Security & Privacy / Customer Identity and Access Management Software
Microsoft Entra External ID is Microsoft's CIAM product for customer and external identity registration, authentication, authorization, access, and application sign-in experiences.
Buying snapshot
A compact view of who this tool fits, what it costs, and what to confirm before choosing it.
Product scope
CIAM for consumers and business customers in external tenants, plus B2B collaboration for external guests in workforce tenants. Basic is the core offer; premium meters have explicit tenant restrictions.
Product checked: Oct 6, 2026
Pricing plans
Pricing checked: Oct 6, 2026
Basic charges for usage above 50,000 MAUs. Linked tenants share the monthly active-user count. Premium add-ons have no free tier: SMS is USD 0.03/0.07/0.15/0.35 per attempt by country tier, M2M USD 0.001 per token and Go-Local USD 0.02 per MAU/month. Workforce-only guest Governance is USD 0.75 per MAU/month and GSA USD 2.50 per MAU/month through Entra Private Access. These East US USD estimates depend on the Azure agreement. Production billing requires a linked Azure subscription; customer and guest configurations have different entitlements.
Official pricing pageAdjust the license quantity to compare public recurring rates across the available plans.
License-rate calculation only. It excludes implementation, migration, training, support, taxes, add-ons, usage charges, and negotiated discounts unless they are explicitly included in the displayed public rate.
Calculate additional usage only where the plan allowance, unit, and period are established. Published rates are shown separately when an estimate is not available.
$0.03 USD / Monthly Active User
$0.03 USD / SMS phone verification attempt
Published rate only. The plan allowance, matching unit, or billing period is not fully established, so extra cost cannot be calculated. An unknown allowance is not zero. Check the base subscription and any required products separately.
$0.07 USD / SMS phone verification attempt
Published rate only. The plan allowance, matching unit, or billing period is not fully established, so extra cost cannot be calculated. An unknown allowance is not zero. Check the base subscription and any required products separately.
$0.15 USD / SMS phone verification attempt
Published rate only. The plan allowance, matching unit, or billing period is not fully established, so extra cost cannot be calculated. An unknown allowance is not zero. Check the base subscription and any required products separately.
$0.35 USD / SMS phone verification attempt
Published rate only. The plan allowance, matching unit, or billing period is not fully established, so extra cost cannot be calculated. An unknown allowance is not zero. Check the base subscription and any required products separately.
$0.00 USD / Token
Published rate only. The plan allowance, matching unit, or billing period is not fully established, so extra cost cannot be calculated. An unknown allowance is not zero. Check the base subscription and any required products separately.
$0.02 USD / Monthly Active User
Published rate only. The plan allowance, matching unit, or billing period is not fully established, so extra cost cannot be calculated. An unknown allowance is not zero. Check the base subscription and any required products separately.
$0.75 USD / Monthly Active User
Published rate only. The plan allowance, matching unit, or billing period is not fully established, so extra cost cannot be calculated. An unknown allowance is not zero. Check the base subscription and any required products separately.
$2.50 USD / Monthly Active User
Published rate only. The plan allowance, matching unit, or billing period is not fully established, so extra cost cannot be calculated. An unknown allowance is not zero. Check the base subscription and any required products separately.
This calculation compares usage with the published allowance on the same unit and period basis. It excludes taxes, negotiated terms, and unverified packaging conditions.
Product scope
Material capabilities are separated by their verified relationship to the target product.
External tenants; selected at creation and charged per MAU.
External tenants; charged per issued token.
Workforce business-guest scenarios, only via Private Access.
Workforce tenants only; not customer-tenant governance.
Per-attempt country-tier charges; linked Azure subscription required.
Method availability depends on primary authentication; SMS costs extra.
OIDC, OAuth2 and SAML app protocols; external-tenant SSO uses one sign-in domain.
External ID as identity provider.
External ID B2B in workforce tenant.
Tenant and sample-app setup.
Scoring method
The score uses the category-specific buying dimensions below and their displayed weights.
This page is based on public product information, official sources, structured feature data, and AI assessment. It is not a hands-on lab test unless explicitly stated. Confidence percentages describe our research indicators, not the probability that a claim is true or a measured accuracy rate.
Branded registration and sign-in plus OIDC, OAuth 2.0 and SAML federation cover the documented customer authentication paths; teams using SMS should pair it with another primary factor because SMS is limited to MFA.
Conditional Access and multifactor authentication support customer access policies, while SMS is an add-on for MFA rather than a first factor; buyers should select controls that match their sign-in policy.
Customer registration and REST authentication extensions support identity workflows that call application-defined business logic, while teams should map their profile and account-linking needs to the application design.
Go-Local offers exclusive data storage in Australia or Japan for external tenants, with the region fixed at tenant creation; buyers should settle residency needs before provisioning and confirm their consent obligations.
REST authentication extensions and listed Azure App Service and Visual Studio Code integrations provide defined application connection paths, while linked tenants share MAU counts for billing; teams should validate capacity and usage forecasts against their deployment design.
Marketplace app signals
These source-reported ratings describe a specific marketplace listing, integration, mobile app, or add-on. They do not automatically represent the complete software product.
AI assessment
The assessments below use the same buying criteria. Review their scores, confidence, fit, cautions, and conclusions alongside the sources.
AI assessment updated: Nov 1, 2026
Microsoft Entra External ID fits teams embedding branded registration and authentication in customer apps, with usage-based MAU billing and separate add-ons to check; choose authentication methods, tenant type and residency settings before deployment.
Research transparency
A compact record of the evidence used, what was not tested, and which conclusions still need verification.
Global Tool Radar generated this assessment from structured facts linked to public sources. No Global Tool Radar hands-on test is recorded in this page's research data. Any external hands-on assessment is identified separately and does not affect the Global Tool Radar score.
Conflict handlingUnresolved evidence is disclosed on the page; affected deterministic calculations and price schema are withheld when the conflict is blocking.
View research methodologySources checked
FAQ
No. Basic includes 50,000 monthly active users at no cost. The optional first-tenant evaluation lasts 30 days and does not need an Azure subscription.
No. SMS, M2M, Go-Local and guest add-ons are billed separately.
External tenants support customer applications. Workforce tenants support business-guest collaboration; guest Governance and GSA do not apply to customer tenants.
No. SMS is not a first-factor sign-in method in external tenants; it is available for MFA at additional cost.
Yes, select the Go-Local add-on when creating the external tenant. It incurs an additional MAU charge.
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