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Amazon Cognito vs Supabase

Live comparisonView as JSON
Amazon Cognito
cloudFree up to 50k MAU
Supabase Auth
hybridFree up to 50k MAU
Agent Sdk
Token Delegation
Human In The Loop
Fga
Mcp Support
Async Authorization
Pricing
Free up to 50k MAU$0.0055/MAU afterSAML federation extra
Free up to 50k MAU$25/mo ProCustom Enterprise
Open Source
Self-Hosted
SDK Languages
javascripttypescriptpythonjavaswiftkotlingoruby
javascripttypescriptpythondartswiftkotlin
Frameworks
langchain
langchainvercel-ai
Compliance
soc2hipaagdprpci-dssfedramp
soc2gdprhipaa
Best For
AWS-native agent stacks; teams already using API Gateway, Lambda, and IAM; compliance-heavy environments on AWS
AI apps built on the Supabase BaaS stack; projects that need auth + database + storage in one platform
Limitations
Poor developer experience; documentation is dense; no agent SDK, no FGA, no human-in-the-loop; locked to AWS
Auth is tightly coupled to Supabase's ecosystem; no token delegation, no FGA, no agent SDK; auth is secondary to the BaaS offering

Supported Not supported Unverified

For developers building AI agents, Cognito wins on AWS IAM credential management for machine identity within AWS-native deployments, while Supabase offers no agentic primitives beyond database-layer RLS. Cognito is the better choice if you need AWS IAM-backed agent credential provisioning within AWS Lambda, ECS, or EC2 deployments. Supabase is only viable for full-stack applications where agents are entirely autonomous and require no machine identity governance.

Where Cognito wins

  • AWS IAM-Backed Agent Credential Management. Cognito integrates directly with AWS IAM, enabling agents deployed as Lambda functions, ECS containers, or EC2 instances to assume IAM roles and receive temporary credentials automatically. This provides native machine identity governance within the AWS ecosystem without separate provisioning. Supabase has no equivalent agent credential management.

  • Ultra-Low Cost for Basic B2C. Cognito is cost-effective for simple consumer applications, offering a free tier for the first 10,000 monthly active users and charging roughly $0.015 per MAU thereafter without add-ons.

  • Native AWS Ecosystem Integration. Cognito integrates directly into the AWS stack, enabling connections with Amazon Pinpoint for marketing analytics, AWS WAF for web application firewall protection, and AWS Amplify for front-end development.

  • Contractual Service SLA. Amazon Cognito provides a 99.9% availability SLA. Supabase does not offer equivalent formal uptime contractual guarantees at its standard tier.

Where Supabase wins

  • Integrated Backend Framework. Supabase is an open-source backend-as-a-service, providing identity with its PostgreSQL database, Realtime subscriptions, and Storage. This allows developers to build full-stack applications with authentication built-in from day one, without orchestrating connections with a separate identity vendor.

  • Built-In Primitives. Supabase Auth includes support for Enterprise SSO, Social Login, and standard username and password flows directly tied to the application's underlying database, giving teams a complete identity toolkit within a single integrated platform.

  • Open-Source Portability. Supabase is open-source and self-hostable, giving teams full control over their data infrastructure without vendor lock-in to the AWS ecosystem.

The agentic difference

Cognito's AWS IAM integration enables machine identity governance; Supabase's RLS is database-centric, not agent-centric. Cognito integrates directly with AWS IAM, allowing agents deployed as Lambda functions or ECS containers to assume roles with temporary credentials for accessing AWS resources and APIs. This provides AWS-locked agent credential provisioning via IAM tags and S3 Access Grants. Supabase's Row-Level Security restricts database row access based on authenticated identities at the PostgreSQL layer, but this is data-layer authorization tied to human users, not agent-aware machine identity governance.

Neither supports CIBA, token vaults, or FGA. Both platforms lack native CIBA for asynchronous human-in-the-loop authorization workflows. Neither offers dedicated token vaults for managing third-party API credentials used by agents. Neither provides Fine-Grained Authorization for RAG pipeline scoping. Cognito's IAM integration is the only agent-specific offering between the two.

When to pick which

  • Pick Cognito when building AWS-native agent deployments requiring IAM-backed credential management, because its direct integration with IAM roles enables Lambda functions and containers to assume roles with temporary credentials automatically.

  • Pick Cognito when building a highly cost-sensitive B2C application hosted entirely on AWS, because its minimal $0.015 MAU pricing keeps baseline infrastructure billing exceptionally low.

  • Pick Supabase when building a new application from scratch that needs a complete open-source data layer with database-native RLS, because its built-in authentication primitives securely tie directly into its PostgreSQL database without requiring separate identity infrastructure.

Last verified: 2026-05-09