Better Auth vs Clerk: What’s the Difference?

The Comparison page of the Better Auth documentation, listing reasons to choose Better Auth over other auth libraries, over managed auth services such as keeping users in your own database with no per-user costs, and over building your own.

Better Auth is a free library that runs inside your app; Clerk is a hosted sign-in service with a free plan and paid plans. Compare cost, data, features and effort.

November 13, 2026 0

Better Auth Tutorial — Part 1: What Is Better Auth?

The Features section of the Better Auth home page, with nine areas such as framework support, built-in credential sign-in, social sign-on, multi-tenancy, enterprise single sign-on, plugins and user management.

Better Auth adds sign-up, sign-in, sessions and user accounts to a TypeScript web app, with your users kept in your own database. Part 1 of a free, hands-on Better Auth tutorial explains how it works.