Clerk vs Better Auth

Summary

Clerk vs Better Auth (Authentication). Agent test scores: Clerk 8.1/10, Better Auth 8.2/10. Better Auth scored 0.1 higher overall in separate runs of our standard tasks. Pricing: Clerk — Pro $25/mo ($20/mo annual), 50K MRU/app incl., then $0.02/MRU; Business $300/mo ($250 annual); Better Auth — Library free (OSS); managed Infrastructure Pro $20/mo.

Every fact on this page comes from our tool records and test logs. Last updated: 2026-10-16

Side by side

	Clerk	Better Auth
What it is	User management and authentication.	Open-source TypeScript auth framework.
Pricing	Pro $25/mo ($20/mo annual), 50K MRU/app incl., then $0.02/MRU; Business $300/mo ($250 annual)	Library free (OSS); managed Infrastructure Pro $20/mo
Free tier	Yes (Hobby): 50,000 monthly retained users/app	Yes: open source; Infrastructure Starter free
Pricing verified	2026-10-16	2026-10-16
Edition tested	Clerk Cloud, Hobby free plan (development instance)	Open-source library (self-hosted), not Better Auth Infrastructure
Tested on	2026-10-16	2026-10-16
Outcome score	7	7
Speed score	10	10
Cost score	9	10
Developer experience score	6	6
Reliability score	10	10
Overall score	8.1	8.2

What our tests found

Clerk

3/3 runs: sign-up (Backend API createUser), password sign-in plus new-device email code, active session check, wrong password rejected (422); ~3.3s per run. Self-serve Frontend API sign-up stalled at missing_requirements without a browser.cloud free plan

Better Auth

Email/password sign-up, sign-in, session, wrong-password rejection, 3/3 runs passed; needed node:sqlite and the new `npx auth migrate` CLI.self-hosted/OSS

Verdict

Both tools were tested on the same rubric (v0.1, 3 runs each), but in separate runs and possibly on different editions (see above). Overall: Clerk 8.1, Better Auth 8.2. Check the free-tier limits above against your project before choosing.

Best Authentication · Best free Authentication · All comparisons · Methodology