Better IAM compared with Auth0, Clerk, WorkOS, Better Auth, OpenFGA, and Keycloak

How Better IAM differs from hosted identity providers, authentication libraries, authorization services, and Keycloak, and when one of those is the better choice.

Better IAM is an identity and access management platform delivered as TypeScript packages. It runs inside your Node.js application, stores its records in your own PostgreSQL, SQLite, or libSQL database, and covers sign-in, authorization, governance, and enterprise federation behind one typed API. This page compares that design with the four kinds of tools teams usually reach for instead:

Hosted identity providers such as Auth0, Clerk, and WorkOS.
Authentication libraries such as Better Auth, Auth.js, and Lucia-style session code you write yourself.
Authorization services such as OpenFGA, SpiceDB, Cerbos, Permit.io, and Oso.
Keycloak, the open-source identity server.

The comparison sticks to architecture and to Better IAM facts you can check in this documentation. Other products change quickly; check their current documentation for their feature lists.

At a glance

	Better IAM	Hosted identity providers	Authentication libraries	Authorization services	Keycloak
What it is	A library in your server process	A service the vendor operates	A library in your server process	A service you call (self-hosted or managed, depending on the product)	A standalone server you deploy
Where identity data lives	Your database	The vendor's infrastructure	Your database	Mostly authorization data (policies, relationship tuples, or synced attributes); sign-in lives elsewhere	A database Keycloak manages, separate from your application's
Main job	Sign-in, authorization, governance, federation	Sign-in, user management, enterprise SSO	Sign-in and sessions	Authorization decisions	Sign-in, SSO, identity brokering
How your code checks access	A function call: `iam.require(...)` reads current state from your database	Token claims or calls to the vendor's API, plus your own code	Your own code	A call to the decision service with the facts it needs	Token claims, or Keycloak's authorization services over HTTP
Language and runtime	TypeScript on Node.js 22.12 or newer	Any, through SDKs and standard protocols	The library's language	Any, through SDKs and APIs	Any, through OIDC and SAML
Who runs it	You	The vendor	You	You or the vendor	You

What Better IAM includes

Every row below is part of the open-source packages and has its own page in these docs.

Area	In Better IAM	Docs
Multi-tenancy	Tenant trees under a platform root. Each organization has its own identity directory, so the same email address can be separate identities in different organizations, linked explicitly when wanted.	Tenants and identities
Sign-in methods	Passwords, passkeys, magic links, email and SMS codes, TOTP with recovery codes, remembered devices, and per-tenant sign-in policies	Authentication
Social and enterprise sign-in	OAuth and OIDC sign-in with presets for Google, GitHub, and Microsoft Entra ID; per-organization SAML SSO	OAuth sign-in, SAML
Acting as an identity provider	An OAuth/OIDC provider for your other applications, with device authorization	OAuth/OIDC provider
Roles and policies	Custom roles, versioned JSON policies with conditions and `${principal.id}` variables, boundaries, and delegated grant authorities	Roles, Policies
Relationships	Relationship tuples on resources for sharing (ReBAC)	Relationships
Reverse queries and filtering	`listAccessible` and `authorizeMany` for UIs; query plans to filter rows in your own database	Queries, Data filtering
Your data in decisions	`resolveResource` loads owners and attributes of your own records at decision time	Resources and catalog
Provisioning	SCIM Users and Groups inbound, SCIM outbound to downstream apps	SCIM, SCIM outbound
Privileged access	Eligible bindings activated just in time, access requests with approval, temporary bindings	Privileged access
Governance	Access reviews, certification campaigns, separation of duties, role mining, change impact previews	Governance
Audit	A per-tenant hash-chained audit log with verification and export, signed webhooks, and in-process subscribers	Audit chain
Security signals	Shared Signals (CAEP/RISC) as receiver and transmitter, identity threat detection, device posture	Shared Signals, Threat detection
Machine and AI identities	API keys, service accounts, STS-style temporary credentials, AI agents with sponsors and delegation, an MCP authorization gate	Tokens, AI agents
Security services	Tenant keys, a secrets vault, a private X.509 CA, an SSH certificate authority	Secrets and keys, SSH access
Frameworks	A typed client plus Next.js, React, Vue, Nuxt, SvelteKit, React Router, NestJS, Express, Hono, and Fastify integrations	Integrations
License	Apache License 2.0	FAQ

Compared with hosted identity providers

Auth0, Clerk, WorkOS, and similar services run identity for you. Your application redirects to, or embeds, the vendor's sign-in experience, and the vendor stores the people, sessions, and organizations and keeps the service running.

