Frequently asked questions

Short answers to the questions we hear most often.

What does Kiavi actually do?: Kiavi handles signup, login, sessions, social login, email codes, and passkeys for your application. Your app redirects users to a hosted login page; we send them back signed in.
How is pricing calculated?: You pay €0.01 per Monthly Active User (MAU). An MAU is a user who signs in or refreshes a session at least once in a calendar month. Optional warmup tiers eliminate cold starts for production apps.
What is "warmup" and do I need it?: Warmup keeps a dedicated authentication instance hot so login response times stay fast. You only need it for production apps that care about latency. Dev and staging can run on shared cold-started instances at no extra cost.
Where is my data stored?: In the EU. Your authentication instance runs on Scaleway in Paris. We do not replicate user data outside of the EU. See the security and subprocessors pages for details.
Is Kiavi GDPR compliant?: Yes. Kiavi is built around GDPR from the ground up: EU hosting, data minimization, a default DPA, a published subprocessor list, and clear data export and deletion APIs.
What does "built on a proven open source base" actually mean?: The authentication core of Kiavi is Better Auth, a well-established open source authentication library used in production by other tech companies. Instead of reinventing the protocol layer, we run a carefully configured Better Auth deployment per tenant and add the operational pieces most teams end up building themselves: a user management UI, daily and monthly active user dashboards, and a full audit log of authentication events. You get the transparency and battle-testing of open source, with a managed service on top.
Are you ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certified?: Not yet. We are at the start of our formal compliance journey and are actively working towards both ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II. The underlying controls (EU hosting, per-tenant isolation, encryption in transit and at rest, audit logging, and a documented incident response process) are already in place. Until certification is achieved we do not claim to be certified; the current status is always reflected on the security page.
Do you support passwordless login?: Yes. Kiavi is passkey-first. Email codes and social login are also supported. Kiavi does not offer password-based login.
Which SDKs do you offer?: A browser SDK for any web framework, a React Native SDK for mobile apps, and a server SDK for Node, Bun, Deno, and edge runtimes. See the docs for integration guides.
Can I self-host or run Kiavi on-premise?: On-premise and dedicated deployments are available for enterprise customers. Get in touch via the contact page if this is a requirement. If you really want to get your hands dirty, you can always choose to implement Better Auth as Kiavi is a pre-configured Better Auth deployment.
What happens to my users if I cancel?: You can export user data via the API at any time. After cancellation, we keep data for a short retention window (defined in the DPA), then permanently delete it.
Is there a free tier?: Pay-as-you-go pricing means small projects pay only a few cents per month. There is no separate free tier; the free signup credit covers most early development.

Did not find your question? Read the docs or get in touch.