Okta review 2026: identity and access management with SSO, MFA, and lifecycle management. Compare pricing, features, pros, cons and top alternatives.
Okta was founded in 2009 by Todd McKinnon and Frederic Kerrest, two former Salesforce executives who saw an opportunity to build cloud-native identity management as enterprises moved away from on-premise directories. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company went public in 2017 and significantly expanded its footprint in 2021 by acquiring Auth0, a leading developer-focused identity platform, for approximately $6.5 billion.
The combined company now operates two product suites: Okta Workforce Identity Cloud, which secures employee access to internal systems, and Okta Customer Identity Cloud (built on Auth0's technology), which lets developers add login, authentication, and authorization to customer-facing apps. Okta serves more than 19,000 customers globally and employs around 6,000 people.
Okta's Workforce Identity Cloud centers on single sign-on across thousands of pre-built application integrations, adaptive multi-factor authentication, and a Universal Directory that centralizes user identities across systems. Lifecycle Management automates provisioning and deprovisioning as employees join, change roles, or leave.
Higher tiers add Privileged Access management, Identity Governance and access certification, Identity Threat Protection, Device Access controls, and API Access Management. Okta Customer Identity Cloud (Auth0) provides developer SDKs, prebuilt login flows, and fine-grained authorization for consumer and B2B applications, including inbound federation for enterprise customers.
Workforce Identity is sold per user per month, billed annually, starting with Starter at $6/user/month for core SSO and MFA, moving through Core Essentials ($14/user/month) and Essentials ($17/user/month) for adaptive MFA, lifecycle management, and access governance, up to custom-priced Professional and Enterprise tiers with the fullest feature set. A minimum annual contract applies.
Customer Identity Cloud pricing is structured differently, starting around $3,000/month for an Enterprise Base Platform with unlimited OIDC and SAML applications, with B2C Suite and B2B Suite add-ons priced individually based on monthly active users and required capabilities.
Okta is an identity and access management platform that provides single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, directory services, and lifecycle management for both employee (workforce) and customer-facing applications.
Okta Workforce Identity plans start at $6/user/month for the Starter tier, with Core Essentials and Essentials tiers at $14 and $17/user/month respectively; Professional and Enterprise tiers, along with Customer Identity Cloud plans, are custom-priced.
No, but they are related. Okta acquired Auth0 in 2021. Auth0 now operates as Okta Customer Identity Cloud, a separate product line focused on developer-facing customer authentication, alongside Okta's original Workforce Identity Cloud.
Okta was founded in 2009 by Todd McKinnon and Frederic Kerrest and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. It went public in 2017.
Common Okta alternatives include Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD), Ping Identity, OneLogin, JumpCloud, ForgeRock, and Google Cloud Identity.
Yes, Okta provides adaptive MFA that adjusts authentication challenges based on contextual risk signals like device, location, and network.
Yes, Okta's Workforce Identity plans typically require a minimum annual contract value, commonly cited around $1,500, in addition to per-user monthly pricing.