WorkOS vs GitHub Actions
The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS
vs. CI/CD native to GitHub — workflows + marketplace + hosted runners
Pricing tiers
WorkOS
AuthKit Free
First 1M MAUs free. Unlimited organizations, user management, social OAuth, passwordless.
Free
AuthKit Scale
Per 1M additional MAUs.
$2500/mo
Enterprise / Annual Credits
Custom with 99.99% SLA, guided migration, dedicated support.
Custom
GitHub Actions
Public Repos
$0. Free unlimited minutes on hosted runners (Linux). No private runners.
$0 base (usage-based)
Free (Personal)
$0. 2,000 minutes/mo private repos (Linux). 500MB Packages storage.
Free
Per-minute Overage
$0.008/min Linux ($0.08 macOS, $0.016 Windows) after included minutes.
$0/mo
Team
$4/user/mo. 3,000 minutes/mo. 2GB storage. Org management.
$4/mo
Enterprise
$21/user/mo. 50,000 minutes/mo. 50GB storage. SAML SSO, audit.
$21/mo
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing authkit-free on WorkOS vs free on GitHub Actions.
| Metric | WorkOS | GitHub Actions |
|---|---|---|
| mau included | 1000000 users/month | — |
| organizations | unlimited orgs | — |
| staging environments | free envs | — |
Features
WorkOS · 13 features
- Audit Logs — Standardized audit log pipeline with streaming to SIEMs (Splunk, Datadog, Sumo L…
- AuthKit — Complete drop-in user management UI + hosted auth flows. Built on top of WorkOS.
- Directory Sync — SCIM-based user provisioning/deprovisioning from Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspac…
- FGA (WorkOS) — Fine-grained authorization based on Google Zanzibar / OpenFGA.
- Magic Auth — Passwordless email codes + links. Good alternative to password auth for B2B.
- Multi-Factor Auth — TOTP + SMS MFA enrollment and verification APIs.
- Organizations — Multi-tenant B2B primitive. Attach SSO/Directory/Audit to specific customer orgs…
- Passkeys — WebAuthn passkeys as a first-class factor.
- Radar — Fraud protection: device fingerprinting + risk scoring at signup and login.
- Single Sign-On — Plug-and-play SAML 2.0 + OIDC SSO with 30+ identity providers pre-mapped.
- User Management — REST API + webhooks for user CRUD, email verification, sessions, MFA, metadata.
- Vault — Secret storage for tokens + per-tenant credentials.
- Widgets — Embeddable admin portals (SSO setup, directory mapping) that your customers self…
GitHub Actions · 18 features
- Actions Cache — Persistent cache across runs.
- Actions Marketplace — 20K+ reusable actions.
- ARC (K8s Controller) — Autoscale self-hosted on K8s.
- Artifacts — Upload/download job outputs.
- Composite Actions — Actions made of other actions.
- Concurrency Groups — Cancel / queue overlapping runs.
- Container Jobs — Run a whole job in a Docker image.
- Environments + Approvals — Gate deploys with manual approval.
- Job Summaries — Markdown summaries in UI.
- Larger Runners — 4-64 vCPU, ARM, GPU.
- Matrix Strategy — Fan out over axes.
- OIDC Cloud Auth — Exchange JWT for cloud credentials.
- Reusable Workflows — workflow_call.
- Secrets + Variables — Encrypted org/repo/env secrets.
- Self-Hosted Runners — Your own runners.
- Service Containers — Sidecar containers (DBs, Redis) per job.
- Triggers — push, pull_request, schedule, workflow_dispatch, etc.
- Workflows — Event-driven YAML workflows.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | WorkOS | GitHub Actions |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | — | gh run CLI |
| SDK | workos-go, @workos-inc/authkit-nextjs, workos-java, workos-node, workos-php, workos-python, workos-ruby | @actions/* toolkit |
| REST | WorkOS REST API | GitHub Actions REST API |
| GRAPHQL | — | GitHub GraphQL (Actions) |
| OTHER | Webhooks | Actions Marketplace, Actions Tab (Web), workflow_* webhooks, Workflow YAML |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to WorkOS and GitHub Actions are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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