Breaking Free from the “SSO Tax”

May 8, 2025

Single Sign-On (SSO) provides a range of productivity and security benefits for organizations that adopt this convenient authentication method across multiple applications. Employees are freed from the hassle of having to log in more than once. SSO also reduces security risks related to identity and access management (IAM). However, these benefits typically come with an unexpected cost: the so-called “SSO Tax.”

The SSO Tax is the added cost organizations pay when a SaaS vendor locks Single Sign-On behind a higher-priced subscription tier, meaning teams must upgrade their entire plan, often at 2–5x the base cost, just to unlock secure login functionality. It isn’t an actual government tax, but a licensing cost imposed by the vendor. This article discusses the origins of the SSO Tax, how it works, and how you can avoid paying it.

A Brief Overview of SSO

Many of us use SSO every day, perhaps without realizing it. SSO is an authentication service that enables a user to log into one system, and then have that initial authentication carry over to allow access to other systems. With SSO, users have no need to enter their login credentials again. It’s a federated identity management (FIM) technology that allows users to be authenticated by other services without exposing the user’s password.

SSO requires integration between an identity provider (IdP), such as Okta, Entra, or Ping, and the Service Provider (SP), a third-party app like Calendly or GitHub. This integration is done by exchanging certificates between the providers, allowing them to verify that the “authentication approval” is signed by the certificate of that third party.

What Is the SSO Tax?

Legacy SSO does not work with every version of a piece of software. It is usually necessary to upgrade to a higher licensing tier to get the functionality required to implement legacy SSO.

For instance, Airtable’s Team plan, which costs $20 per user/month, does not support SSO. To add SSO, you have to move to the $45 per user/month Business plan, a 125% increase in cost (Source: https://sso.tax).

How Much Does the SSO Tax Cost You?

The SSO tax can add up quickly, and it doesn’t always show up as a clean tier upgrade. Calendly is a good example: its Standard plan runs roughly $10–12 per user/month, but SSO isn’t included at that level. To get it, you either add SSO as a roughly $36-per-user/year add-on to the Teams plan (about $16/user/month on its own), or skip the add-on entirely and move to a custom-quoted Enterprise plan starting at $15,000/year, regardless of team size.

Either path adds real cost that has nothing to do with the number of users who actually need federated login, it’s a structural markup for a security feature, not a reflection of what it costs the vendor to support it. The average enterprise runs over 300 SaaS applications (305, per Zylo’s 2026 SaaS Management Index), so even a modest per-app SSO tax compounds into a substantial annual cost once it’s multiplied across an entire software stack.

How to Avoid the SSO Tax

A new generation of SSO solutions enables you to escape the SSO tax. As exemplified by Unixi, they achieve SSO without requiring integration between an application, the IdP, and an SSO server. Rather, using a browser extension and a decentralized, passwordless approach to authentication, these new SSO solutions enable universal SSO on whatever subscription tier already matches your actual needs. There’s no need to upgrade to a higher licensing tier to get the integration functionality. No more SSO tax. SaaS vendors don’t have to integrate with an IdP, either.

Further Benefits to the New Approach

The new approach to SSO delivers benefits beyond saving on the SSO tax. By avoiding integration, it enables far more pervasive deployment of SSO. Any unmanaged or “shadow” SaaS can be included in SSO without integration. No integration also means faster adoption of SSO and no integration costs. There should also be a reduction in credential theft, and systemic risks to SSO become lower as well.

Conclusion

Legacy SSO comes with a tax in the form of higher software licensing fees. To get SSO, you have to upgrade, and that can be quite expensive in organizations with many users and applications. New modes of SSO, such as passwordless and integration-less approaches to authentication, make it possible to achieve SSO on lower tiers of existing software. There’s no need to upgrade, and hence no SSO tax.

Wondering how much your current SaaS stack is actually costing you? Calculate your potential savings with our SSO Tax estimator and see how much you could reclaim.

FAQs

What is the SSO Tax?

The SSO Tax is the extra cost a business pays when a SaaS vendor requires an upgrade to a higher-priced subscription tier just to enable Single Sign-On, rather than including it at the base or standard level.

Which SaaS vendors charge extra for SSO?

Many popular SaaS platforms gate SSO behind premium or enterprise tiers. Airtable, for example, requires moving from its $20/user/month Team plan to its $45/user/month Business plan, a 125% increase, just to unlock SSO.

How much can the SSO Tax cost per year?

It depends on the vendor and team size, but the markup is rarely small, often a 100%+ increase in per-user cost, or, in some cases, a flat five-figure annual contract minimum regardless of headcount. Multiplied across the 300+ SaaS applications a typical enterprise runs, the cumulative cost of paying the SSO Tax across a whole software stack can run into the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars annually.

How can I avoid the SSO Tax entirely?

Newer SSO approaches, like passwordless, browser-based Universal SSO, don't require an application to integrate with an identity provider at all. Because there's no per-app integration to unlock, there's no vendor-imposed tier requirement tied to enabling SSO, you can extend SSO coverage to an application on whatever subscription tier you're already paying for.

Does paying the SSO Tax guarantee SSO coverage across your entire SaaS stack?

No. Even after upgrading to a higher tier and paying the SSO Tax, that coverage only extends to the specific applications you've paid to integrate, it does nothing for the unmanaged or "shadow" SaaS tools employees sign up for outside procurement, which never get wired into SSO in the first place. Paying the tax solves the cost problem for one app at a time; it doesn't solve the coverage gap across a company's full software footprint.

Chad Gerstensang is the co-founder and CEO of Unixi, where he is dedicated to revolutionizing the Identity and Access Management (IAM) landscape. He brings an extensive background in offensive security, having previously served as Managing Director and Offensive Security Team Leader at HUB Security, and Head of Offensive Security at Comsec. Drawing from years of hands-on experience directing Red Teams, penetration testing, and risk assessments, he led the development of Unixi’s Universal SSO solution to solve the structural vulnerabilities traditional tools miss. Unixi provides seamless, secure access to 100% of SaaS applications without requiring integrations – empowering modern organizations to eliminate unmanaged blind spots, completely neutralize residual accounts, and take absolute control of their SaaS ecosystems. Learn more at unixi.io.