Clerk
Drop-in login and user management with ready-made sign-in screens for React and Next.js.
- Price
- Free; Pro $25/month ($20 billed yearly)
- Free plan
- Yes
- Setup
- Needs a developer
- Up and running
- Working login in about an hour; going live takes up to 48 hours waiting for DNS.
What Clerk is for
Login looks simple until you build it: sign-up, password reset, Google sign-in, email codes, sessions that expire, a profile page. Clerk hands you all of that as ready-made screens you drop into a React or Next.js app, plus a dashboard to see and manage your users. It only does login and users; your data still lives in your own database.
How it plugs into your product
- 1Create an app at clerk.com and pick the sign-in methods (email, Google, Apple and so on).
- 2Install the Clerk library and drop its sign-in and user components into your pages.
- 3Link each Clerk user to your database, usually with a webhook that fires when someone signs up.
- 4To go live, create the production instance on a domain you own, add the DNS records and set up your own Google/Apple keys.
Does it fit your idea?
It fits if
- A Next.js SaaS that needs Google login and a profile page this week, without designing auth screens.
- A product with up to 50k returning users a month that can live without MFA at first: it stays free.
- A B2B tool where each customer company has a team account with a few members.
Look elsewhere if
- Your app isn't React-based and you'd rather not wire auth by hand through an API.
- Your users mainly log in with an SMS code: SMS is paid-only and international texts are billed at market rate.
- You sell to hundreds of small teams: past 100 active organizations, each one costs $1/month.
What people only find out after building
Read this before you build on it. Each item links to the official page that says so.
Production needs a domain you own: a free host address like yourapp.vercel.app is refused, since Clerk needs DNS records on it.
Official source: clerk.comThe free plan has no MFA, no passkeys, no SMS codes and keeps the Clerk badge; those start on Pro at $25/month.
Official source: clerk.comOn the free plan, sessions are fixed at 7 days, so users have to log in again every week; changing that requires Pro.
Official source: clerk.comOrganizations are billed separately: 100 active ones are included, then $1 each per month, and custom roles are a $100/month add-on.
Official source: clerk.com
Price
Free; Pro $25/month ($20 billed yearly)
Up to 50k monthly retained users per app, no card required.
- Free tier
- 50k retained users/month
- Price for 10k monthly users
- Free (within the 50k free tier)
- Self-host
- No
Checked on Oct 28, 2026 · official pricing
What it costs in practice
A SaaS with 2,000 users returning each month stays on the free plan: $0. If you want MFA and your own branding, Pro is $25/month ($20 billed yearly). With 150 active customer teams, add 50 × $1 = $50, about $75/month in total (estimate).
Estimate from the official price. Check it before you decide.
At a glance
- Free plan: yes
- Open source: no
“Not stated” means the official site doesn’t say.
Who uses it
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