Opinion: Auth vendors charge premium prices for near-zero-cost security features

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A developer essay argues that authentication providers routinely charge enterprise-tier prices for features like Single Sign-On (SSO), multi-factor authentication, and audit logs, despite these having near-zero marginal cost to operate. The author draws a sharp distinction between pricing based on actual resource consumption versus pricing based on mere permission to toggle an already-built feature. The piece highlights the website sso.tax, created specifically to publicly document the high SSO surcharges imposed by major software vendors. The author contends that locking security and compliance features behind expensive paywalls is especially problematic because customers cannot reasonably opt out of them. This pricing model is described as 'value-based pricing' in industry terms, but criticized as exploitative when applied to baseline security infrastructure.

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