Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

OAuth VS SuperTokens

Compare OAuth VS SuperTokens and see what are their differences

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OAuth logo OAuth

OAuth is an open standard for authorization. It allows users to share their private resources (e.g.

SuperTokens logo SuperTokens

Open Source User Authentication - An Alternative to Auth0 / Firebase Auth / AWS Cognito
  • OAuth Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-19
  • SuperTokens Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-26

SuperTokens is building open source authentication (as an alternative to Auth0, Firebase and AWS Cognito). Add secure, hassle free authentication to your app in 1 day. We enable startups to launch quicker and focus on their core product offering

  1. We're easier to implement as we take a modular approach - making it possible to pick only the features you need for your use case. This means you need not worry about complications associated with other features (eg: SSO and OAuth if you don’t need it) and this in turn makes it easier to implement and manage SuperTokens.
  2. Developer's can own and manage their user's data.
  3. SuperTokens can be run on your premise for free and also has a generous hosted tier for those who dont want to manage it themselves.

SuperTokens is being used by hundreds of developers across the globe.

OAuth features and specs

  • Delegated Authorization
    OAuth allows users to grant applications limited access to their resources without sharing their credentials, enhancing security and user convenience.
  • Third-Party Integration
    Facilitates seamless integration with third-party services by allowing applications to access user data across different platforms securely.
  • Granular Access Control
    Supports fine-grained permissions, enabling users to specify exactly what resources an application can access and for how long.
  • Enhanced Security
    By allowing applications to access data without exposing user credentials, OAuth reduces the risk of password theft and other security breaches.
  • User Experience
    Improves user experience by allowing single sign-on and reducing the need for creating and remembering multiple usernames and passwords.

Possible disadvantages of OAuth

  • Complexity
    Implementing OAuth can be complex and resource-intensive, requiring careful handling of authorization codes, tokens, and various flows.
  • Security Risks
    If not implemented correctly, OAuth can introduce vulnerabilities such as token interception, token leakage, or insufficient token expiration time handling.
  • Evolving Standards
    OAuth standards and best practices evolve over time, which can require ongoing maintenance and updates to ensure that implementations remain secure and compliant.
  • User Consent Fatigue
    Frequent consent requests for different applications and permissions can lead to user fatigue, potentially causing users to ignore important security warnings.
  • Dependency on Third-Party Services
    Relying on OAuth providers for authentication can be challenging as service outages or changes to provider APIs might disrupt the dependent applications.

SuperTokens features and specs

  • Ease of Integration
    SuperTokens is designed to be developer-friendly, providing easy-to-follow documentation and straightforward integration steps for adding authentication and authorization functionalities to applications.
  • Open Source
    Being open source, SuperTokens allows for transparency, peer reviews, and community-driven improvements, providing an advantage over proprietary solutions.
  • Feature-Rich
    It offers a wide range of features including session management, JWT support, email/password login, social login, and passwordless authentication, catering to various authentication needs.
  • Scalability
    SuperTokens is built to scale, making it suitable for both small applications and large-scale enterprises with significant user bases.
  • Security
    Emphasizes security best practices, providing robust mechanisms for session handling, token storage, and data encryption to ensure user information is safeguarded.

Possible disadvantages of SuperTokens

  • Complexity for Advanced Customization
    While it is easy to integrate, performing advanced customizations may require a deeper understanding of its internal workings, which can be time-consuming.
  • Dependency on Third-Party Infrastructure
    For some setups, SuperTokens may impose dependencies on third-party services or infrastructure, potentially leading to issues related to uptime, latency, and control.
  • Limited Community Support
    As a relatively newer player in the market, it might not have as extensive a community or ecosystem as some older, more established authentication solutions.
  • Data Privacy Concerns
    Although the solution emphasizes security, using any third-party service for authentication introduces some level of concern regarding data privacy, especially if sensitive user data is involved.
  • Initial Learning Curve
    Despite its ease of integration, there is still a learning curve associated with initially understanding how to best implement and use the various features offered by SuperTokens.

OAuth videos

OAuth 2.0: An Overview

More videos:

  • Review - OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect (in plain English)
  • Review - Google OAuth Review

SuperTokens videos

How SuperTokens detects Session Hijacking?

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to OAuth and SuperTokens)
Network & Admin
100 100%
0% 0
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Identity And Access Management
Cyber Security
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare OAuth and SuperTokens

OAuth Reviews

We have no reviews of OAuth yet.
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SuperTokens Reviews

  1. David Ruseel
    · Sr. Security Architect at Freelancer ·
    SuperTokens is reliable and safe

    The best part about this library is the level of security it provides with session management. Implementing the library was also easy through the document they provide and with the extensive support on discord channel. They also provided a lot of features compared to the previous library which I was using.

