Okta for AI Agent Security: Features, Pricing, and WorkOS Alternatives

As AI agents gain autonomy and access to sensitive enterprise systems, securing their identity and authentication has become a critical infrastructure challenge. Okta, the established identity management giant, has entered this space with Okta for AI Agents, part of what it calls an identity security fabric, and the Cross App Access (XAA) protocol.  

While Okta brings more than a decade of enterprise identity experience and a customer base of over 18,000 organizations, its approach reflects the complexity, cost, and bureaucracy that characterize legacy enterprise software. For modern B2B SaaS teams building AI-powered applications, this raises an important question: do you need Okta’s enterprise overhead, or can you achieve enterprise-grade security with developer-first simplicity?

In this article, we’ll examine Okta’s agentic security offering and compare it to WorkOS’s modern approach to AI agent authentication.

What is Okta?

Okta is a publicly traded identity and access management (IAM) platform founded in 2009. The company built its reputation on workforce identity and customer identity (CIAM) solutions, providing SSO, MFA, and directory services to large organizations.

In response to the emerging agentic AI market, Okta has introduced a set of capabilities under Okta for AI Agents and its Identity Security Fabric concept, aiming to bring AI agents into a unified identity control plane.   This includes Cross App Access (XAA) for agent-to-app delegation and Auth for GenAI (delivered via the Auth0 platform) for securing GenAI applications.  

Okta’s target audience has always been enterprise IT departments and security teams at large organizations with complex compliance requirements. Their agentic security approach reflects this DNA: comprehensive policy management, identity governance, and deep integration with existing Okta infrastructure.

Key Features and Capabilities

Cross App Access (XAA) Protocol

Okta’s marquee innovation for agentic security is the Cross App Access (XAA) protocol, designed to enable AI agents and applications to securely access multiple downstream services on behalf of users. XAA extends OAuth to bring centralized access control and visibility to agent-driven and app-to-app interactions.  

XAA aims to solve the delegation problem: how does an agent prove it’s acting with authorized user permission across different systems? Okta’s docs describe trust chains, consent flows, and an emerging standard (ID-JAG) to make delegation auditable end-to-end.  

The catch is that XAA requires participating applications to implement the protocol and is being rolled out through early access and partner ecosystems rather than being universally supported today.

Identity Security Posture Management (ISPM)

Okta Identity Security Posture Management (ISPM) extends Okta’s governance model to both human and non-human identities, including AI agents, service accounts, and API keys.  

ISPM discovers non-human identities (NHIs), analyzes permissions and misconfigurations, and helps security teams manage risk. For organizations already standardized on Okta, this folds agent identities into familiar governance workflows—but also imports the same complexity and administrative overhead.

Auth for GenAI (Developer Preview)

On the Auth0 side of Okta’s portfolio, Auth for GenAI is available in Developer Preview. It’s positioned as a toolkit for securing GenAI apps and AI agents, with features like token management, secure patterns for AI workloads, and integrations with frameworks such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, Google GenKit, and Vercel AI SDK.  

The Developer Preview status is important: some of Okta’s most AI-specific capabilities are still evolving. APIs, SDKs, and features may change prior to GA, and production-readiness is not yet guaranteed.

Enterprise Compliance and Governance

True to its enterprise roots, Okta offers comprehensive compliance certifications (SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR) and a broad governance stack, including Identity Governance and Privileged Access.   Universal Directory provides centralized identity management, while policy engines enforce fine-grained access controls and approval workflows.

These are table-stakes features for enterprise IAM, but they come wrapped in Okta’s notoriously complex administration model and modular pricing.

How Okta Handles Agent Identity and Authentication

Okta’s emerging model for agent identity treats AI agents and non-human identities as first-class objects within its unified identity platform. Okta for AI Agents and ISPM are pitched as a way to bring AI agents “into the identity security fabric” with lifecycle management, risk analysis, and visibility.  

In practice, the architecture looks like this:

• Agents are represented as non-human identities with their own credentials, policies, and permissions.
• Agents authenticate using OAuth 2.0 / OIDC plus XAA extensions to obtain tokens that represent both their own identity and delegated user permissions.  
• Authorization decisions and audit events flow through Okta’s existing policy engine and logging systems.
  

This can be powerful if you’re already deeply invested in Okta. However, it also means inheriting Okta’s architectural decisions, operational complexity, and dependency on their entire stack. For cross-application access, XAA introduces token chaining and consent management—but requires each integrated application to speak XAA, turning adoption into a coordination and vendor-lock-in problem.

Pricing and Plans

Okta’s pricing reflects its enterprise positioning and complexity.

• Workforce Identity Cloud “Starter” begins at $6/user/month, and “Essentials” at $17/user/month, with annual contracts and a $1,500/year minimum.  
• Identity Governance typically adds $9–$11/user/month, according to multiple third-party breakdowns.  
  

Industry analyses and AWS Marketplace listings confirm the $1,500 annual contract minimum and note that advanced features and add-ons can push effective per-user pricing significantly higher.  

