12 Great Auth Libraries to Use with Next.js
Lately, many authentication libraries for web frameworks started to appear, so there is some flexibility on what to choose for web app development. If you're looking for one to integrate into Next.js, take a look at these 12 great options in this article.
1. Next-auth
Next-auth has some quite confusing docs because of their transition from V4 to V5, but it is still a go-to library for Next.js.
NextAuth.js is an open source authentication solution for Next.js applications that provides a flexible and secure way to add authentication to your app.
Here are some key features of NextAuth.js: supports a wide range of sign-in providers including OAuth 1.0, 2.0, OIDC, email/passwordless authentication, and more; allows you to bring your own database (MySQL, Postgres, MongoDB, etc.) or use it without a database; designed to be secure by default with features like CSRF tokens, encrypted cookies, tab/window syncing, and more; supports both database sessions and JSON Web Tokens (JWT).
2. Lucia
Lucia Auth is a lightweight open source authentication library that simplifies the process of handling user sessions. It provides a straightforward API that works alongside your database, making it easy to implement authentication in your application. Key features of Lucia Auth include: abstraction of complex session handling logic; fully typed codebase; support for various runtimes like Node.js, Bun, Deno, and Cloudflare Workers; out-of-the-box support for multiple databases.
Lucia Auth is particularly popular in the Next.js community due to its native support and good developer experience (DX). Many developers choose Lucia Auth when they want to quickly set up authentication and move on to building more critical features of their application.
3. Clerk
Clerk is an all-in-one platform that offers authentication and user management solutions. It provides a range of features such as pixel-perfect UIs, flexible APIs, and admin dashboards to authenticate and manage users. Clerk is trusted by various companies globally and offers SOC 2 type 2 certification and CCPA compliance, ensuring security and adherence to best practices.
It can also be integrated easily into a Next.js app.
4. Stytch
Stytch is another all-in-one platform for authentication working with Next.js.
Stytch is a comprehensive platform that offers authentication and security solutions for various needs. It provides a range of services including authentication, authorization, and fraud prevention infrastructure with APIs and SDKs. Stytch is known for its developer-focused approach, offering flexibility to handle different use-cases at any scale, especially for consumer and multi-tenant B2B apps.
Under the hood Stytch is powered by iron-session.
5. Auth0
Auth0 is probably the oldest and biggest of all, but also quite expensive. So use it only if you have more resources available and/or have specific Enterprise requirements.
Auth0 is a cloud-based platform that provides authentication and authorization services for web, mobile, and legacy applications. It allows developers to quickly integrate secure user authentication into their applications with minimal code.
6. Kinde
Kinde is a great Auth0 alternative for less of the price.
Kinde is a powerful authentication platform that provides a range of features to help developers secure their applications and scale their user base.
7. Firebase Auth
Let's don't forget about the battle-tested cross-platform service.
Firebase Authentication is a comprehensive service that allows for easy user authentication in apps. It provides various authentication methods such as passwords, phone numbers, and integration with popular federated identity providers like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Firebase Authentication can be seamlessly integrated with other Firebase services and industry standards like OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect, making it adaptable to custom backends.
8. Supabase Auth
Supabase Auth is an amazing open-source Firebase alternative.
Supabase Auth is a user management and authentication service that simplifies implementing authentication and authorization in applications. It offers various authentication methods like password, magic link, OTP, social login, and SSO. Authentication involves verifying a user's identity, while authorization determines the user's access rights within the application. Supabase Auth uses JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) for authentication and integrates with Postgres databases, enabling Row Level Security (RLS) for authorization.
- https://supabase.com/docs/guides/auth
9. Auth by AWS Amplify
Amplify Auth is powered by Amazon Cognito, which handles user registration, authentication, account recovery and other operations.
It might require a bit more work to integrate into Next.js, but on the other hand, AWS Amplify is a very powerful solution built on AWS.
10. AuthKit by WorkOS
AuthKit by WorkOS is a great authentication solution that offers a pre-built, customizable sign-in UI supporting various authentication methods. It simplifies the process of creating a secure authentication flow by abstracting the complexity associated with it.
AuthKit integrates seamlessly with WorkOS, providing features like Single Sign-On, Multi-Factor Authentication, Social Login, Biometric authentication, and more. It is designed to be compatible with any app architecture, allowing easy synchronization of user updates via realtime APIs. AuthKit can be fully customized to match your app's unique design, offering features like color, logo icon, and radius adjustments. Additionally, AuthKit supports all modern authentication standards, ensuring enhanced security in enterprise environments.
AuthKit can be integrated with next-auth.
11. Userfront
Userfront is a comprehensive platform that offers transformational authentication and identity solutions. It provides a range of features such as Single Sign-On (SSO), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), passwordless authentication, Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), multi-tenancy support, custom flows, and custom user interfaces.
Userfront aims to streamline the process of serving free, freemium, and enterprise customers within a single platform, making it easier to attract new customers and enhance the experience for existing ones.
Userfront can be integrated with React.js
12. iron-session
iron-session - a secure, stateless, and cookie-based session library for JavaScript.
If you don't like any from the above, check out this authored open-source library.
Bonus
While all Auth products from the above are great and provide useful features and guides, it still takes time to add authentication and authorisation to a Next.js app, especially involving some thorough testing.
That's why it might be a good idea to get a pre-made Next.js boilerplate where all the essential features will be completed and tested.
Therefore, I encourage you to take a look at WEBAPPBOOST - a powerful Next.js boilerplate with the preconfigured next-auth. Besides auth, the boilerplate has lots of other useful tech, such as Emails, Payments, CMS, a connected database and many many more.
Conclusion
In this article, we have explored 12 different libraries that can be seamlessly integrated into a Next.js app. As you can see, there is now an abundance of excellent choices available, making it easier to choose one for a specific use-case. Let me know what is your favourite one?