    🏁 Competitors: Auth0, Firebase, Amazon Cognito
    👍 Pros:    Jwt blacklisting|Rotating jwt signing key|Malware protection|Man in the middle attack protection
    👎 Cons:    Automatic email alerts for high resource usage
  2. Jacob Riley
    · Reverse Engineer, OSCP, OSCE at Freelancer ·
    SuperTokens! Best app for Session Security

    I used it with MongoDB and Nodejs. It was very robust and took care of all my security issues. It's super easy to implement like it took me somewhere around 2 to 3 days to implement also while installing it doesn't force or restrict you from doing something a certain way. The documentation provided by SuperTokens is phenomenal too.

    🏁 Competitors: ExpressJS
    👍 Pros:    Session security|Session management|Data protection and security|Simple pricing|Super simple|Easy to use|Information is easily accessible
    👎 Cons:    Not enough intergration yet

12 Best Open-source Database Backend Server and Google Firebase Alternatives
SuberTokens is a self-hosted open-source user authentication backend for startups and companies. It helps developer building a user-based workflow without the complication of complex authentication layer. SuberTokens offers user authentication, tokens management, session management, forget email workflow, email verification, social login support, and easy front-end...
Source: medevel.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, SuperTokens should be more popular than OAuth. It has been mentiond 44 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

OAuth mentions (21)

  • Implementing a token based authentication for rest API
    You want OAuth. You almost certainly want to use Keycloak as your provider. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Skanderbeg Steam Login
    It's the same as when you get "log in with Google" or "Log in with Facebook" buttons on other sites. You can read about OpenAuth here: https://oauth.net/. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Password isn't dying
    Failure to adhere strictly to battle-tested standards like OAuth or OpenID Connect (OIDC). - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Securing BudPay Transactions: Encryption and Authentication Techniques
    In addition to user authentication, BudPay secures its API endpoints using authentication mechanisms such as API keys and OAuth (Open Authorization). These mechanisms ensure that only authorized applications and services can access BudPay's APIs, protecting user data from unauthorized access. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • How do you create a DB that stores info about which people have which access?
    You'll typically need a way for users to authenticate to the service – probably using OAuth if you want them to login with their accounts from an identity provider, such as Google or Facebook. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

SuperTokens mentions (44)

  • Top 5 Open Source Identity and Access Management (IAM) providers 2025
    Home page | GitHub Repo | Documentation | Discord community. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Auth Pricing Wars: Cognito vs Auth0 vs Firebase vs Supabase
    For B2C, Supabase will get you most of the way for small to medium MAU applications. You might need additional services for analytics and monitoring. If you are building a boom-or-bust B2C company (ex. Social media platform, video game, media publication) you should consider using an open-source self-hosted solution like SuperTokens. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • OpenAUTH: Universal, standards-based auth provider
    How does this compare to supertokens https://supertokens.com/ that supports fastify express, hono, bun, koa, nuxt, react, vue, angular with email password + social login + OTP based login + single sign on all wrapped in a self hostable nice package? - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • The Joy of Astro
    My love for Astro and the web platform is well documented. I've contributed to the docs, I've built some integrations and themes. I recently rediscovered the joy of building with Astro when I made a demo integration with SuperTokens. The ultimate goal for it was to become a part of the create-supertokens-app CLI (published here). - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • How to use SuperTokens in a VueJS app with your own UI
    SuperTokens Core Service: This HTTP service talks to your database. It also contains the core logic for authentication. You can self-host with your database (with docker or without Docker or host it with a SuperTokens-managed service. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing OAuth and SuperTokens, you can also consider the following products

OpenID - OpenID is a safe, faster and easier way to log in to web sites.

Auth0 - Auth0 is a program for people to get authentication and authorization services for their own business use.

Cotter - One-click phone number login and checkout

ASP.NET SAML - ASP.NET SAML is an open-source authentication utility that has been used for exchanging authentication and authorization data between the channels.

Amazon Cognito - Amazon Cognito lets you add user sign-up, sign-in, and access control to your web and mobile apps quickly and easily. It scales to millions of users and supports sign-in with social identity providers and enterprise identity providers via SAML 2.0.

BugMeNot - BugMeNot is a free Internet service that provides usernames and passwords to allow users to bypass the registration process for websites.