Udibo vs Firebase Authentication

Firebase Authentication gives you client SDKs for web and mobile, email and social sign-in at no published cost, and a token that Firebase's own databases trust. Udibo gives you hosted sign-in behind a standard OAuth 2.0 boundary, with organizations, roles, and resource permissions included on every plan. The difference that decides most evaluations: Firebase is free until you need multi-factor authentication or audit logs, which move a project to Identity Platform and per-user pricing, and it leaves organizations and per-resource permissions to your code. Udibo includes those on Free and charges as you grow.

Checked September 8, 2026 against Firebase's pricing page and Identity Platform pricing. Udibo Identity is in private beta, and its prices are a preview, not an adopted rate card.

The short version

Why teams pick Udibo over Firebase Authentication

• Organizations are a product, not a pattern. Firebase has no organization object; a customer's company and its members are yours to model, and roles ride in custom claims capped at 1,000 bytes. Udibo ships organizations with invitations, memberships, and roles on every plan, with no cap on organizations or members, and a person can hold a different role in each.

• Permissions checked from the backend you run. Register the permissions your application interprets, attach them to roles across a tenant, inside an organization, or on one resource, and read the result from the token or a hosted check over HTTPS. Firebase Security Rules decide access inside Firestore, Realtime Database, and Cloud Storage; a backend elsewhere gets an ID token and custom claims, and per-resource checks are yours to build.

• MFA and audit history on Free. Firebase's multi-factor authentication and its audit logging come with the Identity Platform upgrade, which changes the pricing model and limits a Spark project to 3,000 daily active users. Udibo's Free plan includes authenticator-app MFA with recovery codes and at least 90 days of audit history exportable as CSV or NDJSON.

• Federated users cost the same as everyone else. Identity Platform bills SAML and OpenID Connect users at $0.015 per monthly active user after the first 50 per project, about $15 per 1,000. Udibo connects any OpenID Connect provider with no per-connection fee, and a federated user is a retained user at the same $3 per 1,000 as any other. SAML is not available on Udibo today.

• A standards boundary instead of a client library per platform. Your application talks to Udibo through OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect, with the active organization and its roles in the token. Any OpenID Connect client works, and leaving means changing an issuer rather than swapping SDKs.

• Your brand on the pages you did not build. Udibo hosts the sign-in, recovery, and MFA pages with your name, logo, and colors and no vendor badge on any plan. Firebase leaves the sign-in page to you, and its account emails let you change the sender, reply-to, and subject, but the message body only for password resets.

• Growth costs less past about 110,000 users. Identity Platform charges $0.0055 per monthly active user from 50,000 to 100,000 and $0.0046 from there to 1,000,000; Udibo's preview rate is $3 per 1,000 retained users. At 1,000,000 users that is $4,415 against about $2,990. Below 50,000, Firebase is free and Udibo is not.

Why Firebase Authentication may still be the right choice

• Free sign-in with no published user limit. Email, social, anonymous, and custom sign-in are included on both the Spark and Blaze plans, and the pricing page lists no monthly active user charge for them unless a project upgrades to Identity Platform. An app that needs neither MFA nor audit logs pays nothing for authentication at any published scale.

• Client SDKs and the Firebase data model. Firebase's SDKs for web, Apple, Android, C++, and Unity sign people in from inside the app, and Firestore, Realtime Database, and Cloud Storage trust the result through Security Rules. Udibo has no mobile SDK, and its tokens do not drive Security Rules.

• Phone and anonymous sign-in. Firebase offers phone sign-in on the Blaze plan, billed per SMS, and anonymous accounts that can be upgraded later. Udibo offers neither today.

• SAML, blocking functions, and tenants. Identity Platform adds SAML (web only), functions that run before registration and sign-in complete, and tenants that silo users and configuration within one project. Udibo does not offer SAML, SCIM, or hosted passkeys.

• Generally available. Firebase Authentication is a production dependency you can adopt this afternoon. Udibo Identity is in private beta.

Pricing side by side

Firebase's published list, Identity Platform's, and Udibo's pricing preview, same date. The two count people differently: Identity Platform bills a monthly active user, "any account that has signed in within a given month", and Udibo bills a retained user, a person who returns more than 24 hours after signing up, counted once per tenant per UTC calendar month. The examples below assume every person counted is active that month on both sides.

Three worked examples, with the same assumptions on both sides:

Sources: Firebase pricing, Identity Platform pricing, the Firebase Authentication overview for what the upgrade adds and its Spark limit, and Udibo's pricing preview. All change; check the vendor's current page before you decide.

