Better Auth
Hacker ApprovedThe most recommended of 8 authentication services
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.
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.
54 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 46
- criticize it
- 8
- approval share
- 85%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 1 year
Median of the 3 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it carries the badge
- 46 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 5.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Plugins and broad integrations
“Corral is built on Better Auth, which has a plugin architecture”
Comment from 17 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Corral – Auth and Stripe billing that AI coding agents can set up” “Works fine with my fastapi backend using the JWT plugin.”
Comment from 6 May 2026 in “From Supabase to Clerk to Better Auth” “This is supported by Better Auth out-of-the box.”
Comment from 6 May 2026 in “From Supabase to Clerk to Better Auth” - Comment from 14 Aug 2026 in “The SvelteKit 3 Release Candidate is here”
Excellent developer experience
“Better auth still provides a grade A dev experience, even with all the plugins, integrations, and tons of things they support.”
Comment from 7 Jul 2026 in “Better Auth is joining Vercel” “the developer experience is really great”
Comment from 13 Nov 2025 in “Kratos - Cloud native Auth0 open-source alternative (self-hosted)” “I'm so incredibly happy with Better Auth”
Comment from 6 May 2026 in “From Supabase to Clerk to Better Auth” User data in your own database
“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.”
Comment from 6 May 2026 in “From Supabase to Clerk to Better Auth” “BetterAuth is users in your own database. So you don't have to!”
Comment from 6 May 2026 in “From Supabase to Clerk to Better Auth” “you get all of your auth data in your own db in 1 cli command”
Comment from 6 May 2026 in “From Supabase to Clerk to Better Auth” Easy move off Supabase or Clerk
“Better Auth is absolutely great. Was pleased with how well it could be extended here to replace Supabase Auth with backwards compatibility”
Comment from 25 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Replacebase – library to migrate away from Supabase” “It's exactly what I always wanted when using Clerk (and its free as a side effect).”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “From Supabase to Clerk to Better Auth” “better-auth is amazing and made moving off supabase a lot less scary”
Comment from 25 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Replacebase – library to migrate away from Supabase”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Opinionated design and assumptions
“the assumptions they make sometimes are so damn annoying”
Comment from 25 Jun 2026 in “Cloudflare launched self-managed OAuth for all” “the weird design to be everything “request header based””
Comment from 6 May 2026 in “From Supabase to Clerk to Better Auth” Worry about cloud business interests
“it's just a matter of time until they destroy this project in favour of their cloud interests”
Comment from 7 Jul 2026 in “Better Auth is joining Vercel” “Open source isn't really open any more. It's just pre-acquisition.”
Comment from 7 Jul 2026 in “Better Auth is joining Vercel”
Other authentication services people recommend
The four most recommended other authentication services, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Better AuthThis page | 46 | 8 | 85% | 9 | 1 yr3 owners | Approved |
| Ory Hydra | 22 | 2 | 92% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Clerk | 19 | 16 | 54% | 7 | — | — |
| AWS Cognito | 18 | 34 | 35% | 6 | — | — |
| Auth0 | 16 | 19 | 46% | 8 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 58 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“add-ons for stuff like drizzle and better-auth”
“Open source isn't really open any more. It's just pre-acquisition.”
“Better auth still provides a grade A dev experience, even with all the plugins, integrations, and tons of things they support.”
“it's just a matter of time until they destroy this project in favour of their cloud interests”
“Better Auth is great, I use it for all my projects.”
“focus more on what made better-auth great in the first place”
“breaking changes in patch version are more common than most packages”
“This is amazing although I would really like for them to explore filling the backend gaps.”
“Better Auth is the go-to solution for many people using Nextjs, so it makes sense that Vercel puts some effort in maintaining it.”
“the assumptions they make sometimes are so damn annoying”
“it felt really rushed and thrown together, with little automated tests”
“It's exactly what I always wanted when using Clerk (and its free as a side effect).”
“Better Auth has been a huge time saver for me.”
“It's really made things super simple so far”
“it's finally a open-source solution that is on par or better with commercial”
“You can literally plug the Better Auth libraries into a little Node server and run it as a separate auth server for free, forever”
“This is supported by Better Auth out-of-the box.”
“thankfully i'm familiar with better auth from a side project”
“I'm so incredibly happy with Better Auth”
“Works fine with my fastapi backend using the JWT plugin.”
“But inclined to BetterAuth for new projects.”
“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.”
“BetterAuth is users in your own database. So you don't have to!”
“it's a library that integrates on the frontend, backend, and database”
“I started Better Auth to solve this exact issue for myself”
“the weird design to be everything “request header based””
“Better auth is great! I love how it's way more hackable than using a something like Clerk.”
“you get all of your auth data in your own db in 1 cli command”
“Better Auth handles auth/orgs well, but not this layer.”
“Some fresh wind instead of stripping features from the open source framework.”
“Better Auth is absolutely great. Was pleased with how well it could be extended here to replace Supabase Auth with backwards compatibility”
“better-auth is amazing and made moving off supabase a lot less scary”
“Corral is built on Better Auth, which has a plugin architecture”
“For production I'd almost always reach for Better Auth instead”
“The goal is a BetterAuth-style developer experience”
“solves that and LLMs know how to integrate it”
“Better Auth is an excellent authentication library—we use it extensively for auth in LaunchSaaS.”
“has been genuinely amazing for ts ecosystem”
“Better Auth is so good that is handling everything from server to client”
“the developer experience is really great”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.