Comparison
Authio vs. WorkOS — the multi-org gap.
If you have ever asked your customer to sign up with a different email for a second org, this page is for you.
The headline difference
WorkOS scopes a user to one organization. Authio does not.
In the WorkOS data model a User belongs to exactly one Organization. If a single person is a fractional CTO across three customers — or a contractor across two clients, or a partner who joins their customers’ tenants — they need three accounts with three different emails. Every account has its own sessions, MFA, recovery flow, and audit history.
Authio inverts this. A User is a top-level identity. Memberships join a user to many organizations. The session JWT carries an active org_id claim that can be switched in-session via the <OrganizationSwitcher /> component with no re-authentication. SCIM provisioning targets a specific org; SAML connections are per-org; FGA tuples are per-org. The user identity is shared.
We built this because we got tired of being told it was “an edge case.” It is not an edge case. It is the entire B2B partner and fractional-leadership economy.
Feature by feature
| Feature | Authio | WorkOS |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-org per user | Yes — sessions follow the user. Active org is a switchable claim. | No — one user, one org. Duplicate accounts required across customers. |
| Passwordless-first | Yes — no password store, ever. | Optional; password flows are still the default surface area. |
| End-user auth (passkeys, magic links, OAuth) | Yes — full lifecycle. Sessions, refresh rotation, MFA, risk engine. | Mostly an SSO layer that sits on top of your existing auth provider. |
| Admin Portal (customer-facing SSO setup) | Yes | Yes |
| SCIM 2.0 directory sync | Yes | Yes |
| Fine-grained authorization (Zanzibar-style) | Yes — built in. | No — requires a separate partner integration. |
| Audit logs + streams | Yes — partitioned, queryable, streamable to S3 / ClickHouse / Datadog. | Yes — basic audit log API. |
| Custom domains + branded hosted UI | Yes — DNS verification + automated ACME. | Yes |
| Pricing model | Per-MAU + per-connection. | Per-connection only. |
| Self-host | Pure SaaS today; single-tenant dedicated infra on Enterprise. | Pure SaaS. |
Where WorkOS is a better fit.
We respect WorkOS. They built the SSO-on-top playbook and executed it well. If your existing auth provider is going to stay where it is — say, you already run Cognito or Auth0 and you only need a way to expose enterprise SSO to your customers — WorkOS slots in cleanly as a federation layer. You will not rip out your existing user store, and you will not have to adopt a new session model.
Authio is the better fit when you are willing to consolidate. We replace the user store, the session layer, the password (or rather, the lack of it), the social federation, the SSO/SCIM layer, the FGA engine, and the audit log in one place. The payoff is a coherent multi-org model, no password column on your side or ours, and one billing line. The tradeoff is a one-time migration.
The honest decision tree: if you want a federation overlay, pick WorkOS. If you want a unified passwordless platform with multi-org as a first-class concept, pick Authio.
Try the migration before you commit.
The Authio CLI ships an importer for the common B2B auth stacks. Spin up a free-tier project and run a dry-import in an hour.