C
Replacement brief
Clerk
Replaces managed authentication + user ui
Drop-in auth UI that bills per MAU. The convenience is real; so is the bill once you cross 10k users.
The verdict weighs direct cost against maintenance, reliability, migration risk, and founder time.
- Verdict
- easy Straightforward swap
- Estimated annual saving
- $348 against the typical bill
- Open-source options
- 3 reviewed alternatives
What founders here actually pay
List price is not the bill.
No founder on RealCost has published a Clerk cost line yet. When they do, the real bills appear here beside the list price — no estimates, no filler. Add your numbers.
01 / Deploy
Start with one command
A Teploy-style starting point for a small VPS. Review the generated configuration, then replace the example host and domain with your own.
teploy deploy --image better-auth --host hetzner --domain auth.example.comBefore you migrate
Price the operational work alongside the server bill. Best value if you'd otherwise ship no auth UI at all.