Clerk
- Free allowance
- Hobby: free with no credit card; 50,000 monthly retained users per app, unlimited applications, up to 3 dashboard seats
- Verdict
- caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- emailno card, phone unknown
- Binding limit
- write-gateda production instance needs a domain the user owns and DNS records on it; a development instance is capped at 100 users
- Evidence
- documented42 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-12-03checked 2026-11-02 (live); stale on 2026-12-03
| Free tier | Hobby: free with no credit card; 50,000 monthly retained users per app, unlimited applications, up to 3 dashboard seats unit users; metered on identity-count; A user counts as retained only after signing in again more than 24 hours after sign-up. Above 50,000 retained users on Hobby a one-month grace period applies before an upgrade is needed. Hobby also includes 1,000 API key creations and 100,000 verifications, 2,500 M2M token creations and 100,000 verifications a month, 100 monthly retained organizations per app with up to 20 members each, and 10,000 protection checks a month. SMS codes and multi-factor authentication are not on Hobby. A development instance is capped at 100 users and delivers at most 20 SMS messages and 100 emails a month. |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
Dashboard seats are capped at 3 on Hobby; the vocabulary has no kind for a seat count. |
| Binding | write-gated Without a domain the app stays on a development instance, capped at 100 users and 100 emails a month; with a domain, the 50,000 retained users per app is the ceiling. |
| Identity | email The sign-up form asks for an email address and a password, or a GitHub or Google sign-in, and states no credit card is required. The Clerk CLI needs no account to start: signed out, npx clerk@latest init provisions a claimable application, writes dev keys to .env.local, and signing in later claims it. A production instance also needs a domain with DNS records. Whether a later step of the dashboard sign-up asks for a phone number is unverified: behind a sign-up. |
| Egress | not applicable: an authentication API; no traffic allowance or egress term is published |
| Per-object cap | user metadata (public, private and unsafe) is limited to 8KB maximum; custom claims copied into the session token should stay under 1.2KB |
| Retention | Application Logs are kept 1 day on Hobby (7 days on Pro, 30 days on Business) (1 days) |
| Interface | rest Frontend API for sign-in and sign-up from the browser, rate limited per IP address; Backend API for administrative tasks, called with a secret key at https://api.clerk.com/v1 (a GET /v1/users without a key answered 401); webhooks for data sync; an OAuth 2.0 authorization server and OpenID Connect identity provider on the instance's Frontend API URL (metadata at /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server, user information at /oauth/userinfo). endpoint: https://api.clerk.com/v1 |
| Tooling | Clerk SDKs and prebuilt sign-in components, the clerk CLI (npx clerk@latest), or any HTTP client against the Backend API with a secret key. |
| Composes with | Login and user store for a web app on free hosting; leaving the 100-user development instance needs a domain with DNS records, which pairs with a cheap or free name from domains-dns. |
| Reliability | A rate-limited request answers 429 with a Retry-After header; Hobby email support covers billing, registration and abuse queries only. |
| Notes | A development instance passes its session token in the querystring, which Clerk states is not secure enough for production use. Pro is USD 25 a month (USD 20 billed annually) and charges USD 0.02 a month per retained user above 50,000 per app. |
| Evidence note | documented Every limit is quoted from first-party pricing, docs and sign-up pages; the Backend API host was probed and answered 401 without a key. A sign-in and a Backend API call on a Hobby instance would move it to measured. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 42
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/pricing | the Hobby plan is free and needs no credit card |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/pricing | Hobby is free and Pro is USD 25 a month |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/pricing | Pro is USD 20 a month billed annually |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/pricing | Hobby is limited to 50,000 monthly retained users per app |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/pricing | Hobby has up to 3 dashboard seats |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/pricing | Hobby allows unlimited applications |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/pricing | a user counts only after signing in again after the first 24 hours |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/pricing | exceeding 50,000 retained users on Hobby gives a one-month grace period |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/pricing | Hobby keeps Application Logs 1 day |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/pricing | Application Logs are kept 1, 7 and 30 days on Hobby, Pro and Business |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/pricing | Hobby includes 1,000 API key creations, 2,500 M2M token creations and 100,000 verifications of each a month |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/pricing | SMS codes are not available on Hobby |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/pricing | multi-factor authentication is not available on Hobby |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/pricing | 100 monthly retained organizations per app are included |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/pricing | an organization has up to 20 members without the add-on |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/pricing | 10,000 protection checks a month are free |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/pricing | part of the text of Reliability, above |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/pricing | Pro charges USD 0.02 a month per retained user above 50,000 |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/docs/guides/how-clerk-works/system-limits | a development instance takes 100 Backend API requests per 10 seconds |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/docs/guides/how-clerk-works/system-limits | a production instance takes 1000 Backend API requests per 10 seconds |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/docs/guides/how-clerk-works/system-limits | Frontend API limits apply per IP address |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/docs/guides/how-clerk-works/system-limits | sign-up creation is limited to 5 requests per 10 seconds |
| 2026-10-30 | clerk.com/docs/guides/how-clerk-works/system-limits | a rate-limited request carries Retry-After |
| 2026-10-30 | dashboard.clerk.com/sign-up | the sign-up asks for GitHub, Google or an email address and a password, with no credit card |
| 2026-10-31 | clerk.com/docs/guides/development/managing-environments.md | part of the text of Limits, above |
| 2026-10-31 | clerk.com/docs/guides/development/managing-environments.md | the development instance's session handling is not meant for production |
| 2026-10-31 | clerk.com/docs/guides/development/managing-environments.md | the development instance carries the session token in the querystring |
| 2026-10-31 | clerk.com/docs/guides/development/deployment/production.md | a production deployment needs a domain the user owns |
| 2026-10-31 | clerk.com/docs/guides/development/deployment/production.md | a production deployment needs DNS records on that domain |
| 2026-10-31 | clerk.com/docs/guides/development/testing/test-emails-and-ph | a development instance delivers at most 20 SMS and 100 emails a month |
| 2026-10-31 | clerk.com/docs/guides/development/managing-environments.md | a clerk CLI creates applications from the terminal |
| 2026-10-31 | clerk.com/docs/guides/how-clerk-works/overview.md | administrative tasks go through a separate Backend API |
| 2026-10-31 | clerk.com/docs/guides/how-clerk-works/overview.md | the Backend API is called with a secret key |
| 2026-10-31 | probe: https://api.clerk.com/v1/users | api.clerk.com/v1/users answers 401 without a key |
| 2026-11-01 | clerk.com/docs/guides/users/extending | Clerk limits metadata to 8KB maximum and recommends keeping a metadata custom claim in the session token under 1.2KB |
| 2026-11-01 | clerk.com/docs/guides/users/extending | the session token cookie is capped at 4KB by most browsers and supports up to 1.2KB of custom claims |
| 2026-11-01 | clerk.com/docs/nextjs/getting-started/quickstart | the Clerk CLI sets up an application without a Clerk account |
| 2026-11-01 | clerk.com/docs/nextjs/getting-started/quickstart | signed out, init provisions a claimable application with dev keys, and signing in later claims it |
| 2026-11-01 | clerk.com/docs/guides/configure/auth-strategies/oauth/single | Clerk acts as an OAuth 2.0 authorization server and, for OIDC clients, as their identity provider |
| 2026-11-01 | clerk.com/docs/guides/configure/auth-strategies/oauth/single | an OAuth access token retrieves user information from the /oauth/userinfo endpoint of the Frontend API URL |
| 2026-11-01 | clerk.com/docs/guides/configure/auth-strategies/oauth/how-cl | authorization server metadata is served at /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server on the Frontend API URL |
| 2026-11-01 | dashboard.clerk.com/sign-up | the dashboard sign-up page asks for GitHub, Google, or an email address and a password, and states no credit card is required |