Authentication for SaaS: Our Default Recommendation

Recommendation

Choose Clerk for most new SaaS products.

Clerk is Starter Wiki's bounded default when a team values managed sessions and prebuilt account flows more than infrastructure ownership.¹ ²

For: New SaaS applications using a supported web framework and preferring managed authentication

Main trade-off

The managed boundary reduces implementation scope, while current cost, data portability, and exit requirements must be validated separately.¹

It covers the common authentication surface without forcing the product team to operate that surface itself.

Short path to production: First-party framework guidance and prebuilt flows reduce integration work.¹ ²

Managed identity state: Users, sessions, account linking, MFA, and recovery are operated as a service.¹

Product-ready interfaces: Hosted and component-based account interfaces avoid rebuilding standard identity UI.¹

Ownership, enterprise identity, and an existing backend ecosystem are the decisive exceptions.

Choose it when authentication must run in infrastructure your team controls.

Main trade-off: You assume more security, persistence, and operational responsibility.³

Choose it when enterprise SSO and directory workflows drive the buying decision.

Main trade-off: The fit is more enterprise-identity-specific than the general SaaS default.⁴

Choose it when the product already commits to Supabase and needs conventional authentication.

Main trade-off: Ecosystem alignment leads the decision more than the account experience.⁵

Use the standards and product documentation to validate security and implementation details.

Primary documentation used for the recommendation and exceptions.