Twilio Authentication and Identity
Unlock world-class verification and onboarding
Verification and fraud prevention infrastructure that easily drops into your application to deliver a low-friction, high-conversion customer experience.
Free trial
No credit card required
Flexible pricing
A secure experience from end to end
Grow conversion without lowering your guard
Onboarding, login, recovery, and transaction approval shouldn't run on isolated checks. Combine verification, phone number intelligence, and risk signals with Twilio, so you can make better decisions across the customer lifecycle.
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Cut acquisition costs
Use carrier signals at signup to spot stolen-identity and synthetic-fraud attempts before they trigger verification spend, manual review, or downstream cleanup.
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Step up only when the risk changes
Carry context from the first login to later actions so you can respond when a device changes, a session looks unusual, or a user updates a phone number or payment destination.
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Keep good users moving
Use channel fallback to reduce retries, delivery issues, and avoidable drop-off during signup, login, and recovery.
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Confirm the phone number. Challenge only when needed.
Check whether a phone number is valid and likely belongs to the user you expect, then add OTP or stronger authentication only where more proof is needed.
6.4B+
verifications
42
languages translated within templates
1.3B+
fraud attempts blocked with Verify Fraud Guard
$160M+
saved for our customers using Verify Fraud Guard
So much more than 2FA
When you build a verification system with Twilio, you aren't just getting battle-tested authentication APIs — you're unlocking our entire Customer Engagement Platform.
Native SMS, WhatsApp, voice, and email serve as channels for verification fallback and all other communication flows. By bridging user identity with unified profiles in our Customer Data Platform, you can move away from one-off auth checks. And instead create secure, personalized experiences for every customer based on real-time context.
Get started with Twilio authentication and identity
Blog
Why stronger security should feel invisible
We’ll show you how to strengthen account security without adding unnecessary steps for every user.
Report
The User Authentication Decision Maker’s Guide
Best practices to choose the right solutions to protect your business and users from costly, reputation-damaging fraud.
Partners
Find a Twilio partner
Work with a Twilio partner to build and deploy an authentication solution with limited internal developer resources.
Get started for free today
Skip the custom build and use an authentication and identity solution that lets you add silent data validation and zero-effort verification to your existing flows and tech stack.
FAQs about Twilio authentication and identity products
To send one-time passcodes, you should use Twilio Verify. Our purpose-built API for verifications is fully managed, fully featured, and requires significantly less dev work than creating an OTP flow with SMS from scratch.
Verify handles token generation, state management, localized templates across 42 languages, and automated sender management (such as short codes and toll-free numbers). It also has built-in fraud prevention mechanisms like Fraud Guard to block SMS pumping fraud.
If you set up OTPs with the Programmable Messaging API, you will have to build, manage, and scale the logic yourself, while also navigating compliance.
Twilio Verify supports multiple channels, including:
- SMS
- Passkeys
- Silent Network Auth
- Voice
- TOTP (authenticator apps like Authy and Google Authenticator)
- Push and Silent Device Approval
Twilio makes it easy to implement channel fallback strategies with a single API interface by initiating a new request with an alternate channel parameter. For example: attempt Silent Network Auth first, then fallback to WhatsApp or SMS if unsuccessful.
Yes, the Fraud Guard feature within Twilio Verify protects against SMS pumping attacks. It uses SMS fraud detection to block suspicious messages from being sent by your Verify Service. It analyzes your historical SMS traffic for unusual patterns and when an unusual fluctuation is detected, Fraud Guard blocks the prefix of the destination of the suspected fraud.
So far, Fraud Guard has blocked 878M+ fraud attempts for our customers*.
*From Sept '23 up to 31 Dec ‘25
Yes, Twilio holds turnkey SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, full GDPR compliance, and pre-cleared HIPAA BAA execution out of the box. Global brands trust us with their use authentication and identity because we manage 10DLC registration and global carrier regulations natively.
Twilio uses a pay-as-you-go model, so you are charged based on your actual usage month to month.
For Twilio Verify:
You are charged $0.05 per successful verification (volume discounts are available), plus standard channel fees. A successful verification for an OTP based authentication channel is one where the user inputs the correct OTP and it is confirmed on the Verify API. If you create your own custom code, you will be charged per created verification.
You can find more detailed rates, international pricing and links to channel-specific rates on the Verify pricing page.
For Twilio Lookup:
It depends on the type of lookup you’re performing. You are charged $0.01 per phone number identity request and $0.02 per reassigned number lookup, $0.007 per line status request, and $0.008 per line type intelligence request.
See more detailed rates and volume discounts on the Lookup pricing page.