Auth · working at 10,000 users · rates as read 25 Sept 2026
Take Clerk for a new Next.js product. You will have working sign-in today, and: the part that actually decides it: Clerk prints the rate above its included allowance as a number: $0.02 per monthly active user, stepping to $0.015. Auth0 publishes $35 / month and $240 / month at 500 monthly active users and then hands the rest to a slider widget, so nobody can tell you from the page what 100,000 users costs. Take Auth0 anyway if your buyers already live inside Okta, because the integration between them is the reason to pick it and the price is not; its free tier is also the larger of the two at 25,000 monthly active users against Clerk's 50,000 hard cap. If the requirement is enterprise SSO rather than sign-in, neither is the answer: WorkOS prices the connection directly and is free to a million users. 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 24 Sept 2026clerk.com/pricing | $ | $ | $ |
| Auth0The incumbent identity platform, now inside Okta.verified 24 Sept 2026auth0.com/pricing | $ | $ | price not publishedProfessional |
| WorkOSAuthKit free to a million users; the money is in SSO and Directory Sync.verified 24 Sept 2026workos.com/pricing | $ | $ | $ |
| Better AuthOpen-source TypeScript auth that runs inside your own app and database.verified 24 Sept 2026better-auth.com/docs/introduction | $ | $ | $ |
- Sorted by the total at
- Drop-in auth with pre-built React components and organisations.verified 24 Sept 2026clerk.com/pricing
- 1,000 users
- $
00 Free - 10,000 users
- $
00 Free - 100,000 users
- $
1,0251,025 Pro
- The incumbent identity platform, now inside Okta.verified 24 Sept 2026auth0.com/pricing
- 1,000 users
- $
00 Free - 10,000 users
- $
00 Free - 100,000 users
- price not publishedProfessional
- AuthKit free to a million users; the money is in SSO and Directory Sync.verified 24 Sept 2026workos.com/pricing
- 1,000 users
- $
00 AuthKit - 10,000 users
- $
00 AuthKit - 100,000 users
- $
00 AuthKit
- Open-source TypeScript auth that runs inside your own app and database.verified 24 Sept 2026better-auth.com/docs/introduction
- 1,000 users
- $
00 Self-hosted - 10,000 users
- $
00 Self-hosted - 100,000 users
- $
00 Self-hosted
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.
Auth0 is the incumbent, now part of Okta. Clerk is the one most new Next.js apps reach for. They are aimed at genuinely different buyers, and the pricing pages show it.
The most important difference on this page is not a number. It is that one of these publishes a rate you can multiply and the other does not.
- One publishes a scale, the other publishes a slider. Clerk prints the whole ladder: 50,000 monthly active users included, then $0.02 each to 100,000, $0.018 to a million, $0.015 beyond. You can work out your bill at any size with a calculator. Auth0 publishes $35/mo at 500 users and moves everything above that behind an interactive slider, so this page shows "price not published" for Auth0 above its base: because it is.
- Components against configuration. Clerk ships React components: a sign-in box, a user button, an organisation switcher: that look finished on the first render. Auth0 ships a hosted login page and a large configuration surface. Clerk is faster to something presentable; Auth0 bends further once requirements get strange.
- Enterprise SSO. Clerk charges $75/mo per enterprise connection on Pro, dropping with volume. Auth0 pushes SSO-heavy customers toward its B2B plans and enterprise contracts. If SAML is a near-term requirement, WorkOS is in the table above for a reason: free to a million users, $125 per connection, and no tier jump.
| If | Then |
|---|---|
| A new Next.js product | Clerk: you will have working auth today and you can predict the bill. |
| Enterprise SSO is the requirement | WorkOS: priced per connection rather than by pushing you up a tier. |
| You are already inside Okta | Auth0: the integration story is the reason, not the price. |
Because its pricing page publishes $35/mo and $240/mo at 500 monthly active users and then hands the rest to a slider widget rather than a table. This catalogue records what the vendor publishes as text, and records the absence honestly instead of guessing.
At the bottom, Auth0: its free tier runs to 25,000 monthly active users where Clerk's is a hard cap at 50,000 MRU with Clerk branding on the components, and Clerk's first paid tier is $25/mo against Auth0's $35 / month. Above that the honest answer is that only one of them can be worked out. Clerk publishes $0.02 per monthly active user stepping to $0.015; Auth0's page carries no per-user rate at all above 500 monthly active users.
WorkOS, on the published terms. It prices SAML by the connection: $125 / ea, falling to $65 each above 50 connections: while AuthKit itself is free to 1 million users, so the bill tracks the number of enterprise customers rather than the number of end users. Auth0 includes one enterprise connection on its free tier and Clerk sells Enhanced B2B SaaS as a $100/mo add-on on top of Pro.
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 each definition before trusting these figures at the margin: a provider that counts token refreshes bills differently from one counting logins.