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From SSO to complete customer and agentic identity

Descope is a no-code WorkOS alternative that provides a complete customer and agentic identity platform with developer flexibility and transparent pricing.


  • Build authentication experiences with no-code workflows.

  • Support identity, SSO, and provisioning for multi-tenant SaaS.

  • Manage credentials, scopes, and policies for AI agents and MCP servers.

  • Transparent pricing designed to scale predictably as your product grows.


Why customers choose Descope over WorkOS
Success

A complete identity platform, not just SSO

WorkOS focuses primarily on adding enterprise SSO and directory integrations to existing auth systems. Descope provides a full customer and agentic identity platform covering authentication, authorization, MFA, provisioning, and identity orchestration.

Money

Predictable pricing as your SaaS platform scales

WorkOS pricing is commonly tied to SSO connections and usage metrics, which can become difficult to forecast as enterprise adoption grows. Descope offers transparent pricing designed to scale predictably with your product.

Workflow

Flexible identity workflows without dev overhead

Build and modify authentication journeys using visual workflows instead of application logic. With WorkOS, implementing complex user journeys such as step-up authentication, onboarding paths, and MFA policies often requires additional development.

AI Agent

Built for agentic AI and MCP ecosystems

WorkOS protects MCP endpoints using shared OAuth configuration, not dedicated MCP server models. Descope treats MCP servers as first-class identity resources with scopes, policies, and client registration for secure agent credentials and tool access.

Powering auth for over 1000 organizations in production

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What our customers say

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“Descope has been a great partner to our IAM team. We appreciate the simplicity of their product, the speed of innovation, and their active and responsive support. Whenever we launch a new application or user portal for external stakeholders, Descope is now the default auth provider in our minds.”

Naveen Zutshi, CIO

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“Whether it’s easily adopting passwordless methods like One Tap, adding risk-based MFA, or unifying identity flows across web and mobile apps, Descope provides workflow-based building blocks to help us achieve these goals much faster than before.”

Nitin Shingate, CTO

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“Partnering with Descope has helped Navan enhance both our user onboarding experience and security posture. The flexible nature of Descope Flows enables us to adapt better to changing business or security needs without burdening our developers.”

Ofer Ben-David, EVP Engineering

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“Descope satisfied our requirement for sophisticated multi-tenancy with support for complex, per-tenant configurations. The ability to define roles and permissions for each tenant, while delegating role creation to tenant admins, proved invaluable.”

Bryan Wise, CIO

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"We love Descope SSO flows from a CX standpoint. A customer we onboarded just told us it was the fastest implementation ever. It usually takes weeks but we were done in 15 minutes - small talk included!"

David Li, Senior Software Engineer

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“Visualizing the user journey as a workflow enables us to audit and modify the registration and authentication journey without making significant code changes.”

Arkadiy Goykhberg, CISO

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“Flows helped us make API calls to the backend to check if a tenant had SSO enabled without relying solely on email domains. This gave our members more flexibility while maintaining security, something that would have been difficult with our previous system.”

Chad Dulake, Senior Software Engineer

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"We needed a better provider who would actually pay attention to the platform and not just muscle people around. With the flexibility of the social auth, passkeys, everything Descope has—it was an easy drop-in for our authentication flow. ”

Brian Powell, VP of Engineering

Cars24

“Our team really appreciates the empathetic and ever-present support. Whether it’s regular check-ins, guidance for unique use cases, or fast response and deployment for feature requests, we can see that Descope has our back.”

Marut Singh, CTO

A detailed Descope vs WorkOS comparison

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User experience

User experience

  • Descope user journey screens are embedded in your app to provide a native experience without redirects.

  • Native mobile flows offer an embedded web-view experience that help customers easily create native-like authentication flows in mobile applications.


WorkOS AuthKit provides prebuilt UI components for login and signup flows. Custom branding and advanced UX control require additional frontend development.

User journeys

User journeys

  • No-code workflows to create and customize screens, auth flows, MFA flows, and any other user journey interaction.

  • A/B testing to experiment with different auth / MFA methods, onboarding paths, and geo-based auth without writing custom code.


  • Modular authentication components.

  • No visual journey orchestration layer.

  • Advanced onboarding requires engineering effort.


Passkeys

Passkeys

  • Passkey support from Day 1 including autofill and fallback conditions.

  • Passkeys can be added as first or second auth factor with any other method.

  • Create different onboarding paths to A / B test passkey implementation.

  • Show any backup auth method if user’s device is not passkey compatible.


WorkOS supports passkeys within AuthKit as part of its passwordless authentication options. Advanced orchestration, recovery flows, and cross-platform UX control require additional implementation.

One Tap

One Tap

  • Native Google One Tap support through Descope SDKs.

  • Add “post-authentication” flows to collect user info, verify additional factors like phone number, etc.


WorkOS supports social login providers that can enable streamlined sign-in experiences. True native-style “One Tap” flows depend on provider configuration and frontend implementation.

MFA

MFA

  • MFA available on all Descope plans.

  • Choose from any MFA factor, including phishing-resistant ones like magic links and passkeys.

  • Risk-based MFA with connectors (reCAPTCHA, AbuseIPDB, Forter, Fingerprint).

  • Workflow-based approach makes adding and modifying MFA logic straightforward.


WorkOS supports common MFA factors such as TOTP and SMS within AuthKit. Advanced adaptive policies and contextual step-up flows require additional configuration.

Future-proofing

Future-proofing

  • Workflow-based approach that makes it easier to modify user journeys without redeploying the app.

  • Descope has one unified platform for B2C B2B, and agentic identity.


  • WorkOS is optimized for enterprise SSO and core authentication use cases. Expanding into complex consumer identity orchestration may require additional services or custom development.

  • The platform supports modern authentication standards, but broader consumer identity evolution depends heavily on application-layer implementation.