Bastionary vs Clerk.
Beautiful DX. Brutal pricing.
Clerk has the best developer experience in auth. The components are polished and the Next.js integration is genuinely excellent. But it's primarily an auth and user-management platform, its pricing is usage-based and scales with retained users, and it's SaaS-only. The moment you need integrated billing, licensing, or data residency, you're looking at a different product.
Where each product wins.
Next.js app, under 5K users, solo dev
Clerk's DX genuinely is better for rapid prototyping. The component library and Middleware integration work in minutes.
Clerk winsB2B SaaS that needs SAML SSO
Clerk's SAML support is limited and expensive. Enterprise procurement requires SAML + SCIM. Bastionary includes both on all plans.
Bastionary wins100K+ MAU product
Clerk's pricing at scale is punishing. At 100K MAUs you're in enterprise pricing territory. Bastionary Cloud Pro is $99/mo flat for 100K MAUs.
Bastionary winsEU data residency required
Clerk processes data in the US. For GDPR-sensitive customers, that's a blocker. Bastionary self-hosted keeps data in your VPC, any region.
Bastionary winsSoftware product with license keys
Clerk does not do licensing. You'd need Keygen or a custom solution. Bastionary has license key management built in: seat limits, offline activation, floating licenses.
Bastionary winsStripe integration required
Clerk does not do billing. Bastionary wraps Stripe, Paddle, and LemonSqueezy in a single commands API. One backend, one bill.
Bastionary winsSide by side.
| Feature | Clerk | Bastionary |
|---|---|---|
| Login UI components | ✓ Excellent, pre-built | ✓ Hosted pages + headless API |
| Next.js / React integration | ✓ First-class, Middleware-native | ✓ Standard OIDC, quickstart guide |
| SAML 2.0 SSO | ~ Enterprise plan, expensive | ✓ All plans |
| SCIM 2.0 provisioning | ~ Directory sync in beta (verify at clerk.com) | ✓ All plans |
| Usage-based pricing | ✗ Yes — MRU-based (monthly retained users), scales with growth | ✓ None. Flat rate. |
| Billing / Stripe integration | ~ Beta — billing objects in experimental docs | ✓ Built-in, production-ready |
| Software license keys | ✗ | ✓ Offline RSA, seat management |
| Feature flags | ✗ | ✓ Built-in, plan-gated |
| Self-hosted | ✗ SaaS only | ✓ Docker, K8s, bare metal |
| Data residency | ✗ US only | ✓ Any region, your VPC |
| Audit log with chain integrity | ✗ | ✓ SHA-256 chained, SIEM export |
| HIBP breach detection | ✗ | ✓ k-anonymity on every password |
| Fine-grained authorization | ~ Basic roles | ✓ ReBAC / Zanzibar-style |
| Multi-tenant orgs | ✓ Organizations feature | ✓ Cryptographic tenant isolation |
The math at 50K and 100K users.
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Bastionary supports standard OIDC. If your app works with Clerk, it'll work with Bastionary — redirect URIs and token structure are the same spec.
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