Descope vs Clerk Pricing (2026)
How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.
Free Forever
- 7,500 Monthly active users (MAUs)
- 10 Monthly active tenants
- 3 SSO connections
- 1 Federated app (OIDC)
- 5 Test users
- 10,000 M2M exchanges
- 2,000 Monthly active consents (MACs)
- 2,000 Monthly active tokens (MATKs)
- All auth methods
- Role-based access control
- MFA / step-up authentication
- Secure session management
- Self-service admin widgets
- Third-party connectors
- No Descope watermark
- Community support
- 99% SLA
Pro
- 10,000 Monthly active users (MAUs)
- 35 Monthly active tenants
- 5 SSO connections
- 2 Federated apps (SAML / OIDC)
- 100 Test users
- 50,000 M2M exchanges
- 5,000 Monthly active consents (MACs)
- 5,000 Monthly active tokens (MATKs)
- Custom Domain
- Google One Tap
- Custom OIDC Provider
- SSO for third-party apps
- Self-service SSO setup
- CI / CD integration
- Localization
- Web and email support
- SOC 2 reports
- 99.99% SLA
Growth
- 25,000 Monthly active users (MAUs)
- 100 Monthly active tenants
- 10 SSO connections
- Unlimited Federated apps (SAML / OIDC)
- 500 Test users
- 100,000 M2M exchanges
- 10,000 Monthly active consents (MACs)
- 10,000 Monthly active tokens (MATKs)
- Bot protection
- 1M Anonymous users
- Zero-downtime SSO migration
- SCIM provisioning
- Admin Portal
- Fine-grained authorization
- External audit connectors
- Multi-region data residency
- HIPAA BAA
- FedRAMP High deployments
Enterprise
- Tiered discounts
- Premium support add-on
- Dedicated CS engineer
- Custom deployments
- Unlimited test users
- Unlimited anonymous users
Hobby
- Up to 3 dashboard seats
- Unlimited applications
- 50,000 MRU limit per app
- Up to 5 user impersonations
- APIs and prebuilt UIs for sign-up, sign-in, and user profile
- Custom domain
- Fixed, 7 day session lifetime
- Application Logs
- Machine Authentication
Pro
- Up to 3 dashboard seats
- 50,000 MRU included per app
- 1 Enterprise connection included
- Remove Clerk branding
- Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
- Satellite domains
- Custom session lifetime
- Application Logs
- SMS Authentication available
- Machine Authentication
Business
- 10 dashboard seats included
- SOC2 Report
- Enhanced dashboard roles
- Priority support
- Application Logs
Enterprise
- Annual committed use discounts
- 99.99% Uptime SLA
- Enterprise SSO for workspace
- Premium support SLA + dedicated slack channel
- Application Logs
- Log sink destinations
- HIPAA compliance available with BAA
- Onboarding & migration support
- Custom security questionnaires
Descope vs Clerk FAQ
- Which one is cheaper?
- Clerk is the cheaper option, starting at $25/mo vs $249/mo for Descope.
- Can I use either one for free?
- Both offer free plans, so you can try each without paying. Start with whichever fits your workflow better and upgrade when you hit the limits.
- How do they charge?
- Different approach here. Descope uses usage-based pricing, while Clerk goes with hybrid. That changes the math depending on your team size and usage.
- Which one is a better deal?
- Depends on what you need. Descope: They're positioned as a mid-market alternative to Auth0 and Okta — cheaper than Okta's enterprise lock-in, more feature-rich than rolling your own. The Hello World startup program is a direct shot at Auth0's free tier dominance in the developer-first space. Clerk: Clerk sits mid-to-premium in the auth-as-a-service space — more expensive than rolling your own with Auth0's free tier or using Supabase Auth, but they're betting on developer experience and B2B feature depth to justify it. They're clearly targeting VC-backed startups, hence the Stripe Atlas and YC discount pipeline.
Keep tabs on both.
We'll monitor pricing changes for Descope and Clerk and let you know when something moves.