Supabase vs Clerk vs Better Auth

Supabase, Clerk, Better Auth side by side: price, free tier, who each one fits and when to skip it.

Item	Supabase	Clerk	Better Auth
What it does	Postgres database with login, file storage, edge functions and realtime in one project.	Drop-in login and user management with ready-made sign-in screens for React and Next.js.	Open source TypeScript auth library that runs inside your app and keeps users in your own database.
Best for	A solo founder who wants login, database and uploads in one place, with a region close to their users so the app feels fast.	A Next.js SaaS that needs Google login, user profiles and team accounts by tomorrow, without designing a single auth screen.	A founder who wants users in their own Postgres and no per-user bill as the SaaS grows.
Skip it if	You plan to leave a free project idle while you validate, since free projects get paused after a week without activity.	You sell B2B to lots of small companies, since organizations are a paid add-on billed per active organization.	You don't want to own security updates, email delivery and session bugs yourself.
Setup	Needs a developer. Login and a first table in an afternoon; access rules and email setup take another day or two.	Needs a developer. Working login in about an hour; going live takes up to 48 hours waiting for DNS.	Needs a developer. Email and Google login in a day for someone who codes; emails, rate limits and testing take a couple more days.
Price	Free, then Pro from $25/month plus usage	Free; Pro $25/month ($20 billed yearly)	Free (you host it); optional dashboard from $20/month
What it costs in practice	A SaaS with 2,000 monthly active users and a 3 GB database outgrows the free 500 MB, so it goes to Pro: $25/month, which already covers one Micro server, 100k users, 8 GB of disk and 250 GB of egress. Add $10 for a custom domain on login and you're at about $35/month (estimate, in dollars).	A SaaS with 2,000 users returning each month stays on the free plan: $0. If you want MFA and your own branding, Pro is $25/month ($20 billed yearly). With 150 active customer teams, add 50 × $1 = $50, about $75/month in total (estimate).	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).
Free plan	2 projects, 50k monthly users, 500 MB database and 1 GB of files; paused after a week idle.	Up to 50k monthly retained users per app, no card required.	The library is free and open source (MIT) and you host it; the optional dashboard has a free plan.
Free tier	50k MAU, 500 MB DB, 1 GB files	50k retained users/month	Unlimited (runs on your server)
Price for 10k monthly users	Free (Pro: $25/mo, 100k MAU included)	Free (within the 50k free tier)	Free, you only pay your own hosting
Self-host	Yes, open source	No	Yes, it always runs in your app
Open source	Yes: yes	No: no	Yes: yes
Before you build	Free projects are paused after one week without activity, and you get only 2 free projects across all your organizations. The built-in email only reaches members of your Supabase team, at about 2 emails an hour. Real users get no confirmation or reset email until you plug in your own SMTP. Phone login doesn't send SMS by itself: you open an account with Twilio, MessageBird or Vonage and pay them per message. The free plan has no automatic backups; Pro keeps 7 days, and point-in-time restore is an add-on of about $100/month. The Pro fee is per organization, but each project runs its own server: every extra project adds compute (Micro is $10/month) on top.	Production needs a domain you own: a free host address like yourapp.vercel.app is refused, since Clerk needs DNS records on it. The free plan has no MFA, no passkeys, no SMS codes and keeps the Clerk badge; those start on Pro at $25/month. On the free plan, sessions are fixed at 7 days, so users have to log in again every week; changing that requires Pro. Organizations are billed separately: 100 active ones are included, then $1 each per month, and custom roles are a $100/month add-on.	It needs a server and a database: the handler has to run on a backend route, and users are stored in tables you manage. It doesn't send email: you write the function that sends verification and password reset emails through your own provider. Rate 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. Security fixes are yours to apply: in 2026 the project published several critical and high advisories, including account takeover bugs.
Price checked	Checked on Oct 28, 2026 · official pricing	Checked on Oct 28, 2026 · official pricing	Checked on Oct 28, 2026 · official pricing

Prices are read from each official pricing page on the date shown and can change. Always confirm before signing up.

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Supabase vs Clerk vs Better Auth

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