NextAuth.js vs Clerk

At a Glance

NextAuth.js

Clerk

NextAuth.js

No features listed.

Clerk

NextAuth.js

Pros

Completely free and open source — no MAU limits, no pricing tiers, no vendor lock-in regardless of how large your app grows+184
Deep Next.js integration means session is available server-side in getServerSideProps, API routes, and App Router with minimal setup+162
Huge community and ecosystem means every common provider (Google, GitHub, Discord) has a working example you can copy+138
You own your session data since it stores in your own database — GDPR compliance is much simpler when you control everything+119

Cons

The configuration is complex and the documentation has gaps that require reading source code or GitHub issues to resolve edge cases

Authentication

Clerk vs Auth0

Authentication

Clerk vs Auth0 vs WorkOS

Authentication

WorkOS vs Clerk

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Clerk

Pros

The pre-built UI components handle every auth flow including MFA, magic links, and OAuth and they look good out of the box+176
TypeScript SDK is excellent — user object is typed and available in both server and client components in Next.js without extra setup+158
Organization support for B2B SaaS is built in — multi-tenant with roles and permissions without writing any of that infrastructure yourself+143
The developer dashboard makes impersonating users and inspecting sessions trivially easy, which saves hours when debugging user issues+127
Webhooks fire reliably for every user lifecycle event so syncing your own database with auth state is straightforward+108

Cons

You're renting your authentication — if Clerk has an outage or shuts down, your users cannot log in, period+178
Free tier is 10,000 MAU and then it jumps to $25/mo — reasonable for real products but expensive if you're experimenting or have a high-churn user base+162
The Clerk-specific components and hooks create significant coupling — switching to another auth provider requires touching every component that handles auth state+134
Custom domain for the hosted auth pages requires a paid plan, so on the free tier users see clerk.accounts.dev in the URL which looks unprofessional+109