Midships Keycloak vs Microsoft Entra External ID

Entra External ID fits Microsoft estates. Your customers may need more than that.

Microsoft Entra External ID, the successor to Azure AD B2C, bills by monthly active user with premium add-ons. Midships Keycloak gives regulated enterprises a customer identity platform they own, cloud neutral and on premises capable.

Compare five-year cost ↗Build or buy? ↗

At a glance

Midships Keycloak vs Microsoft Entra External ID.

	Microsoft Entra External ID	Midships Keycloak
Pricing basis	Monthly active users, with premium add-ons such as SMS and data residency¹	Annual subscription. No per identity or per device fees
Who operates it	Microsoft, as a cloud service	Your team, Midships Guardian, or both
Where it runs	Microsoft cloud	Any cloud, or on premises
Data residency	Go-Local add-on, currently Australia and Japan¹	Wherever you deploy it
Standards	OIDC, OAuth 2.0, SAML 2.0	OIDC, OAuth 2.0, SAML 2.0²
Exit	Re-implement on another platform	Open source core you can keep running without Midships

As at October 2026. Numbered references link to the vendor's own documentation below.

01, Cost

Billed on monthly activity, plus add-ons.

Entra External ID bills on monthly active users, with premium add-ons billed separately, including SMS authentication and Go-Local data residency. Midships Keycloak is a subscription on the deployment, independent of how many customers sign in.

02, Control

Cloud neutral matters in banking.

Entra External ID runs in Microsoft cloud. Many banks run multiple clouds, keep core identity on premises, or face residency rules beyond the regions an add-on covers. Midships Keycloak runs wherever your architecture and your regulator require.

Verdict

Which is right for you?

Choose Entra External ID if

you are standardised on Microsoft, your customer numbers are moderate, and residency needs fit Microsoft's regions.

Choose Midships Keycloak if

you need cloud neutrality, on premises deployment, or cost that does not track monthly activity.

Common questions

Frequently asked questions.

Is Entra External ID the same as Azure AD B2C?

Microsoft positions Entra External ID as the next generation of its customer identity service, succeeding Azure AD B2C.

Sources

How we sourced this comparison.

Statements about other vendors come from their public documentation and pricing pages, checked in October 2026. Vendors change products and prices; confirm current terms with them. Product names are trademarks of their owners and are used only to identify those products. If you believe anything here is inaccurate, tell us at sales@midships.io and we will correct it.

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