Better IAM moves that work into your application:

Data location. People, sessions, roles, and audit records are rows in your database. Nothing leaves your infrastructure unless you configure an integration that sends it (webhooks, SCIM outbound, Shared Signals).
Authorization next to your data. A check such as "may Alice approve this invoice?" runs in your process and can use the invoice's owner and amount through resolveResource, instead of copying that data into tokens or a vendor's user metadata.
No hosted pages. You build the sign-in screens with the typed client, the React, Vue, or Svelte bindings, or the Next.js form helpers. The repository includes a reference administration console (apps/console) built on the public API, but it is an example application, not a managed dashboard.
You operate it. Upgrades, database backups, the secret, scheduled jobs (email outbox, retention sweep), and availability are your responsibility. See Operations.

Compared with authentication libraries

Better Auth, Auth.js, and hand-written session code also run in your process against your database, so the deployment model is the same. The difference is scope: an authentication library answers "who is this?", and Better IAM also answers "what may they do, who granted it, and who reviewed it?".

Tenancy model. In Better IAM each organization is a tenant with its own identity directory, its own roles, its own sign-in policy, and its own SSO connections. In Better Auth's organization plugin, one user record joins many organizations as a member. Neither is wrong; Better IAM's model fits B2B products where each customer administers its own people.
Authorization engine. Decisions come from roles, JSON policies with conditions, relationships, and boundaries, evaluated by one engine on the server and testable in the policy playground. An authentication library leaves that to your application code or to an add-on.
Governance and audit. Just-in-time elevation, access reviews, separation of duties, and a tamper-evident audit chain are built in, and every operation, including an administrator's, runs through the same authorization and audit pipeline.
Cost of the extra scope. Better IAM has more concepts to learn (tenants, catalogs, bindings, authorities) and more tables in your database. If you only need individual users to sign in, an authentication library is less to run.

Better IAM is independent of Better Auth; it does not use or extend it. For moving users across, see the migration guides.

Compared with authorization services

OpenFGA and SpiceDB (relationship graphs in the style of Google's Zanzibar), Cerbos (a policy decision point), and Permit.io and Oso (authorization platforms) decide what a caller may do. They do not sign people in: your application authenticates the caller elsewhere, then sends the decision service the facts it needs, such as relationship tuples you keep in sync or principal and resource attributes on each request.

Better IAM combines both halves in one process:

One source of truth. The identities, groups, roles, and relationships the decision uses are the same records that sign-in, SCIM provisioning, and access reviews change, so nothing has to be synchronized into a second system.
Decisions on current state. Every check reads your database, not a cache, so a revoked role or session stops working on the very next request. Batch with authorizeMany (up to 50 checks per call) and list with listAccessible to keep pages fast. See How decisions work.
Scope. A dedicated authorization service is built to be the single decision point for many services written in many languages. Better IAM's engine runs in a Node.js process; other services rely on the decisions, signed assertions, or tokens it issues.

Compared with Keycloak

Keycloak is a mature open-source identity server. You deploy it next to your applications, configure realms, clients, and identity providers in its admin console or REST API, and your applications sign people in through OIDC or SAML. Better IAM covers similar ground (tenants comparable to realms, SSO, SCIM, an OAuth/OIDC provider, an LDAP gateway) with a different shape:

Embedded, not standalone. Better IAM is a dependency of your Node.js application, configured in TypeScript, migrated with better-iam migrate, and called with typed functions. There is no separate server to deploy, secure, or theme.
Application authorization. Policies, relationships, and resource attributes from your own records are first class, so the same engine that signs people in also enforces documents:write on one document in your routes.
Language reach. Keycloak serves applications in any language through standard protocols. Better IAM's server APIs are TypeScript; applications in other languages integrate through its OAuth/OIDC provider, SAML, SCIM, or the signed session JWTs it publishes at /api/iam/.well-known/jwks.json when session JWTs are enabled.

When to choose something else

Better IAM is a good fit when access control, multi-tenancy, and auditability are part of your product and your backend runs on Node.js. Choose something else when:

You do not want to operate identity. A hosted identity provider runs the service, the database, and the sign-in pages for you, and the vendor carries the operational and compliance work for that service.
You need a ready-made sign-in UI and user dashboard today. Hosted providers ship them. With Better IAM you build your screens on the client and framework helpers.
Your application only signs individuals in. With no organizations, custom roles, or enterprise customers, an authentication library such as Better Auth or Auth.js is smaller and simpler.
Your backend is not Node.js, or many services in different languages need one decision point. Keycloak, a hosted provider, or an authorization service such as OpenFGA, SpiceDB, or Cerbos fits a polyglot backend better.
Authorization is your only problem and the relationship graph is very large. A Zanzibar-style service is built for that single job at that scale.
You need a long-stable API. Better IAM is at version 0.3, before 1.0, so minor releases can change APIs. The upgrade guides list what changed and how to move.

If you are moving from one of these tools, note that password hashes are not imported: Better IAM hashes passwords with argon2id and identities.createMany accepts only plain-text passwords. People who move over set a password through the reset flow, or sign in with a magic link, a passkey, or your enterprise identity provider. The migration recipe walks through a complete move.