Yeah, I have the misfortune of inheriting a SaaS that built on auth0, and the whole stack is rather clownish. But they tick all the regulatory boxes, so we're probably stuck with them (until they suffer a newsworthy breach, at any rate...)

Okta and auth0 are, fundamentally, two distinct products – conceived, designed, and engineered by entirely separate entities.

auth0, as a product, distinguished itself with a modern, streamlined architecture and a commendable focus on developer experience. As an organisation, auth0 further cemented its reputation through the publication of a consistently high-calibre technical blog. Its content goes deeply into advanced subjects such as fine-grained API access control via OIDC scopes, RBAC, ABAC and LBAC models – a level of discourse rare amongst vendors in this space.

It was, therefore, something of a jolt – though in retrospect, not entirely unexpected – when Okta acquired auth0 in 2021. Whether this move was intended to subsume a superior product under the mediocrity of its own offering or to force a consolidation of the two remains speculative. As for the fate of the auth0 product itself, I must admit I am not in possession of definitive information – though history offers little comfort when innovation is placed under the heel of corporate, IPO driven strategy.