Critically, pricing for agentic security features like XAA and Auth for GenAI is not publicly disclosed. Access to these capabilities typically goes through sales-led early access or enterprise contracts. For startups and mid-market SaaS companies, this opaque, sales-driven model can be prohibitive, especially when you’re just beginning to build AI agent capabilities.

There is an Okta / Auth0 free developer tier, but production use of Okta’s workforce identity and XAA-based features still requires paid, annual contracts.

Okta vs. WorkOS

What Okta Offers

Okta provides a full-stack IAM platform and is extending that platform to AI agents via Okta for AI Agents, ISPM, XAA, and Auth for GenAI.

However, Okta comes with significant tradeoffs:

• Enterprise complexity and steep learning curves
• Opaque, sales-driven pricing and minimum annual commitments
• Agentic features (Auth for GenAI, Okta for AI Agents) that are still in Developer Preview or early access, not broadly GA
  

The net result is exhaustive governance at the expense of developer velocity and simplicity.

Why WorkOS Is the Proven Choice for AI Agent Authentication

Enterprise capabilities with developer simplicity

WorkOS delivers enterprise-grade compliance (SOC 2, HIPAA) and comprehensive authentication features (SSO, Directory Sync, MFA, audit logs) without Okta’s complexity and pricing opacity.

Where Okta often requires sales calls, multi-week onboarding, and complex admin training, WorkOS can be integrated and shipped to production in hours.

You get enterprise capabilities without the enterprise overhead.

Production-ready today, not Developer Preview

While Auth for GenAI is in Developer Preview and Okta for AI Agents / XAA are being rolled out via early access programs, WorkOS’s authentication infrastructure is already battle-tested and production-ready.

Thousands of B2B SaaS companies rely on WorkOS for customer-facing authentication today—and that same proven platform secures AI agent workloads. You’re not betting on experimental features; you’re building on stable infrastructure.

Transparent, predictable pricing

WorkOS pricing is public, straightforward, and designed for modern SaaS: you can start building immediately without talking to sales, and costs scale predictably with your business.

No hidden modules and no surprise enterprise quote negotiations. For startups and growth-stage companies, this predictability is critical for planning and budgeting.

WorkOS pricing is generous and transparent.

Modern developer experience

Okta’s platform reflects its heritage serving enterprise IT: administrative consoles, complex policy models, and documentation aimed at IAM professionals. WorkOS is built for engineers shipping product:

• Clean APIs and SDKs for modern stacks
• A focus on fast, copy-paste-able examples
• Integration patterns designed for product teams, not just IT admins
  

You ship enterprise auth features without becoming an identity specialist.

The Right Choice for Modern Teams

If you’re a legacy Fortune 500 enterprise with tens of thousands of workforce identities, deep Okta investment, and dedicated IAM teams, extending Okta to your AI agents might make sense—you’re already paying the complexity tax.

But if you’re a modern B2B SaaS company building AI-powered products, WorkOS delivers enterprise-grade security without Okta’s bureaucracy, cost, and vendor lock-in.

You get production-ready agent authentication today, not a patchwork of Developer Preview and early access features.

Getting Started with Okta

Implementing Okta for AI agent security generally looks like:

1. Engaging sales to scope an enterprise contract (often with a $1,500/year minimum and annual billing).  
2. Configuring Workforce Identity, ISPM, and relevant modules (Auth0 / Auth for GenAI, XAA) in the admin consoles.  
3. Integrating your applications and agents with Okta via OIDC/OAuth and, where applicable, XAA flows.
   

Documentation for Auth for GenAI and XAA is available through Okta and Auth0 developer portals, but the preview/EA status means APIs and behaviors may change. Time-to-value is often measured in weeks or months, not hours.

For developers used to modern SaaS tools where you sign up, drop in an SDK, and ship the same day, Okta’s enterprise sales and implementation motion represents significant friction.

Final Thoughts

Okta’s entry into agentic security brings identity management expertise and the innovative XAA protocol into the AI agent conversation. For massive enterprises already committed to Okta’s ecosystem, this approach offers familiarity and governance continuity.

But it also reflects everything that frustrates modern development teams about legacy enterprise software: opaque pricing, experimental features, complex administration, and vendor lock-in.

WorkOS delivers enterprise auth without Okta’s complexity and cost.

Modern B2B SaaS teams choose WorkOS because it provides the same enterprise-grade security and compliance that Okta promises, but with transparent pricing, production-ready features, and a developer experience built for speed. You get enterprise capabilities without enterprise bureaucracy.

For teams building production AI applications that enterprises will trust, WorkOS provides the proven, developer-friendly foundation your AI agents need—without the overhead of legacy IAM platforms. While Okta experiments with Developer Preview and early access features, WorkOS customers are shipping enterprise-grade agent authentication today.

Ready to add enterprise-grade authentication to your AI agents? Explore WorkOS’s authentication platform and ship in hours, not months.