# Clerk 19 Hacker News commenters recommended Clerk and 16 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months. **Verdict:** Developers recommend Clerk as a quick, off-the-shelf way to add user login and accounts, saving time over building auth in-house. Critics say its pricing gets steep for side projects and its design has limits. ## Why people recommend it - Saves time and money (2 comments): "using an off the shelf solution like Clerk saves us time and money and we believe the risk is very small relative to the savings" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48047259)) "This was made possible by moving from a homegrown auth system to Clerk" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46030139)) - Drop-in components, quick to adopt (2 comments): "I just dropped in a component and moved on." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46466460)) "I've used Clerk, it's good." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46455729)) - Used in common modern stacks (2 comments): "Recommended Nextjs + Supabase + Clerk + Vercel + Stripe which is pretty much exactly what I landed on" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47110568)) "My stack is Claude, v0, nextjs, shadcn, clerk, supabase, vercel." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46579468)) ## What people warn about - Pricing high for side projects (2 comments): "Clerk's pricing got a bit out of hand for side projects." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48047649)) "Clerk's pricing should be evidence enough." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48043471)) - Roles tied to organizations (2 comments): "the fundamental model of only user having a role on the org level has its limitations" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48046659)) "No proper RBAC (roles are tied to organizations, not stored on user itself" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48040544)) - Blocklists flag its default domain (2 comments): "maybe don't use components which are shady enough that they end up on blocklists" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46425781)) "The default Clerk domain often gets flagged by strict blocklists." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46426138)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Better Auth](https://hackerapproved.com/p/better-auth.md): 46 recommend - [Ory Hydra](https://hackerapproved.com/p/hydra.md): 22 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 ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://clerk.com/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Clerk", https://hackerapproved.com/p/clerk/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).