Udibo vs Clerk
Clerk gives you prebuilt sign-in components for your framework and a free plan that covers 50,000 retained users. Udibo gives you hosted sign-in behind a standard OAuth 2.0 boundary, with organizations, roles, and resource permissions included on every plan. The difference that decides most evaluations: Clerk charges when you turn on the controls a real product needs, and Udibo charges when you grow.
Checked September 7, 2026 against Clerk's pricing page. Udibo Identity is in private beta, and its prices are a preview, not an adopted rate card.
The short version
| If you need | Start with |
|---|---|
| Drop-in React or Next.js components and the fastest first login | Clerk |
| Multi-factor authentication, custom roles, and organizations on Free | Udibo |
| Permissions checked on your server, per organization or per resource | Udibo |
| Passkeys, SAML, or SCIM at launch | Clerk, or another provider that ships them today |
| A bill that does not step up at 50,000 users | Udibo |
| A production dependency available today without beta access | Clerk, until the Udibo hosted service opens to the public |
Why teams pick Udibo over Clerk
The controls are included, not upsold. Clerk's free plan holds back multi-factor authentication, custom session lifetime, allowlists, user bans, device tracking, and custom email templates for Pro at $25 a month, and puts custom roles and unlimited organization members in a $100 a month add-on. Every one of those is on Udibo's Free plan.
Organizations without a ceiling. Clerk's free plan allows 100 retained organizations of 20 members each; going past either needs the $100 add-on. Udibo places no cap on organizations or members on any plan, and a person can hold a different role in each.
Permissions your server can enforce. Udibo lets you register the permissions your application interprets, attach them to roles across a tenant, inside an organization, or on one resource, and read the result from the token or a hosted check. Clerk's roles and permissions stop at the organization; per-resource grants are yours to build.
Growth costs less. Above the allowance, Udibo's preview rate is $3 per 1,000 retained users. Clerk Pro charges $0.02 per retained user past 50,000: 100,000 retained users is about $290 on Udibo and $1,025 on Clerk.
A standards boundary instead of a vendor SDK. Your application talks to Udibo through OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect, with the active organization and its roles in the token. Any OpenID Connect client works, and leaving means changing an issuer, not rewriting components.
Your brand at the door. Udibo puts your name, logo, and colors on the hosted pages with no vendor badge on any plan. Removing Clerk's branding is a Pro feature.
A record you can take with you. At least 90 days of audit history on every plan, exportable as CSV or NDJSON, against one day of application logs on Clerk's free plan and seven on Pro.
Why Clerk may still be the right choice
Prebuilt UI. Clerk's components for Next.js, React, and native frameworks are the fastest way to a polished account experience. Udibo hosts the sign-in pages and returns to your app; the account screens inside your product are yours to build.
50,000 retained users free. If you can ship with Clerk's branding, without MFA, and inside the organization caps, a consumer app pays nothing until it is large.
Passkeys, SAML, and SCIM. Clerk offers passkeys on Pro and enterprise connections from one included on Pro. Udibo does not offer hosted passkeys, SAML, or SCIM today.
Generally available. Clerk is a production dependency you can adopt this afternoon. Udibo Identity is in private beta.
Pricing side by side
Clerk's published list and Udibo's pricing preview, same date. Clerk bills retained users the way Udibo does: a person who returns more than 24 hours after signing up.
| You need | Udibo (preview) | Clerk |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | 500 retained users, 25,000 hosted permission checks, 1,000 emails | 50,000 retained users per app, with Clerk branding |
| First paid plan | $5 a month plus usage: 5,000 users, 250,000 checks, 10,000 emails included | Pro, $25 a month ($20 billed annually) |
| Multi-factor authentication | Included on Free | Pro |
| Custom roles and permissions | Included on Free | Enhanced B2B add-on, $100 a month |
| Organizations and members | No cap | Free: 100 organizations of 20 members; unlimited members in the $100 add-on |
| Remove vendor branding | Included on Free | Pro |
| Custom session lifetime | Included on Free | Pro |
| Enterprise SSO connections | No per-connection fee for OpenID Connect providers; SAML not yet available | 1 on Pro, then $75 each (2–15) and $60 each (16–100) |
| Audit or application log history | At least 90 days on every plan | 1 day on Free, 7 days on Pro |
| Sign-in email | 2 per retained user included, then $1 per 1,000; your own sender is free | Included; SMS $0.01 (US and Canada) |
| Users beyond the allowance | $3 per 1,000 retained users | $0.02 per retained user past 50,000 on Pro |
| Hosted permission checks | $10 per 1,000,000 past the allowance | No equivalent product |
| Machine-to-machine tokens | No per-token charge; technical and abuse limits apply | $1 per 1,000 token creations past 2,500 and $10 per million remote verifications past 100,000 (docs) |
Three worked examples, with the same assumptions on both sides:
| Scenario | Udibo (preview) | Clerk |
|---|---|---|
| Consumer app: 10,000 retained users, 5,000 sign-in emails, MFA on, your own branding | $20 (Standard base plus 5,000 users above allowance) | $25 (Pro; Free would be $0 but with Clerk branding and no MFA) |
| B2B app: 200 users, 5 organizations of 30 members, custom roles, MFA | $0 on Free, or $5 on Standard | $125 (Pro plus the Enhanced B2B add-on for custom roles and members) |
| Consumer app at 100,000 retained users | About $290 | $1,025 |
Sources: Clerk pricing and Udibo's pricing preview. Both change; check the vendor's current page before you decide.
