Yes, Clerk has a permanent free tier alongside its paid plans. The free plan includes up to 3 dashboard seats for team collaboration, 50,000 monthly retained users per app, and up to 5 user impersonations. FreeTier.co estimates the free tier at about $15/mo, and no credit card is required to sign up.
About
Clerk is an authentication and user management platform that helps teams add secure sign-up, sign-in, and account management flows to web and mobile applications. It provides prebuilt UI components, APIs, and developer tooling so product teams can launch faster while keeping authentication and user administration under their own brand and domain.
Beyond core authentication, Clerk supports organization management, billing-related UI, machine authentication, and security features such as multifactor authentication, bot protection, session management, and fraud prevention. It is designed for modern SaaS products that need both consumer and B2B identity workflows with flexible framework support and integrations.
- Prebuilt components for sign-up, sign-in, profiles, organizations, and billing
- Support for B2C and B2B authentication workflows
- Security features including MFA, passkeys, bot protection, and session controls
- Framework SDKs and integrations for modern application stacks
Free Tier Value
This free tier is genuinely usable for small apps: it includes unlimited applications, 50,000 retained users per app, core auth UI/API features, custom domains, and even B2B/admin add-ons with modest caps. The cheapest paid plan is Pro at $20/month billed annually, and the free offering covers most of that practical value while holding back higher-end features and raising limits, so a fair estimate is about $15/month. A credit card is not required, and the offer is perpetual but capped rather than unlimited.
What's included in the free tier
Verified
- Up to 3 dashboard seats for team collaboration.
- Unlimited applications for all projects.
- 50,000 monthly retained users per app.
- Up to 5 user impersonations.
- APIs and prebuilt UIs for sign-up, sign-in, and user profile.
- Most authentication features included.
- Custom domain support.
- Fixed 7-day session lifetime.
- Machine Authentication with API Keys and M2M Tokens, subject to monthly limits.
- Up to 3 social connections.
- Usernames for sign-in.
- Passwords with leaked-password checks.
- Email code authentication.
- Email link authentication.
- Sign-in tokens for API-generated single-use authentication.
- Web3 wallet authentication.
- Automatic account linking across methods.
- User metadata storage.
- Webhooks for data sync.
- Account lockout and brute-force protection.
- Bot protection for sign-up security.
- Block email subaddresses.
- Block disposable email addresses.
- Require invitations for access.
- Custom session tokens.
- Custom JWT templates.
- Device tracking and revocation.
- Full data exports.
- Community support via Discord.
- Email support for billing, registration, and abuse queries only.
- GDPR / DPA compliance.
- Free B2B Authentication add-on with 100 MRO included per app.
- Up to 20 members per organization.
- Admin and Member roles included.
- Custom permissions for organizations.
- Invitation emails for organizations.
- Free Administration add-on with 5 impersonations per month.
See Clerk pricing for current limits.
Paid plans
Pro
- MRUs per app
- 50,000 included
- Enterprise connections
- 1 included
- Satellite domains
- Additional $10/mo each
- Application log retention
- 7 days
- 50,000 MRUs included per app
- 1 Enterprise connection included
- Remove Clerk branding
- Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
- Satellite domains
- Custom session lifetime
- Application Logs with 7 day retention
- SMS Authentication available
Business
- Dashboard seats
- 10 included
- Application log retention
- 30 days
- 10 dashboard seats included
- SOC2 Report
- Enhanced dashboard roles
- Priority support
- Application Logs with 30 day retention
Enterprise
- Application log retention
- Custom
- Support
- Premium SLA
- Annual committed use discounts
- 99.99% uptime SLA
- Enterprise SSO for workspace
- Premium support SLA + dedicated slack channel
- Application Logs with custom retention
- Log sink destinations
- HIPAA compliance available with BAA
- Onboarding & migration support
Pricing extracted from Clerk's pricing page. Always verify current pricing before committing.
Common questions
Is Clerk free forever?
Yes. Clerk has a permanent free tier alongside its paid plans, though the allowance typically resets each month.
Does Clerk require a credit card?
No. You can start on Clerk's free tier without entering card details.
What happens when you exceed Clerk's free tier?
You move to a paid plan. Clerk's cheapest paid plan is Pro at $20 / month.
What is Clerk's free tier worth?
Clerk's free tier is worth about $15 per month. That maps to an FTV score of 62/100. The FTV score is explained at freetier.co/ftv.
