Better Auth
Open source TypeScript auth library that runs inside your app and keeps users in your own database.
- Price
- Free (you host it); optional dashboard from $20/month
- Free plan
- Yes
- Setup
- Needs a developer
- Up and running
- Email and Google login in a day for someone who codes; emails, rate limits and testing take a couple more days.
What Better Auth is for
Better Auth is a free, open source library that adds login to your own app: sign-up, passwords, Google sign-in, sessions, teams and two-step verification. Unlike Clerk or Auth0, it isn't a service you rent. It runs inside your server and saves users in your own database, so there's no per-user bill, but keeping it running and secure is on you.
How it plugs into your product
- 1Install the better-auth package and set a long secret key and your app's URL as environment variables.
- 2Connect it to your database (Postgres, MySQL or SQLite) and run its command to create the user tables.
- 3Mount its handler on a server route (/api/auth/*) and add the client to your pages.
- 4Plug in your own email provider for verification and password reset emails, and turn on a persistent rate limit store.
Does it fit your idea?
It fits if
- A TypeScript SaaS (Next.js, Nuxt, SvelteKit, Hono) that already has a server and its own Postgres.
- A consumer app expecting hundreds of thousands of users, where a per-user fee would eat the margin.
- A product that must keep personal data in its own database for GDPR or client contracts.
Look elsewhere if
- You don't code and nobody on the team will keep up with security updates.
- Your app is a static site or a no-code tool with no server of its own to run the library.
- You're already on Supabase or Firebase, which include login at no extra cost.
What people only find out after building
Read this before you build on it. Each item links to the official page that says so.
It needs a server and a database: the handler has to run on a backend route, and users are stored in tables you manage.
Official source: better-auth.comIt doesn't send email: you write the function that sends verification and password reset emails through your own provider.
Official source: better-auth.comRate limiting is off in development and kept in memory by default, which doesn't hold up on serverless hosts; you have to move it to a database.
Official source: better-auth.comSecurity fixes are yours to apply: in 2026 the project published several critical and high advisories, including account takeover bugs.
Official source: github.com
Price
Free (you host it); optional dashboard from $20/month
The library is free and open source (MIT) and you host it; the optional dashboard has a free plan.
- Free tier
- Unlimited (runs on your server)
- Price for 10k monthly users
- Free, you only pay your own hosting
- Self-host
- Yes, it always runs in your app
Checked on Oct 28, 2026 · official pricing
What it costs in practice
With 2,000 monthly active users, the library itself is $0; you pay only for the server and database you already run. If you want their hosted dashboard with email sending, Pro is $20/month plus $0.001 per email: about 4,000 emails a month adds $4, around $24/month (estimate).
Estimate from the official price. Check it before you decide.
At a glance
- Free plan: yes
- Open source: yes
“Not stated” means the official site doesn’t say.
Who uses it
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