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WorkOS on X

The talk about WorkOS is warmer than it is detailed: people praise the team, ship on its auth, and recommend it by name, while the sharpest criticism is reserved for what it charges per SSO connection — and Clerk is the comparison it keeps getting.

First written 27 Oct · what changed · from 51 posts by 44 people

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as of 27 Oct · checked once a month

First written 27 Oct. When what people say changes, it shows here.

Tone· 25 posts from 23 people· written 27 Oct

How do people feel about WorkOS?

Praise is the largest part of the talk: 8 people are enthusiastic about WorkOS with no reservation attached, and what they name is the team and the people behind it. Reports of using it in their own products (6 people) and recommendations of it (6 people) are level with each other behind that.

The enthusiasm in 8 people's posts is directed at the team and the work more than at any one feature: the team called "unparalleled", a raise suggested for whoever is building it, production value rated five stars, and one long-time partner describing it as "a joy to be a partner". One user says WorkOS finally mapped multi-agent SSO and security like nobody else.

Hands-on accounts are level with recommendations, at 6 and 6 people. People describe shipping on it: auth and security that block malicious attacks and spam signups, Agent Auth used for permissions in an MCP prototype, AuthKit in a SaaS stack, and an enterprise stack being finalized on it. The recommenders answer "what should I use" with one word, or say they would gladly pay for it; one frames the pick as Clerk for consumer apps and WorkOS for enterprise.

3 people are not won over — one would rather not give typesafe structured data about their work, another says a rival's terms beat WorkOS's, and a third calls onboarding good even though it got something wrong.

  • Loves it9
  • Uses it and it works7
  • Recommends it6
  • Not won over3
See 5 of 25 posts
Hang Huang ☁️@hanghuang_

Day 4 of our 'Test in Prod' Series: link now uses @WorkOS for auth and security! It helps us block malicious attacks and spam signups, so we can send out more invite codes. If you're on the waitlist, expect yours sooner. Thanks for testing with us ☁️

5 of the 25 posts behind this answer, one per person. The other 20, and every new one as it’s posted, come with tracking. Get early access

Pain points· 13 posts from 10 people· written 27 Oct

What do people complain about with WorkOS?

Pricing is the biggest complaint: 4 people object to what WorkOS costs, led by the charge per SSO connection. Login trouble (3 people) and permissions that are not fine-grained enough (2 people) come next.

The price objection in 4 people's posts has a specific shape: WorkOS "charges per sso connection", a practice one post calls "the SSO tax, driven by @WorkOS". One puts numbers on it, saying WorkOS charges $125 per connection for the first fifteen where a rival includes the first and then charges $75, so on that measure the rival is cheaper. Another argues the cost gets passed down to end customers, and one asks how many companies using WorkOS or its rivals did that rather than deciding to charge on their own.

Login friction, at 3 people, is described in two situations: a product that outsourced enterprise SSO to WorkOS leaving passkeys as the only other way in, and a user who cannot log in while their session stays bound to their account.

The permission objection (2 people) is about granularity: one team running "basic auth with workos" says it has no granular permissions yet, and another wants to permission files, chats, tools, artifacts and skills and concludes WorkOS "doesn't support needs". One person says workos keys are wanted just to boot a self-hosted setup.

  • Pricing and SSO tax6
  • Login friction3
  • Not fine-grained enough3
  • Keys required just to boot1
See 5 of 13 posts
KairoOps@kairoops

First, the lazy take everyone repeats: “Clerk charges $75 per enterprise SSO login — expensive.” Wrong. WorkOS charges $125/connection for the first 15. Clerk includes the first, then $75. Per connection, Clerk is cheaper. So that’s not the story.

Kirill Dubovitskiy@bra1n_dump

We are working in this direction with happy engineering - You can deploy a team server (similar to open claw enterprise), basic auth with workos. We don't have granular permissions yet - Don't have any fleet management yet, but considering separating control plane / workers - Bring your own subs - check - Native harnesses - uncheck. opted into building our own for better durability, process management, subagent spawning, tool control - Table stakes UI - check Definitely not checking all your boxes, especially 300 devs & granular permissions. Thank you for sharing with the class what you want :D

Aaron@dicemanorama

HumanLayer just open-sourced its entire stack under Apache 2.0. Desktop app, the daemon that runs Claude Code and Codex on your machines, cloud API, integrations. Same code their cloud runs. Self-host it and there's zero telemetry. Right now it still wants keys for WorkOS, Slack, Linear and friends just to boot. They say that's first on the fix list. Their reasoning is dead on. Once your agent can patch your tools, closed tools get annoying fast. Own your software factory. 🔧 link

5 of the 13 posts behind this answer, one per person. The other 8, and every new one as it’s posted, come with tracking. Get early access

Alternatives· 9 posts· written 27 Oct

What are the alternatives to WorkOS?

Comparing it with Clerk is the largest part of this talk: 4 people weigh the two, and the split they draw is consumer versus enterprise. Rolling your own (2 people) is the next comparison, and the rest come up one person at a time.

The Clerk comparison, in 4 people's posts, turns on fit and price. One stack builder says "You can switch between this and workos however clerk is more for B2C apps"; another puts it as Clerk if consumer, WorkOS if enterprise. Price is argued both ways: one says Clerk's terms beat WorkOS's rather than matching it, another counts the connections and finds Clerk cheaper per connection once its included first one is counted, while a third says the gap is where a buyer hits a "we need to pass security review" wall and WorkOS walks in. For others the two are simply the pair of auth options worth naming.

Rolling your own, at 2 people, is weighed for air-gapping: one team building an air-gapped deployment says WorkOS is faster for enterprise auth but recommends avoiding managed auth SaaS and says that with AI it is possible to build it themselves. One developer frames the choice as "roll your own vs WorkOS".

