Clerk vs Upstash
User management and authentication as a service
vs. Serverless Redis + Kafka + Vector + QStash — per-request pricing
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
Upstash
Free
Redis: 256 MB + 500k cmds/mo. Vector: 10k queries/mo. QStash: 500 msgs/day.
Free
Pay-as-you-go
Redis: $0.2 per 100k cmds. Vector: $0.4/M queries. QStash: $1 per 100k.
$0 base (usage-based)
Fixed Plans
From $10/mo. 250MB-500GB Redis. $5/read region. 50GB bandwidth included.
$10/mo
Prod Pack
+$200/mo per DB. SLA + RBAC + encryption + SOC-2 + Prometheus + Datadog.
$200/mo
Enterprise
Custom. 100k+ cmd/sec, unlimited bandwidth, HIPAA.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing hobby on Clerk vs free on Upstash.
| Metric | Clerk | Upstash |
|---|---|---|
| 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…
Upstash · 12 features
- Cron (via QStash) — Scheduled HTTP callbacks on any interval.
- Edge-Ready — Native for CF Workers, Vercel Edge, Deno, Bun.
- Global Database — Multi-region Redis reads.
- HTTP REST APIs — Every product has REST — works from edge runtimes.
- QStash — HTTP-based message queue + cron scheduler for webhooks.
- QStash Webhooks — Outgoing webhook delivery with retries + DLQ.
- Read Regions — Add read replicas in any region ($5/mo each).
- @upstash/ratelimit — Redis-backed rate limiter lib.
- Upstash Redis — Serverless Redis with HTTP REST + RESP TCP.
- Upstash Search — Full-text + semantic search engine.
- Upstash Vector — Serverless vector DB with REST API. HNSW indexing.
- Upstash Workflow — Durable workflow runtime built on QStash.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Clerk | Upstash |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | upstash-redis / vector (Python), @upstash/redis / vector / qstash |
| REST | Backend REST API, Frontend API | QStash REST API, Upstash Redis REST API, Upstash Vector REST |
| MCP | Clerk MCP | — |
| OTHER | Webhooks (Svix) | RESP (TCP) |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Clerk and Upstash are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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