Cost at scale

Users only, on the plan that gives you MFA, assuming every person counted is active that month on both sides. Udibo's figures are preview rates; Firebase's are Identity Platform's published tiers on the Blaze plan, priced band by band the way Google's own pricing examples do.

Without the Identity Platform upgrade, Firebase publishes no per-user charge at any scale, so for email and social sign-in alone there is no crossover: Firebase is free and Udibo is not. Once MFA, audit logging, or a SAML or OpenID Connect provider puts a project on Identity Platform, the first 50,000 monthly active users are still free, the two are close at 100,000, and Udibo is cheaper from about 110,000 users upward. Federated users are the exception: at $0.015 each, 10,000 OpenID Connect users cost about $149 a month on Identity Platform and $20 on Udibo.

What the integration looks like

With Udibo, register an application and its callback, send people to the hosted sign-in page, and finish the authorization-code flow on your server. Your backend holds the session and the browser gets a cookie, never a token. The first-login guide walks each checkpoint, and the organizations and permissions guides cover a person with a different role in each of two organizations.

With Firebase, the client SDK signs people in from inside your app and hands back an ID token that Firestore, Realtime Database, and Cloud Storage trust through Security Rules; a backend elsewhere verifies it with the Admin SDK (verify ID tokens). FirebaseUI is Firebase's drop-in UI for the common sign-in methods (FirebaseUI).

A Firebase client often uses identity in more places than the login screen. Before comparing providers, list the database, storage, and server endpoints that trust the current user. Udibo's hosted flow gives your application identity through OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect, and your backend applies the organization and resource checks; nothing translates those checks into Security Rules. A valid session says who someone is; your backend still decides what they may read.

Where Udibo needs a closer look

Udibo does not currently offer hosted passkeys, SAML, SCIM, phone sign-in, or anonymous accounts, and there is no mobile SDK or UI kit. The @udibo/oauth2 package supplies protocol building blocks, not drop-in components. Tenant-management calls need administrator credentials rather than an application's machine token. If anonymous-to-registered upgrades, phone sign-in, mobile recovery, or a Security Rule that depends on the signed-in user is essential, demonstrate the complete target workflow before committing; a successful login alone does not establish parity.

Moving an existing Firebase application

Inventory anonymous users, linked providers, custom claims, Security Rules, and code that assumes a Firebase UID. Keep your application's stable user ID and record the mapping from the old issuer and subject to the new one; do not use email alone as an automatic account-linking rule. Test every Security Rule and backend verifier affected by a new token, and do not weaken a rule to make a different issuer's token appear valid. Firebase's scrypt variant (Firebase scrypt) is not the standard scrypt encoding the import contract accepts, so check it against a real export and plan a reset path. Existing sessions and MFA enrollment do not move with a profile. See migration planning.

Try next: complete one Udibo login, then give a person two organizations and a different role in each. If you are on the waitlist, the agent integration brief lets your coding assistant prepare the integration in the meantime.

Frequently asked questions

Is Udibo cheaper than Firebase Authentication? Not for sign-in alone. Firebase's email and social sign-in carry no published user charge, and Identity Platform's first 50,000 monthly active users are free, so an app under that size pays $0 on Firebase and between $5 and about $140 on Udibo. What Udibo's plan buys is organizations, roles, and per-resource permissions you would otherwise build, plus MFA and audit history without an Identity Platform upgrade. Past about 110,000 users on Identity Platform, or for users who federate through OpenID Connect, Udibo's preview rate is lower.

Does Udibo have client SDKs and phone sign-in like Firebase? No. Udibo hosts the sign-in, recovery, and MFA pages and returns to your app through OAuth 2.0; there is no mobile SDK, no UI kit, and no phone or anonymous sign-in. Any OpenID Connect client library completes the flow, and the account screens inside your product are yours to build.

Can I move from Firebase to Udibo without making users re-register? Profiles and social identities can be imported and linked by the provider's stable subject. Firebase's scrypt password hashes are not in a format Udibo's import accepts, so plan a password reset on first sign-in; MFA enrollments, anonymous accounts, and active sessions do not move. See migration planning and user import.

Do I need Identity Platform for MFA on Firebase? Yes. Firebase documents SMS and TOTP multi-factor authentication for projects upgraded to Firebase Authentication with Identity Platform, which bills monthly active users past 50,000 on Blaze and limits Spark projects to 3,000 daily active users. Udibo includes authenticator-app MFA with recovery codes on Free and does not offer SMS factors.

Last verified 2026-09-08.