FusionAuth 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.
| FusionAuth | Clerk | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $162/mo | $25/mo |
| Number of plans | 4 | 4 |
| Free plan | ||
| Free trial | — | — |
| Pricing model | usage-based | hybrid |
Community
- Core authentication standards & features most apps need
- Community support (forums, Slack, Github)
- Self-host FusionAuth on your own infrastructure for free.
Starter
Popular- Premium authentication features
- Breached Password Detection, authentication, Machine-to-Machine, and more
- Community support (forums, Slack, Github)
- Includes basic hosting
Essentials
- Advanced connectivity, MFA, & security features
- Custom OAuth scopes
- Email support (24 to 48 hour response time during business hours)
- Includes business hosting
Enterprise
- Advanced threat detection
- SSO Tenant Manager
- 24/7 support (email and phone)
- Private Slack channel (with contract)
- Solution architect guidance
- Advanced governance & contract requirements
- Includes High availability hosting
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
FusionAuth vs Clerk FAQ
- Which one is cheaper?
- Clerk is the cheaper option, starting at $25/mo vs $162/mo for FusionAuth.
- 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. FusionAuth 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. FusionAuth: FusionAuth sits in the mid-market auth space competing with Auth0 and Okta CIC, and they're clearly positioning as the more developer-friendly, cost-transparent alternative. At $162/mo for 1K MAUs, they're not the cheapest (Clerk and Stytch have aggressive lower tiers) but they undercut Auth0 significantly at scale, targeting teams that got burned by Auth0's pricing as they grew. 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 FusionAuth and Clerk and let you know when something moves.