How much does Clerk cost per MAU in 2026?

Clerk is billed on Monthly Retained Users (MRU), not traditional MAU. A user only counts as retained if they return to your app at least 24 hours after signing up. Hobby is free to 50,000 MRUs. Pro is $25/month ($20 billed annually), includes 50,000 MRUs. Overage bands: $0.02/MRU/mo for 50,001-100,000, $0.018 for 100,001-1,000,000, $0.015 for 1,000,001-10,000,000, $0.012 beyond 10M. Business is $300/month ($250 annual) with 10 dashboard seats. Enterprise is custom (Clerk pricing, June 2026).

What is the Clerk Free plan in 2026?

Clerk Hobby (free plan) is $0/month to 50,000 MRU — a real free tier scoped for early-stage work, not a time-limited trial. Features include up to 3 social connections, 7-day session, 1-day log retention, up to 3 dashboard seats, 1-day Application Logs. No multi-factor authentication or production passkeys on Free. Exceed 50,000 MRU and you get a one-month grace period to upgrade. The free tier was raised from 10,000 users to 50,000 MRU on February 5, 2026 (Clerk plans changelog).

What does Clerk Pro include?

Clerk Pro is $25/month ($20 billed annually). It includes 50,000 MRU allowance, unlimited social connections, MFA, passkeys, custom sessions, metered SMS, white-labeling, 1 enterprise SSO connection (SAML, OpenID Connect, or EASIE for Google/Microsoft), 7-day Application Logs retention, and 3 dashboard seats. Add-ons: satellite domains ($10/month each), B2B Authentication ($100/month — unlimited org members, verified domains, custom roles), additional Enterprise SSO connections (volume-tiered $75 down to $15) (Clerk pricing, June 2026).

What is the difference between Clerk Hobby and Clerk Pro?

Clerk Hobby is $0/month with 50K MRU for early-stage apps testing login flows. Clerk Pro is $25/month ($20 annual) for production apps and adds: MFA, passkeys, custom session lifetime, 1 enterprise SSO connection, satellite domains, metered SMS, white-labeling, and enhanced logging. The main trigger to upgrade from Hobby to Pro is production readiness — MFA, custom branding, or first enterprise SSO connection. If you need MFA or passkeys in production, you must be on Pro (Clerk pricing, June 2026).

How much do additional Enterprise SSO connections cost on Clerk?

Clerk includes 1 enterprise SSO connection on Pro at no extra charge. Additional connections are volume-tiered: $75/month each for 2-15 connections, $60/month for 16-100, $30/month for 101-500, and $15/month for 500+. SCIM/Directory Sync is included with the connection at no extra charge (Okta, Microsoft Entra ID supported). This is significantly cheaper than competitors: WorkOS charges $125 per connection from the first one, while Auth0 charges $100 per connection on B2B. The public sso.tax catalog documents the pattern — roughly 150 vendors charge a steep premium to turn on a security baseline (Clerk pricing; sso.tax).

What is the difference between MRU and MAU?

MRU (Monthly Retained User) is a narrower metric than MAU (Monthly Active User). A user only counts as MRU if they return to your app at least 24 hours after signing up. Someone who signs up, looks around once, and never returns does NOT count toward MRU. This makes Clerk's effective cost materially lower than MAU-based vendors for apps with normal top-of-funnel traffic (significant trial signups that don't convert). The 50K free MRU tier is much larger than 50K MAU because most apps have 30-60% of signups who never return, so MRU is typically 40-70% of MAU (Clerk pricing; Clerk plans changelog).

How does Clerk pricing compare to Auth0 for a B2B SaaS app?

For a B2B SaaS app with 10,000 MRUs needing enterprise SSO, Clerk Pro is $25/month plus a few enterprise SSO connections at $75 each. Auth0 B2B Essentials for 10,000 MAUs is $2,100/month. That's an 80x cost difference for similar functionality. The catch is that Clerk is purpose-built for B2B SaaS with native Organizations, while Auth0 supports more enterprise SSO protocols, custom domains, and B2C at scale. For new B2B SaaS apps, Clerk is the default recommendation in 2026 (Clerk pricing, June 2026).

