Descope vs Ping Identity

Flexible, developer-friendly CIAM

Easily create and customize user journeys for any app (web, mobile) with full developer and IT control.
Provide a native, frictionless, and personalized experience to end users.
Empower end users with delegated administration and self-service.
Transparent pricing and stellar support for orgs of all sizes.

Powering auth for hundreds of customers and thousands of developers

Why customers choose Descope over Ping Identity

Frictionless developer experience

Use our client, backend, and mobile SDKs combined with Descope Flows to create user journeys for any app in no time. Modify user journeys without touching your codebase.

Seamless IT experience

Abstract away identity complexity for IT teams with no / low code workflows and native support for standard protocols – while also providing great developer experience.

Complete user management

Auth is just the beginning with Descope – seamlessly manage users and tenants, empower end users with delegated admin, and simplify SSO provisioning for tenant admins.

Flexibility

Make Descope fit into your app’s environment rather than the other way round. Any method, any MFA, rip-and-replace or augment – our platform is flexible enough to align with any environment.

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A detailed comparison


Multi-tenancy
Multi-tenancy	Descope is multi-tenant by design and can support advanced B2B enterprise requirements. Tenants can easily be created and managed from the console or Management SDK. Easily control session management, password settings, and permission controls at a tenant level.	With PingFederate, control session management and password settings at a tenant level. Permission controls are complicated to implement at a tenant level in the Ping Dashboard, but can be done programmatically.
Multi-tenancy	“This is the fastest implementation of RBAC in a product I’ve ever seen.” - Co-Founder and CEO
SSO
SSO	Strong support for both SAML and OIDC SSO with full self-service configuration. Use identity federation to unify customer identities across all business-facing apps. Create custom onboarding journeys for each app.	Static SSO that lacks the ability to pass custom user and tenant parameters in real-time. Lacks use cases such as routing to multiple IdPs in real-time and IdP-initiated SSO without the user needing to input their email.
SSO	"Every B2B SaaS app needs to think about SAML and access control from Day 1. Descope helps us offer these capabilities to our customers with minimal engineering effort." - Co-Founder
SSO provisioning
SSO provisioning	Descope’s SSO self-service flows allow your customers to easily set up their app with their own IdPs.	No self service provisioning supported. Customers must interact with Ping Identity admins in order to correctly configure SSO.
User journeys
User journeys	No-code workflows to create and customize flows such as user invites, step-up auth, user merging, and identity orchestration.	Non-workflow based approach to user authentication, much less flexible in developing user journeys. DaVinci exists as an add-on that does support creating workflows, but at an additional cost and requires additional implementation work.
User journeys	"The Descope Flows feature is exceptional and super intuitive! While we try to enhance customer experience, our own experience with Descope has been delightful.” - Co-Founder
Delegated administration
Delegated administration	Self-service, embeddable widgets for a variety of end user actions: user and role mgmt, access key mgmt, audits, and user profiles.	No delegated admin support. Creating self-service experiences for end users needs to be done in-house or with lots of custom implementation work.
Risk-based MFA
Risk-based MFA	With Flows and connectors, you can easily create branching user paths based on risk scores ingested from 3rd-party fraud services like reCAPTCHA.	Risk-based MFA is more complicated to implement because of the lack of built in features like bot detection and impossible traveler detection. Setting up risk-based MFA is restrictive since conditions can’t be easily created based on native or third-party risk scores.
Authorization
Authorization	Add fine-grained and tenant-aware authorization (RBAC, ReBAC, ABAC) capabilities to your app. Utilize custom JWT claims to define access controls for your app. Assign user roles and permissions based on workflow conditions.	Add fine-grained and tenant-aware authorization (RBAC and ReBAC) capabilities to your app. Unable to assign user roles and permissions based on workflow conditions.
SCIM provisioning
SCIM provisioning	Automated or on-demand user provisioning and deprovisioning. Integrations with major IAM systems ensure synchronization of user data across systems. Self service SCIM provisioning with access key widget.	Automated or on-demand user provisioning and deprovisioning. Integrations with major IAM systems ensure synchronization of user data across systems.
Future-proofing
Future-proofing	Workflow-based approach that makes it easier to modify user journeys without redeploying the app.	Non-workflow based approach to user authentication, requires code to be changed and re-deployed if user journey needs to change. DaVinci exists as an add-on that does support creating workflows, but at an additional cost and requires additional implementation work.