WorkOS is Free (up to 1M MAU). Consortium is a self-hosted alternative at $2.99/mo. Here's when each makes sense.
| Consortium | WorkOS | |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Self-hosted, your infra | Managed SaaS (cloud only) |
| Data location | Your server, your disk | WorkOS's cloud |
| Free tier | 3 tenants | Free |
| Pro pricing | $2.99/mo | Free (up to 1M MAU) |
| Dependencies | None (single binary + SQLite) | N/A (managed) |
| Setup time | ~30 seconds | Account signup |
| Dashboard | Built-in at /ui | Cloud dashboard |
| License | BSL 1.1 | Proprietary SaaS |
Consortium is a single Go binary with embedded SQLite. Install it with one command, and you are running in under a minute. Your data stays on your server.
curl -fsSL https://stockyard.dev/consortium/install.sh | sh
Before choosing between Consortium and WorkOS, consider what happens when you need to leave. WorkOS exports vary in completeness — some fields, some history, some metadata may not come with you. Consortium stores everything in a single SQLite file. Leaving means copying that file. This is not a hypothetical concern: the average team changes tools every 18 to 24 months.
Architecturally, Consortium and WorkOS could not be more different. WorkOS runs on distributed cloud infrastructure with load balancers, managed databases, CDNs, and redundancy across availability zones. Consortium is a single process writing to a single file on a single disk. That sounds fragile until you realize that SQLite handles more concurrent readers than most web applications will ever need, and WAL mode means reads never block writes.
Switching from WorkOS to Consortium is straightforward for most teams. Export your data from WorkOS (most services offer CSV or JSON export), then POST each record to Consortium's API. A migration script that reads the export and writes to /api/ endpoints typically takes less than 50 lines of code. The reverse migration is equally simple — Consortium's SQLite database is a standard file you can query with any SQLite client.
Single binary. Free to start. $2.99/mo for Pro.