Global Relay Interview Question

Can you explain the difference between SAML and OIDC?

Interview Answer

Anonymous

May 25, 2026

Both handle authentication but they work differently. SAML passes an XML token between an identity provider and a service provider, and it works well for enterprise SSO scenarios. OIDC is built on top of OAuth 2.0 and uses a JSON web token instead. It is lighter and better suited to modern web and mobile applications. For most new integrations I would default to OIDC unless the application only supports SAML