Stack Auth: The Open-Source Authentication Solution Developers Have Been Waiting For

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Stack Auth: Revolutionizing Open-Source Authentication for Developers

Succession theme song playing on repeat.

Enough Celsius running through your system to kill the Energizer Bunny.

Standing desk set at the perfect 118.2

You're cranking out the next big thing that'll make Zuck sweat, but you're stuck wrestling with user authentication like it's 2010, either paying far more money than your project is making or fearing the day that Google kills yet another beloved tool.

Compounding this, you need to find something secure, and the daily stories of data breaches impacting millions of customers weighs on your mind.

Enter Stack Auth, the open-source authentication savior here to rescue you from the mind-numbing tedium of building yet another login system. It's like the superhero of auth, swooping in to save you from the villainous time-suck of user management.

The open-source authentication platform provides the code to add login and registration features, send verification emails, and manage user accounts, all easily configurable and customizable.

Their dashboard to provide an even more comprehensive overview of users, APIs, and any other high-level data trends a team may need to know, and they offer frontend and backend libraries for Next.js, React, and JavaScript with the promise that you can set it up faster than you can say "password123".

Traction:

• Backed by Guillermo Rauch, Next.js and Vercel founder

• 523 stars on GitHub

• Customers include engineers from Google, Bloomberg, DeepJudge

Market Size:

• TAM: $4.86 billion

• SAM: $2.916 billion

• SOM: $145.8 million

Competition:

• Auth0, Firebase, AWS

• Frontegg, Stytch, SuperTokens

• Keycloak, Ory Kratos, Authelia

Team:

• Zai Shi: ex-DeepJudge ML engineer, Co-founder of Umi (language learning app with 100K+ downloads)

• Konsti Wohlwend: Co-founder of nunu.ai (YC W23), ex-ProgrammWerk SWE

Risks:

• Market saturation: There are more auth solutions out there than use cases for truffle at an Italian restaurant, and being able to differentiate beyond price advantages will be tough

• Open-source monetization: I love open-source as much as the next guy, but how do you make bank when your code is free? It's like trying to sell air... premium, artisanal air.

• Scalability: Stack seems incredibly valuable for an early stage company with a few thousands users and not a ton of time or money to invest in larger scale companies, but the real money makers will be larger organizations with millions of users… will Stack’s current infrastructure be able to scale with that, and if not, will they have the money to invest in building this functionality out?

What I like:

• Developer-first approach: They know their audience and are speaking dev language. It's like Rosetta Stone for coders.

• Open-source goodness: Sort of a plus and a minus, but one of the easiest ways to earn trust from potential customers is simply sharing the code through open-source authentication, though on the other hand, this could also be seen as a potential weakness…

• Configuration: Any colors, fields, and features you can imagine can be easily built out. Want to make your auth look like it was designed by a colorblind monkey? You can do that in “one minute" they say.

Opportunities:

• Case studies: By this point, they have tons of users, and given the flexibility inherent to the product, the ways that these many people are using the tool are likely to vary greatly, so why not show some of these off and offer a little inspiration?

• Auth innovation: Yes, making current auth best practices better is good, but as more companies opt for more secure passwordless measures, like hardware keys, MFA, and even biometrics. Even better, use this as an upsell opportunity

• Faster authentication: Yes, security is important, but so is UX, and making the auth process more efficient would also do wonders in making users love the product more. Once again, monetize it

Remember, you heard it here first: Stack Auth is stacking up to be a real auth-some solution for open-source authentication needs.

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