Pick Clerk if
next.js / SaaS teams who will stay on Hobby at $0 (50,000 MRUs, 3 seats) while they ship a first Sign-in, then buy Pro at $20/month billed yearly ($25 monthly) when they need MFA, passkeys, and branding removed.
Read the Clerk pageClerk vs Permit
Our take
Pick Clerk if next.js / SaaS teams who will stay on Hobby at $0 (50,000 MRUs, 3 seats) while they ship a first Sign-in, then buy Pro at $20/month billed yearly ($25 monthly) when they need MFA, passkeys, and branding removed. Pick Permit if saaS teams who will stay on Community at $0 (1,000 MAUs, 20 tenants) while they open a first Audit Log, then talk to Permit when they need unlimited MAUs, on-prem, or a 99.99%
Best for
Clerk Sign-in you start at $0
Permit Who-can-do-what you start at $0
Free plan
Clerk $0 · no card. 50,000 MRUs / app. 3 dashboard seats. Unlimited applications. Custom domain. Session 7 days. Logs 1 day. API keys: 1,000 creations / 100,000 verifications. M2M: 2,500 / 100,000. Up to 5 impersonations. Up to 3 social connections
Permit $0 · 1,000 MAUs. 20 tenants. No limit on authorization queries. 25 roles. 50 resource types. 5 condition sets. 2,000 role assignments / resource instances / relationship tuples. 20 groups. 3 environments. Unlimited projects. RBAC / ABAC / ReBAC / PBAC, Policy UI, Cloud Console, unlimited PDPs, single region. Basic Slack support
Lowest paid
Clerk Pro $25/mo
Permit Not published by the vendor
Next step up
Clerk B2B Enhanced add-on $100/mo
Permit
Runs where
Clerk Local or hosted
Permit Hosted
Watch out
Clerk Hobby MFA / passkeys / no-branding are Pro
Permit Free is 1,000 MAUs and 20 tenants
Last checked
Clerk 2026-10-23 · clerk.com/pricing
Permit 2026-10-23 · permit.io/pricing
Which one, then?
Pick Permit if
saaS teams who will stay on Community at $0 (1,000 MAUs, 20 tenants) while they open a first Audit Log, then talk to Permit when they need unlimited MAUs, on-prem, or a 99.99% SLA — because the public page does not print a self-serve paid dollar.
Read the Permit page