Ending the Absurdity of SSO Tax – Introducing ssotax.org
Ever heard of the SSO Tax? In short, it's a tactic where software vendors bully security-conscious companies to upgrade to costly enterprise plans. They do this by gating SSO (Single Sign-On) features behind their priciest options, causing companies to pay up to 70 times their standard rates. As a former CTO at a VC-backed and security-conscious company, I've faced the tough choice of skipping costly enterprise upgrades, even when SSO was crucial. Take a look at Notion: to access SSO, they casually double their standard pricing. Imagine buying a Tesla and being charged extra to unlock full…
Ending the Absurdity of SSO Tax – Introducing ssotax.org launched on November 20, 2023 with 14 votes, #1,348 of 4,332 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 2 years on.
In plain words
ssotax.org is a directory that catalogs software vendors' pricing practices around Single Sign-On (SSO) features. It documents instances where companies gate SSO access behind expensive enterprise plans, sometimes charging up to 70 times standard rates. The site is designed for security-conscious companies and IT decision-makers evaluating software purchases. It aims to increase transparency around what the creator calls the "SSO Tax"—a practice where essential security features command premium pricing.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
A list of vendors that treat single sign-on as a luxury feature, not a core security requirement.
The SSO Tax stands for the practice of SaaS vendors to upcharge for Single-Sign-On (“SSO”). As a consequence, features like SSO, and more specifically OpenID Connect or SAML, are often restricted to enterprise-level subscriptions. This pricing strategy makes it prohibitively expensive for non-enterprise businesses to centrally manage their employees’ access. Find out more about the why . The following list includes vendors that have SSO locked up in an subscription tier that is more than 10% more expensive than the standard price. Imagine buying a car and the manufacturer asks for an extra payment to unlock 100% of the braking power. Not offering security features if they already exist in…from ssotax.org
In the maker’s words, at launch
Ever heard of the SSO Tax? In short, it's a tactic where software vendors bully security-conscious companies to upgrade to costly enterprise plans. They do this by gating SSO (Single Sign-On) features behind their priciest options, causing companies to pay up to 70 times their standard rates. As a former CTO at a…
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Skip the SSO Tax, access your user data with OSS2023 · github.com · ▲220As the former CTO of an Insurtech and Fintech startup I always had the “pleasure” to keep regulators and auditors happy. Think of documenting who has access to what, quarterly access reviews, yearly audits and so on… Like many others we couldn’t justify the Enterprise-plan for every SaaS tool to simply get access to SSO and SCIM/SAML APIs. For Notion alone the cost would have nearly doubled to $14 per user per month. That’s insane! Mostly unknown to people, SSO Tax also limits access to APIs that are used for managing user access (SCIM/SAML). This has proven to be an incredibly…
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