Clerk Pricing 2026: Cost Per MAU Guide

Q: What is Clerk's B2B Authentication add-on?

Clerk's B2B Authentication is an add-on that costs $100/month ($85 annual) and unlocks: unlimited Organization members (base caps at 20), Verified Domains, Custom Roles and Rolesets, additional Enterprise SSO connections scoped to specific Organizations, and 100 MROs (Monthly Retained Organizations) included, then $1 per additional MRO. This is required for the standard multi-tenant B2B SaaS pattern where each customer tenant needs their own SSO connection. Without this add-on, Enterprise SSO connections work app-wide but cannot be scoped to specific Organizations (Clerk pricing; Clerk changelog).

Quick Answer

Clerk pricing in 2026 starts at $0/month on Hobby for up to 50,000 Monthly Retained Users — a deliberate redefinition of the 'free auth tier' that no major competitor matches. Pro is $25/month ($20 annual), includes 50,000 MRU. Business is $300/month ($250 annual). Enterprise is custom. Overage bands: $0.02/MRU/mo (50K-100K), $0.018 (100K-1M), $0.015 (1M-10M), $0.012 beyond. One Enterprise SSO connection is included on Pro; additional connections are volume-tiered from $75 to $15 (Clerk pricing, June 2026).

Last verified: Sep 16, 2026.

At a glance

Hobby (Free): $0/month to 50,000 MRU
Pro: $25/month ($20 annual) — 50K MRU included
Business: $300/month ($250 annual) — 10 dashboard seats
Enterprise: Custom
MRU (not MAU): Retained users only, not signups
SSO connection 1: Included on Pro
SSO connection 2-15: $75/month each
SSO connection 16-100: $60/month each

Why MRU is the key innovation

Clerk bills on Monthly Retained Users (MRU), not traditional MAU. A user only counts as MRU if they return to your app at least 24 hours after signing up. Someone who signs up, looks around once, and never returns does NOT count toward MRU. This is materially narrower than MAU (Clerk pricing, June 2026).

For apps with normal top-of-funnel traffic (significant trial signups that don't convert), MRU is typically 40-70% of MAU. A B2B SaaS app with 100,000 MAU might have 50,000-70,000 MRU. The 50K free MRU tier is much larger than 50K MAU because most apps have 30-60% of signups who never return (Clerk pricing).

The four Clerk tiers in 2026

Clerk's pricing was restructured on February 5, 2026 — the first major pricing update since November 2023. Key changes: free tier raised from 10,000 users to 50,000 MRU; unlimited applications now included on every plan (eliminating per-application upgrade); Enhanced Authentication Add-on eliminated (MFA, satellite domains, simultaneous sessions now in Pro); automatic volume discounts apply as usage grows (Clerk plans changelog).

Hobby is $0/month forever with 50,000 MRU. Pro is $25/month ($20 billed annually) for production apps — the base plan most teams need. Business is $300/month ($250 annual), adds 10 dashboard seats, priority support, 30-day log retention, and SOC 2/HIPAA compliance artifacts. Enterprise is custom, annual-only (Clerk pricing).

Side-by-side: Clerk tiers at a glance

Feature	Hobby	Pro	Business
Base price	$0	$25/mo ($20 annual)	$300/mo ($250 annual)
Included applications	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Included MRUs	50,000	50,000	50,000
MFA, passkeys, custom sessions	No	Yes	Yes
1 Enterprise SSO connection	No	Yes	Yes
Dashboard seats	3	3	10 (extra $20/mo each)
Application Logs retention	1 day	7 days	30 days
Priority support	No	No	Yes
SOC 2 / HIPAA artifacts	No	No	Yes

Enterprise SSO connection pricing

Clerk includes 1 enterprise SSO connection (SAML, OpenID Connect, or EASIE for Google/Microsoft) on Pro at no extra charge. Additional connections are volume-tiered. This is significantly cheaper than competitors: WorkOS charges $125 per connection from the first one, while Auth0 charges $100 per connection on B2B. The public sso.tax catalog documents the pattern — roughly 150 vendors charge a steep premium to turn on a security baseline (Clerk pricing; sso.tax).

