Clerk
Ranked 3 of 8 authentication services by recommenders
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.
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.
35 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 19
- criticize it
- 16
- approval share
- 54%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 19 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.1 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 7 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
Saves time and money
“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”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “From Supabase to Clerk to Better Auth” “This was made possible by moving from a homegrown auth system to Clerk”
Comment from 24 Nov 2025 in “We stopped roadmap work for a week and fixed bugs” Drop-in components, quick to adopt
“I just dropped in a component and moved on.”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “I'm having the worst career winter of my life” “I've used Clerk, it's good.”
Comment from 1 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: How Are You Handling Auth in 2026?” Used in common modern stacks
“Recommended Nextjs + Supabase + Clerk + Vercel + Stripe which is pretty much exactly what I landed on”
Comment from 22 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: I built a free AI tool that picks your SaaS tech stack based on budget” “My stack is Claude, v0, nextjs, shadcn, clerk, supabase, vercel.”
Comment from 11 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (January 2026)”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Pricing high for side projects
“Clerk's pricing got a bit out of hand for side projects.”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “From Supabase to Clerk to Better Auth” “Clerk's pricing should be evidence enough.”
Comment from 6 May 2026 in “From Supabase to Clerk to Better Auth” Roles tied to organizations
“the fundamental model of only user having a role on the org level has its limitations”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “From Supabase to Clerk to Better Auth” “No proper RBAC (roles are tied to organizations, not stored on user itself”
Comment from 6 May 2026 in “From Supabase to Clerk to Better Auth” Blocklists flag its default domain
“maybe don't use components which are shady enough that they end up on blocklists”
Comment from 29 Dec 2025 on Hacker News “The default Clerk domain often gets flagged by strict blocklists.”
Comment from 29 Dec 2025 on Hacker News
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 Auth | 46 | 8 | 85% | 9 | 1 yr3 owners | Approved |
| Ory Hydra | 22 | 2 | 92% | 7 | — | Approved |
| ClerkThis page | 19 | 16 | 54% | 7 | — | — |
| AWS Cognito | 18 | 34 | 35% | 6 | — | — |
| Auth0 | 16 | 19 | 46% | 8 | — | — |
What people said
34 of the 40 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“you can instantly export all your user data through a button in the dashboard”
“I was never a fan of the "we'll manage your user Table"”
“Clerk's pricing got a bit out of hand for side projects.”
“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”
“the fundamental model of only user having a role on the org level has its limitations”
“Clerk is an authentication provider for the most part, it concerns itself with telling you who the user is.”
“I really don't see a single reason why I would pick Clerk”
“That alone is a very strong indicator they do not understand basic security or data protection.”
“Turns out hot isn't always good.”
“Clerk's pricing should be evidence enough.”
“sparsely documented frontend API”
“it's a bit of a workaround rather than first class”
“Clerk looks _really_ good initially. It's perfect if you want to prototype something and not care about auth.”
“No proper RBAC (roles are tied to organizations, not stored on user itself”
“found it to have troublesome reliability”
“companies like Replit and several other large startups are actually adopting Clerk”
“Clerk is just a mess. They are trying to cram EVERYTHING into their libraries”
“I needed to invoice a client and hated every tool I tried. So I built my own.”
“Recommended Nextjs + Supabase + Clerk + Vercel + Stripe which is pretty much exactly what I landed on”
“it's a bit of pain to migrate development users to production users”
“I still use a ton of SaaS services for things that I could probably do just fine myself.”
“2.5Mb for an auth library!?!?”
“Clerk seems to be having problems”
“My stack is Claude, v0, nextjs, shadcn, clerk, supabase, vercel.”
“I just dropped in a component and moved on.”
“That's ok for enterprise stuff where revenue per user is high.”
“Clerk seems pricey once you scale.”
“I've used Clerk, it's good.”
“You are still in violation of GDPR rules by including a SVG file with the google logo from the clerk.com domain”
“The default Clerk domain often gets flagged by strict blocklists.”
“maybe don't use components which are shady enough that they end up on blocklists”
“This was made possible by moving from a homegrown auth system to Clerk”
“why have major authentication providers like @auth0 and @ClerkDev and @Google / @LinkedIn SSO have not supported”
“yet another company involved: clerk.com - yay?”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.