Clerk vs Render
Clerk and Render are both developer tools tools aimed at developers. Both have a free plan.
| Pricing | Freemium · $25 | Freemium · $25 |
| Starting price | $25/mo | $25/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Built for | Developers | Developers |
| Platforms | web | web |
| Country | US · 2019 | US · 2018 |
| 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 Render if
Teams wanting PaaS simplicity with predictable costs.
- Predictable pricing
- Easy Heroku migration
- Managed databases
Look elsewhere if: Complex enterprise infrastructure.
Clerk vs Render 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
Render
- Hobby$0Plus compute; up to 25 services, 5 GB bandwidth
- Pro$25/moFlat fee plus compute; unlimited seats, 25 GB bandwidth
- Scale$499/moFlat fee plus compute; SAML SSO, HIPAA, 1 TB bandwidth
- EnterpriseCustomUptime SLAs, dedicated account team
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
Render · Key features
- Web services and static sites from Git
- Managed Postgres and Redis
- Background workers and cron jobs
- Preview environments
- Private networking and autoscaling
- Blueprints (IaC)
Cons
- Free services spin down
- Fewer regions than big clouds
- Platform fee on top of compute
Clerk vs Render: FAQ
Do Clerk and Render have a free plan?
Yes, both Clerk and Render have a free plan; paid plans add more usage and features.