Recently I wanted to add auth to my pet project, and between
(a) using better-auth, then integrating 3rd party mailer service, and rolling out my main dashboard
(b) leeching off free tier of Auth0 or Clerk and getting all batteries included I've chose the latter.
The fact that better-auth doesn't come with barebone dashboard is criminal.
For pet project it doesn't matter if I have to integrate Resend or Clerk, it's still some mental overhead I have to account for, but with Clerk at least I don't have to manage my users using sql queries.
People say it's better because you can embed it in your app. I don't buy that either. If I'd have to rollout better-auth I'd do that as a separate app, just to encapsulate database, dashboard, and integrations.
Anyway, glad it's getting traction, I just don't get all the hype around it.
For production systems that need to scale and evolve over time, you’ll regret tightly coupling to Auth0 or Cognito. Don’t misunderstand me—the hosted versions of these services work well, and their hardened, managed interfaces make security testing straightforward. However, the moment you need even minor customization beyond their standard offerings, you’ll find yourself in a frustrating situation.
But for a side gig that may or may not pop stuff like Auth0/Clerk is absolutely god send. Auth is hard. Compliance around it is hard. Bad actors deterrence is hard.
Sure, I can roll my own auth with better-auth or similar but I have to think about it. It's the same thing as owning a bare metal and managing my own kubernetes. It's a neat idea, and in some scenarios can be cheaper/more beneficial, but for most scenarios, especially low key side projects or startups it's too much of a hassle. I'd better delegate that mess to someone else for free - for now, and pay the bill later on, when I have to money to share.
If I'd be starting a well researched project with decent founding I would probably roll my own solution, but when talking about side project or personal moonshot it's way better to stick with "responsibility as a service" scheme.
If Better Auth came with a simple builtin email implementation (i.e. just plug in SMTP credentials), I’d consider it perfect. (I’m not sold on Resend!)
Agreed that a builtin dashboard would be nice, but it’s not necessary by any means – you’ll still be building your own dashboard around your ORM models, which is of course what Better Auth uses, too.
But if you’re looking for something more like Clerk, maybe try Logto or Authentik?
After your post I made it back to logto to see that I've already have account in their system. Then I looked around and I still have no clue what their offering is about. Seriously, it's so "AI", "MCP", "SaaS" oriented that I'm absolutely clueless what the offering is.
Comparing Better-Auth to Clerk or Auth0 misses the point entirely.
People choose Better-Auth because they want to own their user auth and users table themselves. Auth can be complex, but it's such a key and important piece of your business that outsourcing it to a 3rd party should be much closer to a last resort than a first impulse. If that 3rd party ever shuts down, has downtime, or your account gets suspended for whatever reason, users won't even be able to login to your app. That is a HUGE risk that I am not sure you are accounting for.
I get what you're saying, but the same can be said about any 3rd party vendor.
Even if you host your app on AWS or CloudFlare you can face some major downtimes like recently. Sure it's less likely for AWS to go out of business than some mom-and-pop auth service. But if you stick with major, overcharging, players like Auth0 you should be good.
Sure, it cost a lot, but I recently had a conversation with a entrepreneur who makes a really, really good life out of an online shop and she said something between the lines of "I fking hate shopify, they steal my money, I need to get out of that platform!". Sure they take her money, but they provide the whole foundation for her business, and the cut is like 3%. Payment provider takes similar cut. You can say they are leeching of her business, but without them - and she made a concious choice to only sell her products on her online platform - her business doesn't exist.
I have the same outlook at auth providers. Sure you can do it yourself, same as hosting, monitoring, etc. But most people these days decide to outsource that chore to someone else for a change. Auth0 et al. have a hefty free tier to lock you in, and then they charge you premium, but I'm very happy to take that bet in a not-so-serious scenario, because at the time I have to pay premium I'd better be making some serious money I can share with them.
Again - same argument can be made about AWS. It might be cheaper to own the infra, but in the transitional stage I likely won't be afford to staff a competent devops to do all the chores. And sure, couple steps later I'm locked in for life, but hey, if they didn't helped me at first I wouldn't be able to get there.
Recently I wanted to add auth to my pet project, and between (a) using better-auth, then integrating 3rd party mailer service, and rolling out my main dashboard (b) leeching off free tier of Auth0 or Clerk and getting all batteries included I've chose the latter.
The fact that better-auth doesn't come with barebone dashboard is criminal.
For pet project it doesn't matter if I have to integrate Resend or Clerk, it's still some mental overhead I have to account for, but with Clerk at least I don't have to manage my users using sql queries.
People say it's better because you can embed it in your app. I don't buy that either. If I'd have to rollout better-auth I'd do that as a separate app, just to encapsulate database, dashboard, and integrations.
Anyway, glad it's getting traction, I just don't get all the hype around it.