HonkIO Auth vs Amazon Cognito

• Both can keep user data in Canada: Cognito user pools are available in Canada (Central) and Canada West (Calgary), and HonkIO Auth stores every app's user data in Montréal.
• Cognito charges per monthly active user in USD across three tiers, and texts are billed separately through AWS. HonkIO Auth charges a flat monthly fee per app in CAD, and sign-in texts cost HonkIO's normal SMS rate.
• Passkeys and passwordless one-time codes need Cognito's Essentials or Plus tier. On HonkIO Auth, email codes or links and passkeys are on every plan.

HonkIO Auth is priced per app, per month, in CAD, and paid from the same prepaid balance as HonkIO's SMS and email: Free at $0 with 250 users, Pro at $49 with 2,500 users and then 2.5¢ each, and Business at $249 with 10,000 users and then 2¢ each. A user counts in a month only if they sign in on a day after the day they signed up, and likely bots never count. Sign-in emails and texts cost HonkIO's normal message rates, and passkey sign-ins are free.

Cognito charges per monthly active user, in USD, in three feature tiers. Lite is tiered ($0.0055 and $0.0046 per MAU in AWS's example); Essentials, the default for new user pools, is $0.015 per MAU above the free tier; Plus is $0.020 per MAU with no free tier. Lite and Essentials include 10,000 direct sign-in MAUs a month per account, or per AWS organization, and 50 federated MAUs.

Texts are billed separately, through Amazon SNS or AWS End User Messaging SMS, on top of the MAU price. Risk-based adaptive authentication is on Plus only.

The two count users differently, so compare them with your own sign-in numbers rather than the headline prices.

HonkIO Auth stores your users' data in Canada: the database and cache are in Montréal, and sign-in emails go through AWS in Montréal (ca-central-1). Requests are processed on US-hosted infrastructure (Railway, US East), and Cloudflare ends TLS for sign-in hostnames as a processor without storing the traffic. So HonkIO says the data is stored in Canada, not that it never leaves Canada.

Cognito user pools are available in Canada (Central), ca-central-1, and Canada West (Calgary), ca-west-1. A custom domain for managed login needs an ACM certificate in US East (N. Virginia) whatever the user pool's region, and is served through a CloudFront distribution.

• You already run on AWS and want sign-in managed and billed with the rest of it.
• You need SAML or OIDC federation: Cognito supports it, with 50 federated MAUs a month free, and HonkIO Auth does not.
• You want user data in Calgary: Cognito offers Canada West (ca-west-1), while HonkIO Auth stores data in Montréal.
• You expect up to 10,000 monthly active users and want them free on Lite or Essentials.

When HonkIO Auth fits

• You want user data stored in Canada, in Montréal, for every app on every plan.
• You want passwordless sign-in only: email codes or links and passkeys on every plan, and text-message codes from your own Canadian number on Pro and Business.
• You want flat monthly fees in CAD, paid from the same prepaid balance as HonkIO's SMS and email, with users counted only when they come back on a later day.
• You want sign-in on your own domain on every plan, test apps included, and a hosted page in English and French.
• You want abuse protection on every plan: a self-hosted bot check with no third-party CAPTCHA, SMS pumping detection and a daily text spending limit.

HonkIO Auth uses the OpenID Connect authorization code flow with PKCE, so your app talks to it through an OIDC library you may already use, such as openid-client, Auth.js, Authlib or Socialite. Test apps are free, get every feature and send nothing.

• HonkIO Auth overview
• Next.js quickstart
• Plans and prices
• Where data is stored
• Sign-in methods
• Setting up your domain

Can Amazon Cognito keep user data in Canada?

Yes. As of October 2026, Cognito user pools are available in Canada (Central) and Canada West (Calgary). HonkIO Auth stores user data in Montréal for every app, and processes requests on US-hosted infrastructure.

Are passkeys in Cognito's free tier?

As of October 2026, passkeys and passwordless one-time codes are part of Cognito's Essentials and Plus tiers, not Lite; Essentials includes 10,000 free MAUs a month. On HonkIO Auth, passkeys are on every plan, Free included.

How are sign-in texts billed?

On Cognito, texts are billed separately through Amazon SNS or AWS End User Messaging SMS. On HonkIO Auth, text codes (Pro and Business) come from your own Canadian HonkIO number at HonkIO's normal SMS rate, on the same bill, with no verification fee.

Can I move from Amazon Cognito to HonkIO Auth?

HonkIO Auth is standard OpenID Connect, so an app that signs in through an OIDC library mostly needs a new issuer, client ID and secret. Code written against a provider's own SDK needs replacing. Plan how existing users will sign in: HonkIO Auth has no passwords, so they use an email code or link, a passkey or, on Pro and Business, a text code.

Does HonkIO Auth support passwords or social login?

No. HonkIO Auth is passwordless only, and has no social login and no enterprise single sign-on (SAML) or SCIM. If you need those, it isn't the right fit today.

1. Amazon Cognito: pricing
2. AWS: Amazon Cognito endpoints and quotas
3. Amazon Cognito developer guide: custom domains
4. Amazon SNS: SMS pricing

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