Auth · working at 10,000 users · rates as read 29 Sept 2026
There is no best auth for Next.js, and three questions pick three different answers. Shipping a consumer product this week? Clerk: the components are the fastest path from nothing to working sign-in, and it publishes the per-user rate above its allowance so the bill at 100,000 users is arithmetic. Selling to companies who will ask for SAML? WorkOS: AuthKit is free "Up to 1 million users" and enterprise connections are priced at "$125 / ea", so the bill tracks enterprise customers rather than end users. Want the user table in your own database? Better Auth: "The Better Auth framework is free and open source", there is no auth line on the bill at all, and you carry the maintenance instead. The one thing that is not a differentiator is the free tier: every option here gives away at least 10,000 monthly active users and WorkOS gives away a million. What differs is whether the vendor tells you the price after that, and on this table only Auth0 does not. StackTab sells none of these and takes no referral fee on any of them.
Priced for an app where 2% of users pay $20 a month, on the usage a user of that kind typically implies, on the cheapest plan of each service that can carry it.
| Service | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| ClerkDrop-in auth with pre-built React components and organisations.verified 21 Sept 2026clerk.com/pricing | $ | $ | $ |
| Better AuthOpen-source TypeScript auth that runs inside your own app and database.verified 21 Sept 2026better-auth.com/docs/introduction | $ | $ | $ |
| WorkOSAuthKit free to a million users; the money is in SSO and Directory Sync.verified 21 Sept 2026workos.com/pricing | $ | $ | $ |
| KindeAuth with billing and feature flags bundled in.verified 21 Sept 2026kinde.com/pricing | $ | $ | $ |
| Auth0The incumbent identity platform, now inside Okta.verified 21 Sept 2026auth0.com/pricing | $ | $ | price not publishedProfessional |
| StytchAuth plus device fingerprinting and fraud tooling in the same SDK.verified 21 Sept 2026stytch.com/pricing | $ | $ | price not publishedPay as you go |
| PropelAuthB2B auth priced per user with org management built in.verified 21 Sept 2026propelauth.com/pricing | $ | $ | $ |
- Sorted by the total at
- Drop-in auth with pre-built React components and organisations.verified 21 Sept 2026clerk.com/pricing
- 1,000 users
- $
00 Free - 10,000 users
- $
00 Free - 100,000 users
- $
1,0251,025 Pro
- Open-source TypeScript auth that runs inside your own app and database.verified 21 Sept 2026better-auth.com/docs/introduction
- 1,000 users
- $
00 Self-hosted - 10,000 users
- $
00 Self-hosted - 100,000 users
- $
00 Self-hosted
- AuthKit free to a million users; the money is in SSO and Directory Sync.verified 21 Sept 2026workos.com/pricing
- 1,000 users
- $
00 AuthKit - 10,000 users
- $
00 AuthKit - 100,000 users
- $
00 AuthKit
- Auth with billing and feature flags bundled in.verified 21 Sept 2026kinde.com/pricing
- 1,000 users
- $
00 Free - 10,000 users
- $
00 Free - 100,000 users
- $
1,5911,591 Plus
- The incumbent identity platform, now inside Okta.verified 21 Sept 2026auth0.com/pricing
- 1,000 users
- $
00 Free - 10,000 users
- $
00 Free - 100,000 users
- price not publishedProfessional
- Auth plus device fingerprinting and fraud tooling in the same SDK.verified 21 Sept 2026stytch.com/pricing
- 1,000 users
- $
00 Pay as you go - 10,000 users
- $
00 Pay as you go - 100,000 users
- price not publishedPay as you go
- B2B auth priced per user with org management built in.verified 21 Sept 2026propelauth.com/pricing
- 1,000 users
- $
00 Free - 10,000 users
- $
00 Free - 100,000 users
- $
4,6504,650 Growth
A cell reading not published is not missing data. It means the vendor does not publish a rate at that usage on its own pricing page, so no honest figure exists to print.
Change any of those assumptions in the calculator.
Every option here has a Next.js SDK that handles the App Router, middleware and server components. None of them will be the reason your app fails. So the choice comes down to three questions that have nothing to do with the framework.
Who holds the user table. What enterprise single sign-on costs. And whether the provider will quote you a price at the scale you are aiming for.
- Who owns the user table. Clerk, WorkOS, Auth0, Kinde and Stytch keep your users on their systems and hand you a token. Better Auth is a library: the users are rows in your own database, which means you can join them to your own data and there is no auth bill at any scale. The cost is real, it is just paid in maintenance rather than dollars.
- SSO is where the money is. The per-user rates above are close enough not to decide anything. Enterprise SSO is not: Clerk charges $75/mo per connection on Pro, WorkOS charges $125 each but includes AuthKit free to a million users, and PropelAuth charges $100. If three customers ask for SAML, that line is bigger than everything else combined. Set the SSO field in the auth calculator and the ordering changes.
- Two of these will not quote you. Auth0 publishes a base at 500 monthly active users and moves the rest behind a slider. Stytch is free to 10,000 and produces its overage rate only inside a calculator widget. Both show as "price not published" above their free tier, because that is the honest state of their public pricing.
- Free tiers worth knowing. WorkOS AuthKit is free to one million users. Clerk includes 50,000 monthly active users on both Free and Pro. Auth0 raised its free tier to 25,000. At small scale nearly everything here costs nothing, so pick on the shape of the bill at the size you are aiming for, not on today.
| If | Then |
|---|---|
| Consumer app, ship this week | Clerk: the components are the fastest path from nothing to working auth. |
| B2B, enterprise buyers will ask for SAML | WorkOS: free to a million users, priced per connection rather than per tier. |
| You want the users in your own database | Better Auth: no auth line on the bill, ever; you carry the maintenance. |
No. This catalogue only carries products with a public rate card, and Auth.js does not publish one. Better Auth is in the table as the reference point for the self-hosted option. Its framework is free and open source, and Better Auth Inc. publishes a rate card for its managed infrastructure at better-auth.com/pricing, which this catalogue reads nightly.
It varies by provider, which is a real problem when comparing them. Most count a user who authenticated at least once in the billing month. Read the definition before trusting any of these numbers at the margin: a provider that counts token refreshes will bill differently than one counting logins.
At any realistic small-app scale, all of them are free: the smallest allowance in this table is 10,000 monthly active users and WorkOS gives away a million. The first plan you actually pay for is Clerk or Kinde at $25 a month, then Auth0's Essentials at $35 / month, then PropelAuth's Growth at $150 /month. Better Auth run as a library is $0 forever, because the users live in a database you already pay for.
All of them here except Auth0. Clerk publishes "$0.02/mo each" stepping to $0.015, Kinde "$0.0175 per extra MAU", PropelAuth "$0.05 per user", WorkOS "$2,500 / mo" per additional million, Stytch "$125/connection", Better Auth "then $0.0001 per event". Auth0's page prints $35 / month and $240 / month at 500 monthly active users and moves the rest into a slider, so there is no rate on the page to multiply out.