Clerk pricing: How it works and compares to WorkOS
Explore how Clerk’s pricing stacks up against WorkOS. Understand the costs and features of each service to make an informed decision for your business.
Many users find Clerk's pricing structure frustrating due to its low usage caps and reliance on costly add-ons. While the base plan may seem affordable initially, essential features like multi-factor authentication, custom roles, and user impersonation come with additional fees. This can complicate budgeting and lead to unexpectedly high monthly costs.
As a result, businesses often look for alternatives that offer transparent and predictable pricing. One such alternative is WorkOS, which provides a modular approach that seamlessly scales with your business, from your first client to your 10,000th.
This article breaks down Clerk’s pricing and illustrates how WorkOS offers a more transparent and competitive pricing option.
Clerk’s pricing explained
Clerk’s pricing structure consists of three main plans: Free, Pro, and Enterprise.
Each plan includes your first 10,000 Monthly Active Users (MAUs) for free, ensuring cost efficiency for initial growth phases. Plus, the “First Day Free” policy ensures you are not charged for users who sign up and churn within their first day.
Free plan
This plan covers up to 10,000 MAUs at no cost and offers pre-built components and a custom domain.
The B2B SaaS suite in the free plan includes components and APIs for managing teams and organizations. It supports basic roles and invitation flows. It’s free for 100 monthly active organizations (MAO) with a limit of 5 members per organization.
Pro plan ($25/month)
The Pro plan has a base cost of $25/month and charges $0.02 per MAU after you use up your initial 10,000 MAUs.
The B2B SaaS suite in the pro plan costs $1 per MAO after the first 100 for unlimited members per organization.
Features included in the pro plan are:
- Removing Clerk branding
- Custom session duration
- Password complexity requirements
- SOC 2 report on request
- Allowlist/blocklist
- Multiple domains
- User ban/unban
- SMS authentication
If you need additional features, add them using these add-ons:
- Enhanced Authentication: $100/month (includes Multi-Factor Authentication and SAML authentication, with each SAML connection priced at $50)
- Enhanced Administration: $100/month (includes user impersonation)
- Enhanced B2B SaaS: $100/month (includes domain restrictions, automatic invitations, and custom roles and permissions)
Enterprise plan (custom pricing)
The Enterprise plan is for businesses requiring extensive support and compliance features like:
- 99.99% SLA
- Support SLA
- HIPAA/BAA Compliance
- Dedicated Slack Support
- Onboarding and Migration Support
For pricing, you’ll need to talk to sales.
How does Clerk's pricing compare to WorkOS?
WorkOS uses a modular pricing structure including:
- User Management: Free for the first 1,000,000 MAUs, with every additional 1 million MAUs costing $2500
- Single Sign-On (SSO): $125/connection/month
- Directory Sync (SCIM): $125/connection/month
- Audit Logs: Start at $5/organization/month with various retention and streaming options
Why WorkOS is better
Predictable pricing
WorkOS offers transparent, predictable pricing without the complexity of MAU or MAO caps. Unlike Clerk’s, which includes 100 organizations with 5 members each in its free and Pro plans and charges $1 for each additional MAO with unlimited members, WorkOS provides unlimited organizations and users.
Moreover, WorkOS's free tier supports up to 1,000,000 MAUs, compared to Clerk's 10,000 MAUs, significantly reducing costs for growing businesses. This simplifies budgeting and forecasting, making WorkOS a more cost-effective and predictable solution for user management as companies expand.
Modular features
WorkOS structures its pricing modularly, allowing you to pay only for your needs. You get user management for free for your first million users, and as you grow and onboard larger enterprise clients needing SSO or SCIM, you can simply pay for those specific connections. Plus, you enjoy automatic volume discounts once you get to your 16th connection.
This scalable pricing model ensures that WorkOS grows with your business, providing the necessary features as and when needed without incurring unnecessary costs.
Unlimited admins
Clerk offers 3 free admin seats, with each additional admin costing $10/month/seat. In WorkOS, the number of admins is limitless.
Add-ons
With Clerk, invitation emails, auto-join, domain restrictions, custom password requirements, custom email, session management user impersonation, and custom dashboard roles are part of the add-ons you must pay for. They’re not included in base plans.
WorkOS includes them with the user management SKU, which is free for 1 million MAUs.
Better enterprise support
Clerk only supports SAML, while WorkOS supports SAML and OIDC. It also lacks support for SCIM, audit logs, self-serve onboarding portal, and organization-scoped authentication policies, which WorkOS provides.
Try WorkOS instead
Choose WorkOS for enterprise identity features and enjoy straightforward, transparent pricing without hidden costs.
Sign up for WorkOS today, and start selling to enterprise customers tomorrow.