Database & auth
Clerk
Hosted authentication and user management with prebuilt sign-in UI, billed on monthly retained users rather than raw signups.
Pricing as seen
Hobby is free. Pro is $25/month, or $20/month billed annually. Business is $300/month, or $250/month annually. Enterprise is custom. Billing is on monthly retained users.
Checked 16 Oct 2026. Prices change. Confirm on the vendor site before you buy.
Pricing sourceUpdated
16 Oct 2026
Added
16 Oct 2026
Supported builders
Documented most naturally in code you own: Cursor, Claude Code, Windsurf, v0, and Replit. Lovable and Bolt can call it if you can edit the auth flow they generated. It does not replace Supabase's database.
What it is
Clerk hosts sign-up, sign-in, sessions, and user profile UI, and gives you APIs and components to drop into a React or Next.js app. The pricing page bills on monthly retained users: someone who returns after the first day, not every signup.
It is auth, not a database. You still pick where rows live. Organizations, SSO, and MFA show up on higher plans. The Hobby plan is free with a stated MRU cap.
Best for: A Next.js or React app that wants hosted sign-in UI and is fine paying once retained users grow past the free tier.
Watch-outs
- You are still responsible for authorizing access to your own tables. Clerk identifies the user. Your database must check that identity.
- SSO and some MFA features sit on paid plans. Read the current table.
Our take
Opinion from ShipSafeStack. Not a score, not a certification, and not a sponsorship.
A good trade when you do not want to own password reset and session cookies yourself. It will not fix an open database behind it. If the builder already wired Supabase Auth, switching is a migration, not a one-line env change.