Clerk vs Plango
Clerk and Plango are both security & identity tools. Clerk is aimed at developers, while Plango is aimed at developers and freelancers. Plango costs less, from $4.99/mo versus $25/mo for Clerk. Only Clerk has a free plan.
Drop-in authentication and user management
Mac security suite that guards your machine from AI coding agents
| Pricing | Freemium · $25 | Paid · $5 |
| Starting price | $25/mo | $4.99/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | No |
| Free trial | — | 7 days |
| Built for | Developers | Developers, Freelancers |
| Platforms | web | macos |
| Country | US · 2019 | US |
| Rating | — | — |
Choose Clerk if
React and Next.js teams who want production auth with great UX immediately.
- Beautiful components save weeks of work
- Generous free tier
- Organizations and B2B features built in
Look elsewhere if: Teams requiring full ownership of auth data (Better Auth, Keycloak) or non-JS stacks.
Choose Plango if
Solo developers and freelancers on Apple silicon Macs who let AI coding agents run commands on their own machine.
- Low single price of $4.99 a month
- Trial needs no card and does not auto-convert
- Works with Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI and more
Look elsewhere if: Teams that need central policy across many machines or Windows and Linux coverage (Snyk).
Clerk vs Plango pricing
Clerk
- Hobby$050,000 monthly retained users per app, 3 dashboard seats
- Pro$25/mo$20/mo billed annually; 50k MRUs, then from $0.02/MRU
- Business$300/mo$250/mo billed annually; 10 dashboard seats
- EnterpriseCustomAnnual billing; 99.99% uptime SLA, volume discounts
Plango
- Plango$4.99/moOne Mac at a time, transferable; no annual option
Clerk · Key features
- Prebuilt UI components for auth and user profile
- Email, password, passkeys, OTP and 20+ social providers
- Organizations, roles and permissions (B2B)
- MFA, bot protection and session management
- Clerk Billing for subscriptions and feature gating
- SDKs for Next.js, React, Remix, Expo, Astro and more
Cons
- User data lives with a third party
- Per-user (MRU) cost grows with scale
- Enhanced features (SAML, MFA) cost extra
Plango · Key features
- Agent guard that blocks dangerous actions by AI coding agents
- Inventory and guarding of connected MCP servers
- Vetting of skills and plugins before agents trust them
- Moves .env secrets into the macOS Keychain
- Finder-tagged folders kept out of AI agents' reach
- Project CVE scanning and outbound firewall
Cons
- macOS only, Apple silicon and macOS 15 or newer
- Requires at least 16 GB of RAM
- No team or fleet plan yet
Clerk vs Plango: FAQ
Which is cheaper, Clerk or Plango?
Plango starts at $4.99/mo and Clerk at $25/mo. Both prices are checked on the vendors' own pricing pages.
Do Clerk and Plango have a free plan?
Clerk has a free plan. Plango has no free plan, a 7-day free trial.