The remaining comparisons are each one person: feature flags against PostHog, Cloudflare flags or doing it themselves; other MCP and OAuth approaches, with one saying they were thrilled to see an alternative drop; and one asking what makes WorkOS Atlas different from AmpCode.

  • Clerk4
  • Rolling your own2
  • Other feature flag tools1
  • Other MCP and OAuth approaches1
  • AmpCode1
See 5 of 9 posts
David@DavidE21187

Here’s my current tech stack for building software: 1. @bot @cursor_ai ( agent harness ) Even though they don’t have the greatest models available. I love what the engineering team has done and has a big lead over the other labs in that department 2. @convex (backend ) It’s the greats backend and the only option you need 3 @clerk ( auth ) You can switch between this and workos however clerk is more for B2C apps Lmk what you all are using!

KairoOps@kairoops

This is the pattern I hunt in every PLG company: the customer’s NEED arrives before the offer lets them buy the answer. Clerk’s buyer hits “we need to pass security review” — and the only door is a 12× upgrade. That gap is where WorkOS walks in.

Marc Klingen@marcklingen

We already see many big cos air-gap their Langfuse deployments, and this will only accelerate Luckily we've built it that way from day 1 I'd recommend avoiding managed services that don’t have an OSS api/equivalent, and components that are notoriously hard to host even when OSS Good: smtp, s3, postgres, redis Bad: proprietary database, auth SaaS, kafka That way, air-gapping is comparatively easy and not a huge lift Yes, it's slower than using e.g. WorkOS for enterprise auth, but with AI it's possible to roll your own, and offering air-gapping with all those vendors in the mix is pretty much impossible By extension, if you rely on Langfuse as a component (e.g. to surface its data in your application or auto-improve agents), you can bundle it with your app and customers deploy it as part of the air-gapped infrastructure. Surprisingly common use case, very happy that we can power these use cases.

IND_is_Here@itsindishere

Woah woah woah. As a Cloudflare nerd, you might wanna keep using Postgres for write heavy workloads and Clerk or WorkOS for auth. And put Hyperdrive in front. Otherwise D1. Those are two things I can't compromise on. Rest is perfect, great job. Also, Supabase is goated oss.

Peter Edmonds@peteredm0

would love a dive on how amp's feature flags work, and why you decided to build instead of buy? we use posthog right now, but are eyeing cloudflare flags to unify this a bit. also considering workos flags. should we skip that all and just DIY?

5 of the 9 posts behind this answer, one per person. The other 4, and every new one as it’s posted, come with tracking. Get early access

Questions· 6 posts from 4 people· written 27 Oct

What do people ask about WorkOS?

The questions are about whether WorkOS fits what someone already runs, and whether it can be tuned to what they need. The largest group, 2 people, asks about fitting an existing auth setup; single askers raise permissions and how a demo was wired.

The fit questions, from 2 people, are concrete: one asks whether passport will work for SP-initiated auth and not only from the WorkOS widget shown in a demo. The other asks whether switching to WorkOS preserves existing sessions, after seeing someone report they could not log in while their session stayed tied to their account.

The permissions question, asked by 1 person, is whether WorkOS will give the flexibility to permission everything "from files, chats, tools, artifacts, skills etc." — and the same asker later reports checking and finding it does not support the need.

1 person asks about a demo rather than the product: what the voice round trip latency was like on a badge built on WorkOS, and whether it was wired to specific WorkOS APIs or was more of a general router. No answer appears in the posts filed here.

  • Will it fit my existing auth setup?2
  • Will it support fine-grained permissions?2
  • How was the demo wired?2
See 5 of 6 posts

5 of the 6 posts behind this answer, one per person. The other 1, and every new one as it’s posted, come with tracking. Get early access

Wishes· 6 posts· written 27 Oct

What do people want from WorkOS?

Two wishes are level at the top, 2 people each: don't require WorkOS keys just to boot a self-hosted or local setup, and put more of the setup surfaces behind MCP so agents can do the configuration. Below them are single asks to open source the platform and to make a track official.

The keys request, from 2 people, is about trying before committing: one says requiring keys for WorkOS, Slack and Linear just to boot is what stops people from trying a self-hosted install locally, and one praises making those keys optional as "the right first move".

The MCP request, from 2 people, is for access to configuration without manual work: one wants an MCP tool so any agent can control the VMs, another wants to upload branding images via MCP rather than doing "90% of the branding with MCP" and then handling images by hand.

The remaining asks are one person each: that WorkOS "open source their whole platform" before someone else does, and that it make a particular track its official one, a post that travelled further than most on the page.

  • Don't require keys to boot2
  • More MCP tooling2
  • Open source the platform1
  • Make their track official1
See 5 of 6 posts
Sebas Vallejo@svallejo_tech

Apache 2.0 and no telemetry when self-hosted makes this easy to plug into an existing review flow. Making the WorkOS/Slack/Linear keys optional is the right first move, that's what stops people from just trying it locally.

Aaron@dicemanorama

HumanLayer just open-sourced its entire stack under Apache 2.0. Desktop app, the daemon that runs Claude Code and Codex on your machines, cloud API, integrations. Same code their cloud runs. Self-host it and there's zero telemetry. Right now it still wants keys for WorkOS, Slack, Linear and friends just to boot. They say that's first on the fix list. Their reasoning is dead on. Once your agent can patch your tools, closed tools get annoying fast. Own your software factory. 🔧 link

andrew@shellscape

yo @WorkOS it would be absolutely grand to be able to upload branding images via MCP. being able to do 90% of the branding with MCP and then have to slog through images manually is le stinky

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