Head to head
Clerk vs Amazon Cognito
Both platforms are scored with the same methodology and the same category rubric. Nothing on this page is influenced by advertising.
53/100Higher score | 44/100 | |
|---|---|---|
| Category rank | #3 | #9 |
| Confidence | Medium confidence | High confidence |
| External Reputation | 70 | 79 |
| AI Authority | 63 | 0 |
| Web Authority | 14 | 35 |
| Expert Assessment | 52 | 60 |
| TOP10 User Score | — | — |
| Pricing | From $25/mo (Pro) — vendor-domain explainer, not verified on the billing page · free tier: Free "Hobby" plan covering 50,000 monthly retained users; all features free in development mode | Lite: $0.0055 per MAU above the free tier (first band), $0.0046 per MAU next band — AWS example 950,000 MAUs = $4,405/month · free tier: 10,000 MAU/month per account or AWS Organization on Lite and Essentials (does not expire); 50 MAU/month for SAML 2.0/OIDC federated users on any tier; identity pools free of charge; no free tier on Plus, none for M2M token requests, and none in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions |
| Pricing model | Subscription (metered on monthly retained users) | Usage-based (pay-as-you-go per monthly active user, plus per-token and per-RPS add-ons) |
| Best for | React/Next.js product teams shipping B2B SaaS or paid B2C below roughly 50k retained users, who value time-to-launch over auth-layer control, have engineers able to work around component styling limits, and whose incident tolerance can absorb slow vendor support. | Engineering teams already running on AWS that are building consumer or B2C applications with social/direct sign-in, either below 10,000 MAU (free) or above roughly 500,000 MAU on Lite, and with in-house capacity to wire up Lambda triggers, IAM, KMS and SNS/SES. |
| Avoid if | You run a non-JavaScript stack, need deep domain-specific authorization, operate a free/ad-supported or high-churn consumer app at scale, need Clerk to be your billing system today, or carry hard support SLAs and regulated uptime obligations. | You sell B2B SaaS where every user arrives via a corporate SAML/OIDC IdP, need adaptive authentication on a small user base, provision an app client per tenant beyond 2,500, operate in GovCloud, have no AWS footprint or platform engineering capacity, or require a fixed predictable monthly invoice. |
| Markets | SMB, Mid-Market, B2B SaaS, Startups | SMB, Enterprise, Startups, Consumer/B2C applications, Public sector (with GovCloud limitations) |
| Founded | — | — |
| Headquarters | — | — |
A higher TOP SCORE means more of the evidence favours that platform on this methodology — it is not a recommendation, and it does not account for your specific requirements. Advertisers are never declared the winner of a comparison.