Volume tiers: $75/month each for 2-15 connections, $60/month for 16-100, $30/month for 101-500, $15/month for 500+. SCIM/Directory Sync is included with the connection at no extra charge, with general availability on April 16, 2026 and groups plus custom attributes on May 21, 2026, supporting Okta and Microsoft Entra ID (Clerk Directory Sync GA, 2026).

Clerk pricing compared to competitors

Provider	1,000 users	10,000 users	50,000 users	100,000 users
Clerk Pro	$25	$25	$25	$1,025
Auth0 B2C Essentials	$70	$700	$3,500	Enterprise quote
WorkOS (user mgmt)	$0	$0	$0	$0
Supabase Auth	$25	$25	$25	$25

All figures are monthly USD list prices, verified June 2026. Clerk and Supabase rows assume the paid production tier. WorkOS user management is free to 1M MAU but enterprise SSO is $125/connection from the first one (Clerk pricing explained, June 2026).

Overage bands and what they mean

The graduated overage bands are why real costs diverge from old flat-rate formulas. At 100,000 MRU on Clerk Pro, the math is $25 base + (100,000 - 50,000) × $0.02 = $25 + $1,000 = $1,025/month. The old $0.02-flat formula produces $1,825/month — wrong because the rate is graduated downward as scale grows (Clerk pricing).

Volume discount bands: $0.02/MRU for 50,001-100,000, $0.018 for 100,001-1,000,000, $0.015 for 1,000,001-10,000,000, $0.012 beyond 10M. These bands are published all the way to 1,000,000+ users — you can model your bill without a sales call. Multi-year commitments on Business or Enterprise unlock 10-15% discounts with price-lock language for years 2-3 (Clerk pricing).

B2B Authentication add-on for multi-tenant SaaS

For B2B SaaS apps with multi-tenant patterns (each customer tenant needs their own SSO), Clerk offers the B2B Authentication add-on at $100/month ($85 annual). It unlocks: unlimited Organization members (base caps at 20), Verified Domains, Custom Roles and Rolesets, additional Enterprise SSO connections scoped to specific Organizations, and 100 MROs (Monthly Retained Organizations) included, then $1 per additional MRO (Clerk pricing).

App-level Enterprise SSO connections work without this add-on but cannot be scoped to specific Organizations. For multi-tenant B2B SaaS where each customer tenant needs their own SSO connection, the B2B Authentication add-on is functionally required, not optional. The flat $100/month is structurally different from Auth0's $100 per-connection add-on (Clerk pricing; Clerk changelog).

What enterprise buyers should do next

Three actions for organizations evaluating Clerk in 2026.

Model MRU, not MAU. If your app has normal top-of-funnel, MRU is 40-70% of MAU. A 100,000-MAU B2B SaaS app typically has 50,000-70,000 MRU. Run the math both ways before committing.
Build the SSO connection stack into the budget. For a B2B SaaS app with 5-10 customer tenants needing their own SSO connections: $75 × 5 = $375/month on top of base Pro. The B2B Authentication add-on at $100/month is required for multi-tenant scoping.
Lock in price caps for multi-year deals. Business and Enterprise custom contracts can lock in the overage rate bands for years 2-3. Always insist on price-lock language for multi-year deals.

What to watch next

Three near-term datapoints. First, Clerk's annual pricing update — the February 2026 restructure was the first since November 2023, so expect another one in 2027. Second, the WorkOS competitive response — WorkOS AuthKit has been free for users and charges $125 per SSO connection; if they move to a per-user model, Clerk's pricing advantage widens. Third, AI agent authentication — Clerk is investing in agent-aware authentication flows; expect AI-features to be add-ons priced similarly to Auth0's AI Agents +50% (Clerk pricing, June 2026).

#clerk pricing 2026 #clerk cost per mau #clerk mru #clerk pro plan #clerk enterprise sso

Written by

Fazlur RahmanAI, Entrepreneurship, EdTech

Fazlur Rahman is the founder of Tutorsbot, building AI-powered tools for learning and career growth. He writes about applying AI in real products and the practi… Read more

Fazlur Rahman is the founder of Tutorsbot, building AI-powered tools for learning and career growth. He writes about applying AI in real products and the practical side of building an ed-tech startup.