features, and SLA.
Tiers
| Tier | Price | What's included |
|---|---|---|
| Community | Free forever | All auth flows, unlimited users, self-hosted, community support (GitHub Discussions / Discord), 90-day CVE alerts |
| Pro | $499/mo (billed annually) | Community + email support (24h response), signed update channel, branded transactional emails, role customization |
| Scale | $2,499/mo (billed annually) | Pro + SAML SSO, SCIM provisioning, audit log streaming to SIEM, 4h SLA, dedicated Slack channel, multi-region deployment guidance |
| Enterprise | Contact for quote | Scale + on-prem deployment support, source review under NDA, dedicated CSM, custom contracts, security audit collateral, SOC2 reports |
All prices in USD. Annual pricing already reflects a 15% discount over monthly billing — see the FAQ below.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Community | Pro | Scale | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Email + password auth | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| MFA (TOTP) | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Passkeys (WebAuthn) | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| OAuth (Google, GitHub) | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Sessions, audit logs | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Org + team + invitations | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| RBAC | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Branded transactional emails | — | yes | yes | yes |
| Custom roles | — | yes | yes | yes |
| SAML SSO | — | — | yes | yes |
| SCIM v2 provisioning | — | — | yes | yes |
| Audit log streaming | — | — | yes | yes |
| 24h email support | — | yes | yes | yes |
| 4h SLA | — | — | yes | yes |
| On-prem deployment help | — | — | — | yes |
| Source review under NDA | — | — | — | yes |
| SOC2 reports | — | — | — | yes |
FAQ
How does pricing compare to Auth0 / Clerk?
The competition charges per monthly active user (MAU). At 10k MAU, Auth0's B2B Essentials plan starts around $1,500/mo and scales roughly linearly. Clerk's Pro plan kicks in at $25 + $0.02/MAU after the free tier, so 100k MAU is roughly $2,025/mo — and that's before add-ons like SAML or SCIM.
IdentSphere is flat rate. A 100k-MAU deployment pays the same as a 1k-MAU deployment on the same tier. There is no cost cliff at scale, because you host the service yourself and we don't see the traffic.
A useful mental model:
- Below ~5k MAU, hosted vendors are cheaper because their free tiers are generous and you don't need premium features yet.
- Between 5k and 100k MAU, IdentSphere Pro or Scale is typically 3–10x cheaper than a comparable hosted plan.
- Above 100k MAU, the gap widens further. Hosted vendors price linearly; IdentSphere does not.
Can I upgrade mid-term?
Yes. Upgrades are prorated to the day. Downgrades take effect at the next renewal so you keep the features you've paid for through the end of the current term.
What happens if my license expires?
Your deployment drops to the Community tier. Premium features (SAML, SCIM, audit streaming, branded emails) stop working at the next binary restart, but no data is lost and the core auth flows continue to operate normally. You can re-license at any time and the premium features come back online.
This is by design. We never hold customer data hostage to a license state — the worst case of a billing dispute is that you stop getting premium features, not that your users can't log in.
Do you offer a trial?
Yes. New customers get a 30-day trial at Scale-tier features. The
trial license is issued by running scripts/issue-trial-license.sh
(see Trial licenses) or by contacting sales.
After the trial expires, the deployment drops to Community tier — same behavior as any other expired license.
Are there annual discounts?
Yes. Annual prepay carries a 15% discount over month-to-month billing. The monthly prices above already reflect that discount; if you pay month-to-month, the rate is roughly 18% higher (Pro is $589/mo month-to-month, Scale is $2,939/mo month-to-month).
Do you offer non-profit or open-source discounts?
Yes. Verified non-profits and open-source projects with a published governance model get the Pro tier at no cost. Contact sales with a link to your organization's public registration or the project's repository.
How does support work?
- Community: GitHub Discussions and Discord. Best-effort response from maintainers and community members. Typical response time: a few business days.
- Pro: Direct email support, 24h response during business days (UTC-8 to UTC+1, Mon–Fri).
- Scale: A dedicated private Slack channel with the engineering team. 4h response SLA during business hours, including escalation paths for outage-level incidents.
- Enterprise: A named Customer Success Manager, custom SLAs (including 24/7 critical-incident response on request), and direct access to the engineering team.
Can I switch off IdentSphere without losing my users?
Yes. Every user record, password hash, and session is stored in your own Postgres database. The schema is documented in Database schema. If you ever decide to migrate to another provider, you own the data — there are no proprietary formats to convert and no per-export fees.
Ready to start?
- New project? Run the quick start.
- Want to evaluate Scale-tier features? Issue a trial license.
- Need a custom contract? Email sales — see the GitHub README for the current contact address.