Okta’s pricing page lists Workforce Identity Starter at $6 per user per month. That’s the number that shows up in search results and comparison articles. It’s also not what a small team actually pays, because the same pricing page requires a $1,500 annual contract minimum — a floor underneath the per-user math that doesn’t show up until you do the arithmetic yourself.
At $6/user/month, $1,500/year works out to $125/month. That’s the amount you’re paying regardless of headcount, until your per-user total crosses it.
| Team size | $6/user/mo × headcount | You actually pay | Effective price per user |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 people | $30/mo | $125/mo (minimum) | $25/user/mo |
| 10 people | $60/mo | $125/mo (minimum) | $12.50/user/mo |
| 15 people | $90/mo | $125/mo (minimum) | $8.33/user/mo |
| 21 people | $126/mo | $126/mo | $6/user/mo (minimum stops binding) |
Below about 21 people, the listed $6 price is fiction — you’re paying the $1,500/year floor, and the smaller your team, the further the effective price climbs above the sticker. A 5-person team is paying just over four times the listed rate.
Professional and Enterprise tiers go further: both are quote-only, no published price at all.
The listed price only tells you what you pay above the floor. Below it, the number that matters is the $1,500/year minimum divided by your headcount, not the per-user rate.
The minimum doesn’t move with team size. A 3-person team and an 18-person team both pay $1,500/year on the Starter tier — the second team is just getting a much better deal on it.
It’s a floor built for a certain size of company. Nothing wrong with that; Okta is a mature product built for teams that can absorb the minimum without noticing it. The question worth asking is whether that’s you yet.
Rostid is $5 a seat, flat, with no minimum — the smallest team pays the same per-seat price as the largest. No annual contract, no sales call.
We’re in early access. Join the waitlist and we’ll send one email when it opens. If you’re weighing the wider field, we also wrote up Okta alternatives for small teams and JumpCloud alternatives.
Okta pricing: okta.com/pricing, retrieved August 2026 — Workforce Identity Starter listed at $6/user/month; page states “$1,500 annual contract minimum required.” The math above is arithmetic on those two published figures, not a third-party estimate.
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