# Better Auth

46 Hacker News commenters recommended Better Auth and 8 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 1 years (3 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Open-source auth library that people praise for developer experience, plugins and keeping user data in your own database. Critics mention breaking patch releases and worry about its cloud business.

## Why people recommend it

- Plugins and broad integrations (4 comments): "Corral is built on Better Auth, which has a plugin architecture" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47053878)) "Works fine with my fastapi backend using the JWT plugin." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48041767)) "This is supported by Better Auth out-of-the box." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48043000))
- Excellent developer experience (3 comments): "Better auth still provides a grade A dev experience, even with all the plugins, integrations, and tons of things they support." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48820735)) "the developer experience is really great" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45916026)) "I'm so incredibly happy with Better Auth" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48042388))
- User data in your own database (3 comments): "It's open source, you can pay them to manage your user/auth tables if you want or you can run it all on your own db." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48041176)) "BetterAuth is users in your own database. So you don't have to!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48040670)) "you get all of your auth data in your own db in 1 cli command" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48039578))
- Easy move off Supabase or Clerk (3 comments): "Better Auth is absolutely great. Was pleased with how well it could be extended here to replace Supabase Auth with backwards compatibility" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47154750)) "It's exactly what I always wanted when using Clerk (and its free as a side effect)." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48050021)) "better-auth is amazing and made moving off supabase a lot less scary" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47154606))

## What people warn about

- Opinionated design and assumptions (2 comments): "the assumptions they make sometimes are so damn annoying" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48671071)) "the weird design to be everything “request header based”" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48039881))
- Worry about cloud business interests (2 comments): "it's just a matter of time until they destroy this project in favour of their cloud interests" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48820395)) "Open source isn't really open any more. It's just pre-acquisition." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48820884))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Ory Hydra](https://hackerapproved.com/p/hydra.md): 22 recommend
- [Clerk](https://hackerapproved.com/p/clerk.md): 19 recommend
- [Auth0](https://hackerapproved.com/p/auth0.md): 16 recommend
- [Sign in with Apple](https://hackerapproved.com/p/sign-in-with-apple.md): 7 recommend
- [WorkOS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/workos.md): 7 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Better Auth", https://hackerapproved.com/p/better-auth/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).