Clerk vs Redis
User management and authentication as a service
vs. The real-time data platform — in-memory DB + cache + vector + search
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
Redis
Free
30 MB. Single DB. Community support. AWS + GCP only.
Free
Redis OSS
BSD-licensed Redis (or source-available RSALv2 for newer). Self-host free.
$0 base (usage-based)
Essentials
From $5/mo. 250 MB to 100 GB. SAML SSO, RBAC, 99.99% uptime.
$5/mo
Pro
From $200/mo. Dedicated. Active-Active multi-region. Auto-tiering. 99.999% uptime.
$200/mo
Enterprise
Custom annual. SOC2, HIPAA, private deployment.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing hobby on Clerk vs free on Redis.
| Metric | Clerk | Redis |
|---|---|---|
| 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…
Redis · 21 features
- Active-Active (CRDT) — Multi-region live-write replication.
- Auto-Tiering (Flex) — RAM + SSD tiered storage.
- Bitmaps + Bitfields — Compact boolean storage.
- Geo — Geospatial queries on lat/lon.
- Hashes — Field-value maps per key.
- HyperLogLog — Probabilistic cardinality.
- Lists — Linked list — push/pop/range.
- Lua Scripting — Server-side Lua + Functions.
- Pub/Sub — Channel-based messaging.
- RedisBloom — Bloom + Cuckoo + Count-Min Sketch + TopK.
- Redis Cluster — Horizontal sharding.
- RediSearch — Full-text + vector search engine.
- RedisInsight — Official GUI for Redis.
- RedisJSON — Native JSON document support.
- RedisTimeSeries — Time-series data type.
- Replication — Primary-replica async replication.
- Sets — Unique element sets.
- Sorted Sets (ZSet) — Score-ranked sets for leaderboards.
- Streams — Append-only log (Kafka-like).
- Strings — Primitive + binary-safe key-value.
- Transactions (MULTI/EXEC) — Atomic command batches.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Clerk | Redis |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | — | redis-cli |
| 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 | go-redis, Jedis + Lettuce, node-redis, redis-py, redis-rs |
| REST | Backend REST API, Frontend API | Redis Cloud API |
| MCP | Clerk MCP | — |
| OTHER | Webhooks (Svix) | RedisInsight GUI, RESP protocol |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Clerk and Redis are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
Want this comparison in your AI agent's context? Install the free Staxly MCP server.