Medusa vs Clerk

Open-source commerce engine — build custom storefronts with Next.js + Node
vs. User management and authentication as a service

Medusa website ↗Clerk website ↗

Pricing tiers

Medusa

OSS (self-host)

$0. MIT license. Run Medusa backend + admin on your infra.

$0 base (usage-based)

Medusa Cloud Free

$0. Hobby projects. Shared infra. Community support.

Free

Medusa Cloud Pro

$99/mo. Production support. Dedicated DB. Priority.

$99/mo

Enterprise

Custom. SSO, SLA, dedicated cluster, PCI.

Custom

Medusa website ↗

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

Clerk website ↗

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing oss on Medusa vs hobby on Clerk.

Metric	Medusa	Clerk
mao	—	100 orgs/month
mau	—	50000 users/month
sso connections	—	0 connections

Features

Medusa · 16 features

Admin Dashboard — React-based admin UI.
Auth — Customer + admin auth with JWT.
Cart — Multi-region carts with tax/pricing logic.
Checkout — Multi-step checkout flow.
Customers + Groups — Customer records + B2B groups.
Dynamic Pricing — Price lists, rules, customer-specific.
Event Bus — Async events via Redis / RabbitMQ.
File Service — Pluggable storage (S3, local).
Gift Cards — Native gift-card support.
Inventory + Multi-warehouse — Stock tracking across locations.
Next.js Starter — Production-ready Next.js storefront.
Orders + Fulfillment — Full order lifecycle (edits, returns, exchanges).
Products + Variants — Products with options, variants, images.
Promotions + Discounts — Rule-based promos, campaigns.
Tax Providers — Pluggable tax calculation.
Workflows Engine — Durable saga-style business logic.

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…

Developer interfaces

Kind	Medusa	Clerk
CLI	medusa CLI	—
SDK	@medusajs/js-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
REST	Medusa Admin API, Medusa Store API	Backend REST API, Frontend API
MCP	Medusa MCP	Clerk MCP
OTHER	Medusa Admin UI, Next.js Starter	Webhooks (Svix)

Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Medusa and Clerk are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.

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