2 categories · RankedClerk
Clerk is an authentication and user management product for developers to build into their applications · clerk.com ↗
Strongest at small business, contested with WorkOS AuthKit. Thin evidence at enterprise: four labels.
The standing depends on who is buying. Every model is asked the same questions for each company size.
Ranked first, contested: WorkOS AuthKit has 17%.
Auth0 is first at 34%. 0 of 14 models made it the first choice when asked directly.
Auth0 is first at 38%.
Why models recommend it
“Clerk has become the go-to recommendation for modern startups building web apps”Qwen 3.7 Flash · Budget-constrained question · first choice
“Best Overall Value: Clerk”Kimi K2 · Budget-constrained question · first choice
“Developer‑centric teams building modern consumer apps favor Auth0, Clerk, Supabase Auth, Firebase Auth, Descope, Frontegg”GLM 4.7 FlashX · Comparative question · alternative
“Clerk offers exceptional value and covers all the enterprise requirements B2B customers typically demand”DeepSeek V4 Flash · Paraphrase question · alternative
What gives them pause
“Clerk's own postmortems show that outages in one service can cascade into session-management downtime, and Clerk notes its session service incidents can cause "complete downtime" for customers.”GPT-5.4 mini · Negative question · warning
“Clerk or similar developer-first tools as your only enterprise CIAM. Be cautious if you need mature consent management”Perplexity Sonar · Negative question · warning
“Modern developer-first options with good UX, but verify their long-term viability and security maturity”DeepSeek V4 Flash · Negative question · warning
Also on the shortlist
The products named in the same answers as Clerk, over the 84 answers that named it, and how often each was the first choice instead.
| Product | Named together | Picked instead | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 71 | 11 | Compare → | |
| 39 | 10 | Compare → | |
| 36 | 0 | View → | |
| 33 | 0 | View → | |
| 30 | 1 | View → | |
| 30 | 1 | Compare → | |
| 26 | 1 | Compare → | |
| 23 | 3 | View → | |
| 21 | 5 | Compare → | |
| 17 | 2 | Compare → |
What the models named instead of Clerk →
A side-by-side page exists where both products are among a category's top eight.
At a glance
Stated on Clerk's own site, not checked by Gane.
- For
- developers building authentication and user management into their application
- Price stated
- Free for your first 50,000 monthly retained users and 100 monthly retained orgs.
- Starting price
- 0
- Free plan or trial
- Free for your first 50,000 monthly retained users and 100 monthly retained orgs.
- Certifications
- SOC 2 Type II, CCPA, GDPR, HIPAA
- Customers named
- Supabase, Vercel, Stripe, Replit
How this is measured
Fourteen AI models from 12 labs are asked the same buying questions six ways, for three company sizes. Standings refresh every edition.
Gane sells AI visibility software. No company can pay to change a result.
Read the method →Sources returned with these answers
Fourteen of the fourteen models returned a source list in this edition: five return the pages they cited and nine the search results they consulted. These counts come from 62 of the 84 answers that named Clerk and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
176 of the 209 domain citations in answers naming Clerk came from a third party's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
By model
| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Warning | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 8 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Grok 4.20 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Mistral Small | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| Kimi K2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 4 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
What it publishes
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Report or ebook | 640 | 78 | 2026-09-28 | ||
| Blog | 279 | 15 | 2026-09-11 | ||
| Conference or event | 215 | 63 | 2026-09-28 | ||
| Glossary or explainer | 25 | 9 | 2026-09-29 | ||
| Comparison | 24 | 12 | 2026-07-09 | ||
| Template or tool | 3 | 3 | 2026-07-06 |
Most recent
- 2026-09-29Cipher suite glossary or explainer
- 2026-09-29Dkim glossary or explainer
- 2026-09-29Dmarc glossary or explainer
- 2026-09-29Spf glossary or explainer
- 2026-09-29Identity provider glossary or explainer
- 2026-09-29Service provider glossary or explainer
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page clerk.com exposes, subdomains included. Kind is read from the address and title. The last 90 days, the latest date and the twelve months count pages by when they were published, from the site's feeds, a date in the address, or the page's own publication date, read from up to a hundred of its most recently changed pages; a page that says only when it last changed is counted in its kind but not in when, so the recent counts are a floor, and a kind none of whose pages gives a publication date reads undated. An event counts as online when its address or title says so (webinar, on demand, virtual or online summit); a conference, summit, trade show, expo or roadshow that does not say so is counted as a conference or event, which on a vendor's site is mostly in person. Read September 29, 2026.