Okta

Okta, Inc. is an identity and access management company. Its Workforce Identity products let employees and contractors sign in once to the applications they use, verify who they are with multi-factor authentication, and receive or lose access automatically as they join, move or leave. Its customer identity products, for adding sign-in to your own applications, are offered under the Auth0 brand.

The problem Okta addresses is identity sprawl: separate accounts in dozens of SaaS tools, manual onboarding and offboarding, and weak passwords as the main way attackers get in. Okta centralises users in one directory and connects to applications through the Okta Integration Network, which lists more than 8,000 pre-built integrations.

Key features

• Single Sign-On. One login for cloud and on-premises apps, with strong authentication enforced across apps and devices.
• Adaptive MFA. Risk-aware authentication policies that can ask for extra factors depending on context.
• Universal Directory. One directory for users, groups and devices that can sync with existing sources.
• Lifecycle Management. Automates onboarding and offboarding by provisioning and deprovisioning accounts in connected apps.
• Workflows. No-code identity automation and orchestration; the number of Workflows included depends on the suite.
• Identity Governance and Privileged Access. Access requests, reviews and certification, plus least-privilege controls for critical accounts.
• Identity Threat Protection and ISPM. Continuous analysis of risk signals, and Identity Security Posture Management to find and prioritise identity misconfigurations.

Who it is for

Okta is aimed at organisations with enough users and applications that manual account management becomes a risk, typically from growing startups upward to large enterprises. IT and security teams use it to standardise sign-in, enforce MFA and meet audit requirements; HR-driven onboarding often feeds Lifecycle Management. Developers building customer-facing login usually start with Auth0 instead.

Pricing at a glance

• Starter: $6 per user per month, billed annually, with a $1,500 minimum annual contract; includes SSO, MFA, Universal Directory and 5 Workflows.
• Core Essentials: $14 per user per month, billed annually; adds Adaptive MFA, Lifecycle Management and Access Governance.
• Essentials: $17 per user per month, billed annually; adds Privileged Access for 2 admins and 50 Workflows.
• Professional and Enterprise: priced by quote; add Device Access, ISPM, Identity Threat Protection and, in Enterprise, API Access Management and Access Gateway.
• Customer identity: an Enterprise Base Platform at $3,000 per month, billed annually; B2C and B2B suites by quote; an Integrator Free Plan for up to 10 monthly active users in non-production use.

A 30-day free trial is available for Starter. Prices as checked on 7 October 2026; confirm on the vendor's pricing page.

Things to consider

• All published workforce prices are billed annually, and Starter has a $1,500 minimum, which is significant for very small teams.
• Features such as Adaptive MFA, Lifecycle Management and Privileged Access depend on the suite, so compare tiers carefully before buying.
• Higher tiers are quote-only, so total cost is not visible up front.
• Okta becomes a central dependency for sign-in; plan break-glass access and availability procedures.

Getting started

1. Compare suites on the Okta pricing page and start the 30-day Starter trial.
2. Import users and groups into Universal Directory or connect your existing directory.
3. Add your most-used apps from the Okta Integration Network and enable SSO.
4. Turn on MFA policies, starting with administrators.
5. Pilot with one team before rolling out to the whole organisation.