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2026-04-29 KEVIN HOLLAND

SSO Should Be Free

Charging $8/user/month for SSO is a security tax. We include Google, GitHub, and Microsoft SSO on every plan, Free included.

The SSO Tax

There's a well-known pattern in SaaS pricing: lock single sign-on behind the enterprise tier. Need Google auth? That'll be $8-15 per user per month, minimum 50 seats, annual contract only.

The effect is predictable: small teams fall back on passwords. Passwords get reused, shared in Slack, and stored in plaintext notes. Security degrades exactly where it matters most, at the smallest teams.

Our Position

SSO is a security feature, not a premium feature. xpntl includes Google, GitHub, and Microsoft SSO on every plan. Free, Pro, Ultra: all of them get SSO. No upsell, no enterprise gate.

This is an architecture decision as much as a pricing one. When every user authenticates through their existing identity provider, we don't have to store passwords at all. That's less attack surface for us and better security for you.

What About SAML/OIDC?

Custom SAML and OIDC providers (Okta, Entra ID, and the like) land on every plan too, Free included. They cost us more to support, but security isn't where we draw the paid line. The three major OAuth providers are already live; SAML 2.0 is close behind.

The Broader Point

Too many dev tools charge for things that should be baseline: SSO, audit logs, API access. We charge for scale and advanced workflows instead, and leave security and access alone.