Tools / Clerk / Clerk vs WorkOS
Drop-in auth and user management for modern apps.
Clerk provides authentication and user management as a set of embeddable components and APIs. It covers user authentication, multi-tenancy, enterprise authentication, and agent authentication. The product ships prebuilt UI components — sign-in, sign-up, user profile, user button, organization switcher, organization list, create-organization, waitlist, and pricing table components — plus profile and organization pages with billing tabs. It also includes an OAuth consent flow (shown in the homepage example with a Cursor integration) and a SKILL.md endpoint for adding Clerk auth to an app via agents. Developers manage their instance from a dashboard at dashboard.clerk.com. The company announced a $50m Series C.
Enterprise auth: SSO, SCIM, and audit logs.
WorkOS is an auth and user management platform aimed at developers whose apps need to sell to enterprise customers. Its core products cover Enterprise SSO (with support for any identity provider), Directory Sync for user lifecycle management from corporate directories, Audit Logs for event logging and streaming, Multi-Factor Authentication, Role-Based Access Control, and an Admin Portal that lets corporate IT admins onboard themselves. It also ships AuthKit, a customizable hosted UI for authentication flows, and a broader User Management platform that ties these together. Beyond the core auth stack, the site lists Radar for real-time bot, fraud, and abuse protection; Vault for encryption and key management of objects; MCP Auth for securing MCP servers; Pipes for app and agent integrations; auth.md for user registration by agents; Airlock for intent-based access control; and Atlas, described as an AI coworker. Documentation, a changelog, API status page, pricing, and support plans are all available on the site.