Authentication option not available in Static web app service

Question

Hi Team,
I recently upgraded the hosting plan of my Static Web App service from the Free tier to the Standard tier in order to access the native Authentication feature, which is not available in the Free tier. However, even after upgrading to the Standard tier, the Authentication option still does not appear.

Answer 1

Hi Naveen,

You need to edit your configuration file and add entries to auth section for your custom identity provider. Below article details what you need to do and has tabs for different providers:

Custom authentication in Azure Static Web Apps

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/static-web-apps/authentication-custom

Please make the necessary changes and if you have issues please let me know the specific provider you are wanting to add along with symptoms, what steps you tried, config entry, etc.

Please click Accept Answer and upvote if the above was helpful.

Thanks.

-TP

Answer 2

Hello Naveen,

Upgrading a Static Web App from Free to Standard doesn’t add a new “Authentication” blade in the portal—the built-in auth endpoint (/.auth/*) is always there on every plan, and the extra Standard-tier benefit is simply that you may now register custom identity providers and manage roles. Those advanced settings are surfaced in two places:

• staticwebapp.config.json + environment variables – this is where you add the "auth" section that points to Google, Entra ID, OIDC, etc. Microsoft’s doc notes that “Custom authentication is only available in the Azure Static Web Apps Standard plan” and shows the config snippets you need for more info refer learn.microsoft.com.

Settings ▶ Role Management – once your first deployment succeeds the “Role Management” blade appears automatically; that’s the only UI the service exposes for authentication, and it’s available on both plans. If you don’t see it, wait for the deployment to finish or refresh the portal.

The “Authentication” blade you’re looking for exists on App Service, not on Static Web Apps. In SWA the workflow is: choose Standard to unlock custom registrations, edit staticwebapp.config.json, add the client-ID/secret in Environment variables, then use the Role Management blade (or invitations API) to assign users to custom roles. The feature matrix on the hosting-plans page confirms this: Free gets “Pre-configured (service-defined) providers” while Standard adds *“Custom registrations”
*
So the absence of an “Authentication” button after your plan upgrade is expected you already have auth; you just configure it through the config file and Role Management instead of a dedicated portal pane.

Best Regards,

Jerald Felix