Authentication — compare pricing, reliability & setup
Generated 2026-11-02 01:10 UTC · JSON
For app user authentication, the current pick is Better Auth (score 68.5). $0/mo at 100k mau.
Ranking — App user authentication
| Vendor | Score | 1k/mo | 10k/mo | 100k/mo | Free | Agent-friction | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Better Auth | 68.5 | $0 | $0 | $0 | yes | 90 | 2026-11-01 |
| Supabase | 68.01 | $0 | $0 | $25 | yes | 100 | 2026-11-01 |
| WorkOS | 65.5 | $0 | $0 | $0 | yes | 80 | 2026-11-01 |
| Clerk | 45.5 | $0 | $0 | $1025 | yes | 80 | 2026-11-01 |
| Auth0 | insufficient data | $0 | $0 | — | yes | 80 | 2026-11-01 |
Agent-friction — can a service be set up without a human?
Each check and its weight is published; the column total is the 0–100 agent-friction score.
| Check | Better Auth | Supabase | WorkOS | Clerk | Auth0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Test credentials without a credit card (20) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Sandbox or test mode (15) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Setup with no human-only steps (15) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Official CLI (10) | ✓ | ✓ | × | × | ✓ |
| Official MCP server (10) | × | ✓ | × | × | × |
| Markdown docs, current with the SDK (10) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | × |
| Typed SDK for main languages (10) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Error messages that name the fix (10) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Score | 90 | 100 | 80 | 80 | 80 |
How this category is scored
Per use case, weights published in the data: fit 25% · cost 20% · integration 20% · agent_friction 15% · health 10% · lock_in 10%. Affiliate status is never an input.