Clerk alternatives
Clerk is already the cheapest auth provider we track at 10,000 monthly active users (free). Here's how the other 2 compare. The closest match, Auth0, covers 84% of what Clerk does. Each one shows how much of it it covers, capability by capability, next to the price.
What Clerk does
Core: End-user sign-up & login, Prebuilt login UI, Organizations & multi-tenancy.
Important: Social login, Magic links & one-time codes, Multi-factor authentication, Enterprise SSO, Roles & permissions (partly), Bot & fraud protection, Native mobile SDKs, Plans, entitlements & billing.
Also has: Passkeys, Custom auth flows (partly), Directory sync (SCIM), M2M tokens & API keys, OAuth provider & MCP auth, User import & export, Compliance & data residency (partly).
Alternatives to Clerk at 10,000 monthly active users, best match first
- Auth0: free Annual billing = 11x monthly (Free). It covers 84% of Clerk; missing or partial: Prebuilt login UI (partly), Bot & fraud protection (partly), Plans, entitlements & billing, M2M tokens & API keys (partly). Free plan: Free: up to 25,000 MAU, 5 organizations, 1 enterprise connection, custom domain, passkeys. Last price hike: Nov 2023.
- Amazon Cognito: free No native orgs; SSO via user-pool federation (Lite (free tier)). It covers 63% of Clerk; missing or partial: Prebuilt login UI (partly), Organizations & multi-tenancy (partly), Social login (partly), Magic links & one-time codes (partly), Multi-factor authentication (partly). Free plan: 10,000 direct-sign-in MAUs/month on Lite and Essentials (does not expire); 50 federated MAUs free. Last price hike: Nov 2024.
Prices at every size
- Clerk: 10,000 monthly active users free, 100,000 monthly active users $1,025/mo, a B2B app with 3 SSO customers $275/mo (Bills monthly retained users (MRU))
- Auth0: 10,000 monthly active users free, 100,000 monthly active users custom pricing, a B2B app with 3 SSO customers $300/mo (Annual billing = 11x monthly)
- Amazon Cognito: 10,000 monthly active users free, 100,000 monthly active users $495/mo, a B2B app with 3 SSO customers $3.75/mo (No native orgs; SSO via user-pool federation)
Prices are USD per month on monthly billing (annual-only plans divided by 12) for the vendor's hosted service: the headline is a production app with 10,000 monthly active users signing in with email/password and Google, and we also price 100,000 MAU and a B2B app with 1,000 MAU and 3 enterprise SSO customers. Free plans count when they allow production use at that volume.
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Everything about Clerk's own prices and price hikes: Clerk.