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Best Clerk Alternatives in 2026

These are the 5 closest tools to Clerk that we track, ordered by what they cost to start. Each entry says how its pricing differs from Clerk's — based on the numbers we hold, not on who pays us. We do not publish a quality score, because we do not have one we can stand behind. The cheapest verified option is Caddy at Free.

Why people leave Clerk

  • Pricing per monthly active user adds up
  • Deep customisation fights the defaults
  • Auth becomes a vendor dependency

These are the drawbacks listed in our own Clerk review — not complaints we invented for this page.

  1. 1
    Caddy

    Web server with automatic HTTPS.

    vs Clerk: priced differently (Free vs Free tier).

  2. 2
    Drizzle ORM

    Lightweight TypeScript ORM.

    vs Clerk: priced differently (Free vs Free tier).

  3. 3
    iTerm2

    Terminal replacement for macOS.

    vs Clerk: priced differently (Free vs Free tier).

  4. 4
    Jenkins

    Open-source automation server for build pipelines.

    vs Clerk: priced differently (Free vs Free tier).

  5. 5
    Keycloak

    Open-source identity and access management.

    vs Clerk: priced differently (Free vs Free tier).