For years, the IAM tradeoff looked obvious: SaaS was easier to start, and on-prem was cheaper only if you were willing to absorb a lot of setup and integration work.
That is changing.
SaaS IAM still looks simple on day one, but the cost usually grows with every employee, partner, customer, and feature tier. On-prem IAM still needs ownership, but the software delivery cycle now looks very different. LLM-assisted delivery, better automation, and reusable integration patterns are cutting down the work that used to make self-hosted identity slow and expensive to adopt.
That is where Aerobase fits: a Keycloak-based on-prem platform with a fixed-price support model and an Identity Agent designed to reduce repeated application integration work.
The shift is simple: the SaaS meter keeps climbing with every identity you add, while the old on-prem rollout penalty has shrunk — modern automation and reusable setup patterns now handle most of the work that used to make self-hosted identity slow. Fixed-price on-prem with a reusable integration layer wins the math sooner than most teams expect.
The SaaS problem is not just the sticker price
The problem with SaaS IAM is not only that it costs money. It is that the cost usually scales in the same direction as the business:
- more employees
- more partner access
- more customer identities
- more advanced feature needs
That means identity stops feeling like a stable platform cost and starts behaving like a tax on growth.
The old objection to on-prem is weaker now
The historical objection to on-prem IAM was always the same: deployment and integration would take too long.
That objection matters less when the software development cycle itself is changing.
Teams now have much better tooling for:
- environment setup
- configuration generation
- migration planning
- test creation
- rollout automation
That does not remove the need for engineers. It does make the old integration penalty much smaller than it used to be.
Where the Identity Agent fits
Even if the platform is on-prem, costs stay high if every application still needs custom identity work.
That is the point of the Aerobase Identity Agent. It creates a reusable integration boundary so claims mapping, role translation, provisioning behavior, and workflow logic do not have to be rebuilt every time a new application arrives.
That is what makes IAM cost drop more dramatically:
- the pricing model is flatter
- deployment is simpler
- application onboarding is more reusable
Bottom line
SaaS IAM gets expensive because pricing scales with growth. On-prem IAM gets more attractive when support pricing is fixed and the software delivery cycle makes deployment and integration much simpler than before.
That is the Aerobase story in one line: lower recurring cost, simpler rollout, and less repeated integration work.
If you want the pricing-side argument, read the Okta and OneLogin pricing benchmark. If you want to evaluate the platform directly, start with the Aerobase downloads or the plans page.