Clerk vs Mailgun
User management and authentication as a service
vs. Email API for developers with deep deliverability tooling
Pricing tiers
Clerk
Free
50k MAU included. No SSO/SAML. Perfect for side projects and early prototypes.
Free
Pro
$25/mo (or $20/mo annual). 50k MAU, $0.02 each after. 1 enterprise SSO connection per app. Webhooks, JWT templates, custom session duration.
$25/mo
Business
$300/mo (or $250/mo annual). Advanced organizations, enhanced support, additional enterprise features.
$300/mo
Enterprise
Custom. Volume MAU discounts, SLA, workspace-wide SAML SSO, dedicated support.
Custom
Mailgun
Free
100 emails/day. 1 custom domain, 1-day log retention, 1 inbound route. No credit card.
Free
Basic
$15/month. 10,000 emails/month, no daily limit, 5 inbound routes.
$15/mo
Foundation
$35/month (1st month free). 50,000 emails/month, 1,000 custom domains, 5-day retention.
$35/mo
Scale
$90/month. 100,000 emails/month, SAML SSO, 5,000 email validations, dedicated IP pools, 30-day retention.
$90/mo
Enterprise
Custom. Deliverability services, managed onboarding.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing hobby on Clerk vs free on Mailgun.
| Metric | Clerk | Mailgun |
|---|---|---|
| mao | 100 orgs/month | — |
| mau | 50000 users/month | — |
| sso connections | 0 connections | — |
Features
Clerk · 15 features
- Account Portal — Hosted sign-in/user profile pages at accounts.yourapp.com — zero UI code, fully …
- Bot Protection — Cloudflare Turnstile CAPTCHA integrated into sign-up.
- Clerk Billing — Built-in Stripe-powered billing: subscriptions, plans, proration — ties directly…
- Enterprise SSO (SAML/OIDC) — SAML and OIDC for enterprise customers. Per-domain connection. Pro+ (1 included)…
- Impersonation — Act as a user from dashboard to debug. Logged.
- JWT Templates — Custom JWT issuance for third-party backends (Supabase, Hasura, Firebase, Convex…
- Machine Tokens (M2M) — API keys and machine tokens for service-to-service auth in addition to user sess…
- Multi-Factor Auth — TOTP (authenticator apps), SMS OTP, backup codes. Forced or optional per user.
- Organizations (B2B) — Multi-tenant orgs with roles, permissions, invitations, domain allowlist, and pe…
- Passkeys (WebAuthn) — Passwordless passkey sign-in with per-device biometrics.
- Prebuilt Components — Drop-in React components: <SignIn/>, <SignUp/>, <UserButton/>, <OrganizationSwit…
- Sessions — Server-side session tokens. Sliding expiration by default; configurable absolute…
- User Management — Full user CRUD, metadata (public/private/unsafe), email/phone verification, ban/…
- Waitlist Mode — Collect sign-ups before opening the app. Approve waitlist entries to activate ac…
- Webhooks — Events: user.created/updated/deleted, session.created, organization.* — delivere…
Mailgun · 14 features
- Batch Sending — Send up to 1,000 recipients per API call via recipient variables.
- Dedicated IPs — IP pools with auto warmup. Scale+ tier.
- Deliverability Suite — Inbox placement testing, DMARC reporting, seed lists.
- Email Logs — Searchable log of all send attempts + events.
- Email Templates — Template builder + variables + versioning.
- Email Validation — Real-time email verification (syntax, MX, role accounts, disposable).
- EU Region — Data stored in EU for GDPR-sensitive customers.
- Inbound Routing — Route incoming emails to URLs/SMTP. Attachment forwarding.
- Mailing Lists — Unlimited mailing lists with bulk subscribe/unsubscribe.
- Open/Click Tracking — HTML + text tracking with configurable tracking domain.
- SAML SSO — Scale+ tier.
- Send API — REST/SMTP send with MIME + tracking.
- Tags — Tag messages to slice stats.
- Webhook Events — delivered, opened, clicked, unsubscribed, complained, permanent_fail, temporary_…
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Clerk | Mailgun |
|---|---|---|
| SDK | @clerk/astro, @clerk/backend / @clerk/clerk-sdk-node, @clerk/chrome-extension, @clerk/clerk-expo, @clerk/clerk-js (vanilla), @clerk/clerk-react, @clerk/clerk-react-native, @clerk/nextjs, @clerk/nuxt, @clerk/remix, clerk-sdk-go, clerk-sdk-python, clerk-sdk-ruby, @clerk/tanstack-start, @clerk/vue | mailgun.js (Node), mailgun-php, mailgun-python, mailgun-ruby |
| REST | Backend REST API, Frontend API | Mailgun REST API |
| MCP | Clerk MCP | — |
| OTHER | Webhooks (Svix) | Inbound Routing, SMTP Relay, Webhooks |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Clerk and Mailgun are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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