Cost at scale
Users only, same definition on both sides, on the plan that gives you MFA and your own branding. Udibo's figures are preview rates; the vendor's are its published list on the date above.
| Retained users | Udibo (preview) | Clerk Pro |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | $5 (Standard) | $25 |
| 10,000 | $20 | $25 |
| 100,000 | About $290 | $1,025 |
| 1,000,000 | About $2,990 | $19,025 |
Clerk's free plan is $0 through 50,000 retained users if Clerk's branding, no MFA, and the organization caps are acceptable. The crossover is where a product turns those controls on: Udibo is cheaper from the first paid dollar until about 11,700 retained users, Clerk Pro is cheaper from there to 50,000, and Udibo is cheaper again above it.
What the integration looks like
With Udibo, register an application and its callback, send people to the hosted sign-in page, and finish the authorization-code flow on your server. Your backend holds the session and the browser gets a cookie, never a token. The first-login guide walks each checkpoint, and the organizations and permissions guides cover a person with a different role in each of two organizations.
With Clerk, you mount its provider and components in your framework and use its SDK for session and organization state. Clerk documents quickstarts for full-stack, frontend, and native frameworks (Clerk quickstarts, Clerk architecture).
Neither approach removes your responsibility to protect application data on the server. A valid session says who someone is; your backend still decides what they may read.
Where Udibo needs a closer look
Udibo does not currently offer hosted passkeys, SAML, or SCIM. The
@udibo/oauth2 package supplies protocol building blocks, not drop-in UI
components. Tenant-management calls need administrator credentials rather than
an application's machine token. If your product needs a particular
account-management screen, test that whole journey before committing; a
successful login alone does not establish parity.
Moving an existing Clerk application
Inventory every place your application uses Clerk's user, session, organization, or component APIs. Give your own user records stable IDs and record the mapping from the old issuer and subject to the new one; do not use email alone as an automatic account-linking rule. Replace one server-side authentication boundary first, then account UI and organization selection. Password hashes, MFA enrollment, and sessions do not move with a profile; plan a re-enrollment path. See migration planning and user import.
Try next: complete one Udibo login, then give a person two organizations and a different role in each. If you are on the waitlist, the agent integration brief lets your coding assistant prepare the integration in the meantime.
Frequently asked questions
Is Udibo cheaper than Clerk? For a consumer app under 50,000 users that can ship with Clerk's branding and without MFA, Clerk is free and Udibo is not. For a product that needs MFA, custom roles, more than 20 members in an organization, or its own branding, Udibo's Free or $5 plan replaces Clerk's $25 Pro plan and its $100 add-on. Past 50,000 retained users Clerk's $0.02 per user is several times Udibo's preview rate.
Does Udibo have prebuilt components like Clerk? No. Udibo hosts the sign-in,
account-recovery, and MFA pages on its side and returns to your app through
OAuth 2.0; the account screens inside your product are yours to build, and the
@udibo/oauth2 package supplies the protocol pieces rather than UI.
Can I move from Clerk to Udibo without making users re-register? Profiles and social identities can be imported and linked by the provider's stable subject. Password hashes Clerk can export are imported with an upgrade on first sign-in; MFA enrollments and active sessions do not move, so plan a re-enrollment path. See migration planning.
Does Udibo support SAML or SCIM like Clerk? Not today. Udibo connects to any OpenID Connect provider with no per-connection fee; SAML federation, SCIM provisioning, and hosted passkeys are not available.
Last verified 2026-09-07.