Best offer on record: User Management / AuthKit free tier: first 1,000,000 MAU free. 4 verified findings, checked 2026-10-22.
Offers
User Management / AuthKit free tier: first 1,000,000 MAU free high confidence
Official free tier covering the entire AuthKit/User Management platform (sign-up, sign-in, social/email login, MFA, RBAC, passkeys, admin portal): first 1,000,000 MAUs at $0/mo. Beyond that: $2,500/mo per additional 1M MAU. No time limit, no expiry stated on the official page. Staging environments are free (only production billed); Standard support (email, in-product web, API status notifications, private Slack channel) included at no cost. MAU = any user performing an action (sign up/in, profile update) in a calendar month.
Eligibility
Open to anyone (companies, individual developers, students) via self-serve sign-up at dashboard.workos.com; no application, no eligibility criteria, no .edu or funding requirements. No credit-card requirement is stated anywhere on the official pricing pages (neither confirming nor denying CC-free sign-up).
How to claim
Self-serve: create a WorkOS account (no approval step), integrate AuthKit/User Management, and use it free up to 1M MAU. Staging is free for unlimited testing; production billing starts only past the free cap.
Expiry
Permanent / rolling — the 1M MAU free cap has no published end date or renewal mechanism. Overage pricing is pay-as-you-go; Annual Credits plan is a custom sales arrangement (prepay discounts, 99.99% SLA).
Gotchas
Free tier does NOT cover enterprise add-ons: SSO and Directory Sync are priced per connection ($125/each for 1-15 connections, tiered down to $65 at 51-100, custom beyond 100); Audit Logs stream $125/mo per SIEM connection + $99/mo per 1M events retention; Custom Domain $99/mo. MAU counts end-user activity, not your team seats — a large consumer app can hit 1M MAU and then pay $2,500/mo per extra million. Third-party directories (guptadeepak.com, startups.ws) note some directory listings mention payment-method rules generically, but WorkOS's own pages state no CC requirement — unverified officially either way.
Startup program (WorkOS for Startups) high confidence
workos.com/startups exists, but it is a marketing landing page for the same 1M-MAU free tier, not a distinct startup program: 'User Management is free up to 1M MAUs', connections-based pricing for SSO/SCIM, 'from launch day to IPO and beyond'. No application form, no equity/data terms, no funding or age caps, no duration or expiry stated, no separate credit pool. Third-party directories (startups.ws, verified 2026-10-21; guptadeepak.com, Oct 2026) corroborate: free to join, no formal eligibility, worldwide, rolling.
Eligibility
Effectively open to any startup (and any company); no published gate on company age, funding stage, revenue, or geography. No .edu requirement.
How to claim
No application needed: sign up self-serve, integrate AuthKit/User Management, use free up to 1M MAU. Optional: contact sales for SSO/Directory Sync enterprise deals or Annual Credits discounts.
Expiry
No program duration or sunset date published; the underlying free tier has no published expiry.
Gotchas
Do not treat as a time-boxed startup perk — it is the same permanent free tier rebranded for startups. SSO/SCIM (what startups usually need when selling enterprise) is NOT free: $125/connection/mo at low volume. No startup-specific discount is published on the official page; enterprise discounts are sales-negotiated. No credit-card requirement is stated on the page.
Radar free tier: first 1,000 checks free high confidence
Radar (bot/fraud/abuse detection): first 1,000 checks per month free; $100/mo per additional 50,000 checks. Part of the same pay-as-you-go model; available standalone.
Eligibility
Open to anyone via self-serve WorkOS account; no startup/education gate.
How to claim
Same self-serve signup as User Management; Radar usage starts free up to 1,000 checks/mo.
Expiry
Rolling monthly allowance, no published end date.
Gotchas
Checks beyond the first 1,000 are billed in 50k increments at $100/mo; not a trial — recurring usage pricing. (Radar is bot protection, not a product-analytics/feature-flags offering; WorkOS publishes no free offer for product analytics or feature flags.)
Free staging environments + free Standard support high confidence
WorkOS explicitly: staging environments are free for testing; only production is billed. Standard support tier (email, in-product web support, API status notifications, private Slack) is included at no cost. Useful for students/developers: full sandbox access at $0.
Eligibility
Any account holder; no gate.
How to claim
Automatic: staging environment of your project is $0; Standard support included with any plan tier.
Expiry
Ongoing, part of standard pricing; no expiry.
Gotchas
Standard support P1/P2 response SLAs are weaker than paid add-ons (Scale support $1,000/mo adds video calls, 1-business-hour P1; Enterprise is custom with 24x7 SLAs).
No student/education license exists at WorkOS: workos.com/education returns 404, no education/student/trial URL appears in the official sitemap (sitemap_website.xml), and the footer only offers /startups and /pricing. No free trial credits or sign-up credit pool are documented on any official WorkOS page; the 'startup program' is not a formal program with an application — it is the permanent 1M-MAU free tier marketed to startups. No 2025-2026 sunset of a student/education or startup-credit offer was found: the official changelog (entries Aug 2025 - Oct 2026) contains no pricing/free-tier/trial changes. Caveat: third-party web search was exhausted mid-task in this session, so I could not search for historical/sunset announcements (e.g., a past YC or academic partnership); verification relied on today's official pages (pricing, startups, radar, sitemap, changelog) plus third-party directories corroborating the current state (startups.ws checked 2026-10-21; guptadeepak.com Oct 2026).