Ping Identityvs
Okta
Okta: Okta for a comparable enterprise platform without a 5,000 user floor
Ping Identity
Enterprise identity for workforce and customers, with a 5,000 user floor
As of 1 September 2026, Ping Identity starts at $3/month. An enterprise identity platform that now includes the former ForgeRock product line after the 2023 merger under Thoma Bravo ownership. Softwr lists it under Cybersecurity. Ping Identity is available on Web, Linux, Windows.
Overview
What Ping Identity does
Ping Identity provides single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, identity orchestration, API access management, directory services and identity governance across workforce and customer use cases. Thoma Bravo took Ping private in 2022 and acquired ForgeRock in 2023, merging the two into one portfolio; ForgeRock capabilities have been folded into the Ping platform and are no longer sold as an independent product line. The distinguishing capability is orchestration and deployment flexibility. Ping supports on premises, private cloud and SaaS deployment of the same identity capabilities, and its no-code orchestration engine lets an enterprise assemble authentication journeys that mix its own risk signals, third party verification vendors and step-up rules. Large banks, airlines and telcos with regulatory constraints on where identity data lives are the natural buyers, and they are the segment for which a purely SaaS competitor is not an option. The trade-off is stated openly in the price list. PingOne for Workforce is 3 US dollars per user per month on Essential and 6 dollars on Plus, both with a 5,000 user annual minimum, while PingOne for Customers starts at 35,000 dollars annually on Essential and 50,000 on Plus. A thousand-employee company therefore pays for five thousand users. Adaptive MFA sits in the Plus tier, so multi-factor authentication beyond the basics is a doubling of the per user rate rather than an included feature.
What people use it for
- A bank that must keep identity data on premises in one country while running SaaS identity elsewhere
- An airline or telco with tens of millions of customer identities needing a directory that holds that scale
- An enterprise assembling authentication journeys that call several external verification and risk vendors
- An existing ForgeRock customer deciding what its upgrade path looks like under Ping ownership
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Ping Identity.
- Workforce pricing carries a 5,000 user annual minimum, so an organisation with 800 staff pays for 5,000 and the effective per user cost is over six times the list rate.
- Adaptive multi-factor authentication is in the Plus tier only, doubling the per user price for a capability many buyers assume is standard in a modern identity platform.
- ForgeRock no longer exists as an independent product, so customers who chose it specifically to avoid Ping now face a roadmap set by the vendor they did not pick.
- Thoma Bravo ownership across both merged companies means the commercial priority is margin, and buyers report firmer renewal negotiations than they saw before 2022.
- The portfolio has overlapping components from three product lineages, so scoping a deployment requires vendor architects and the licensing conversation is more complicated than the price list implies.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Ping Identity
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- Ping IdentityvsKeycloak
Keycloak: Keycloak if you have the engineering capacity to run open source identity and want no licence cost
- Ping IdentityvsAuth0
Auth0: Auth0 for customer identity at a scale where a 35,000 USD annual entry price is not justifiable
Pricing
What Ping Identity costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
PingOne for Workforce Essential
$3 /mo
- Minimum 5,000 users billed annually
- Single sign-on and directory services
- OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML and SCIM
- Basic authentication policies
PingOne for Workforce Plus
$6 /mo
- Minimum 5,000 users billed annually
- Everything in Essential
- Adaptive multi-factor authentication
- Passwordless authentication
- Microsoft ecosystem integration
PingOne for Customers Essential
$35,000 /yr
- Flat annual fee
- No-code identity orchestration
- Unified customer profiles
- Authentication policies
PingOne for Customers Plus
$50,000 /yr
- Flat annual fee
- Everything in Essential
- Adaptive MFA and device management
- Transaction approvals
- API access management
Capabilities
Features
Single sign-on
Federation across cloud and on premises applications with SAML and OpenID Connect
Adaptive MFA
Risk-based step-up authentication, available in the Plus tier
Identity orchestration
No-code journey builder chaining internal and third party identity services
API access management
Authorisation and policy enforcement for API traffic
Directory services
Scalable identity store for large customer populations
Flexible deployment
The same capabilities on premises, in private cloud or as SaaS
ForgeRock capabilities
Former ForgeRock identity management folded into the Ping portfolio
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Can I still buy ForgeRock?
Not as a separate product. Ping acquired ForgeRock in 2023 and the capabilities are sold within the Ping portfolio. Existing customers should ask about the specific migration path for their components.
What is the real minimum spend?
PingOne for Workforce Essential is 3 USD per user per month with a 5,000 user annual minimum, so roughly 180,000 USD a year before anything else.
Is MFA included?
Basic authentication policies are in Essential. Adaptive MFA and passwordless require the Plus tier at 6 USD per user per month.
Keep looking
Where to go from Ping Identity
- Ping Identity alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Ping Identity pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Ping Identity badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Cybersecurity softwareThe full category
- Best Cybersecurity softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Cybersecurity software for
Compare Ping Identity with
- Entrust Identity as a Service
- Frontegg
- Speakeasy
- Akeyless
- authentik
- Logto
- Authelia
- Transmit Security
- Delinea
- Genetec Security Center
- VMware Carbon Black
- Rhombus Systems
- Yoti
- Avast One
- Chainguard
- Cosign
- CyberGhost VPN
- authentik
Other Cybersecurity software
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Open source9 researched notesCustomer identity platform built around passwordless and fraud signals
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Free, then $19,000/yr11 researched notesSigns and verifies container images and artifacts, with or without managing keys
Open source12 researched notesConsumer VPN operated from Romania and owned by Kape Technologies, with a no-logs claim audited by Deloitte.
From $2.19/mo14 researched notesOpen-source identity provider with flexible authentication flows
Free plan9 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Ping Identity, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Ping Identity
Ping Identity alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Ping Identity pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare Ping Identity
Put it head to head with anything we hold
Ping Identity badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
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