Clarification on Free Plan MAU limit: Immediate HARD block or Grace Period?

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Hi Auth0 Community,

I am looking for clarification on the behavior of the 25,000 MAU limit on the Free Plan. I’ve read several existing community threads regarding what happens when hitting this limit, but the answers seem conflicting.

I need a definitive answer to the following questions:

  1. The 25,001st Login: What exactly happens to the 25,001st unique user’s login attempt? Does Auth0 immediately reject the request (Hard block), or is there a grace period where logins still succeed while warning emails are sent?

  2. Error Response: If it is an immediate hard block, what are the specific HTTP status code and error payload/message returned by Auth0?

  3. Credit Card on Free Plan: If we stay on the Free Plan but have a credit card on file (e.g., for custom domains), does this prevent the block or does the hard limit still apply strictly?

Thank you in advance for the clarification!

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Hi @wodn5428

Welcome to the Auth0 Community!

The official expected course of action does not seem to be documented for such cases, of 25k MAU limit exceeded on Free tenants, as this has been configured to allow enough room for the limit to be hard to reach. If this limit is reached however:

  • tenant Admins will be notified via email and will receive warnings that the MAU limit has been exceeded, which are reflected for the previous month, please see Auth0 Quota Exceeded;

  • users will not be logged out if the limit is exceeded;

  • for cases of existing subscriptions ( B2C Essentials as an example ) where you have your credit card set on the tenant, exceeding the limit for three consecutive months will cause the subscription to automatically be upgraded to ensure no service disruption. On a Free tenant you should not be upgraded automatically, even with the credit card set, however you do risk :

    • service disruptions if the limit is exceeded over a couple of months;
    • new user creation should not be interrupted, however logins past the 25k mark will lead to getting blocked.

Exceeding by a small amount and not regularly will not lead to any instant blockage, as the main objective would be to observe patterns and provide solutions to accommodate a larger number of users. I your business grows to the point that it regularly risks hitting the limit or is exceeding it, I highly recommend getting in contact with our Sales team to determine the best course of action for your particular use-case. Even if you have higher seasonal traffic, it could be worth upgrading your subscription for the months of higher usage and then downgrading when the elevated limits are not required .

Hope this helped, let us know if you have other concerns or issues that we can assist you with!

Best regards,
Gerald

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