Beyond the Auth Wars: Choosing the Right Strategy for Your Context

The authentication debate often frames sessions and tokens as opposing forces, but each of the eight major strategies—from session-based approaches to JWTs, OAuth 2.0, SAML, passkeys, and mTLS—was designed to solve specific problems in different operational contexts. Understanding the tradeoffs and ideal use cases for each method empowers developers to make principled choices rather than defaulting to trends or popularity.