Updated November 2, 2026
· ~2 min read
WorkOS and Clerk both handle sign-in, users and organizations, and both sell enterprise SSO. They come from opposite ends. Clerk started as drop-in authentication with polished UI components and added B2B features. WorkOS started as the enterprise-readiness layer (SSO, SCIM, audit logs) and added user management, now free up to a million monthly active users. The right choice depends mostly on how many of your customers will ask for SSO, and how soon.
WorkOS's admin portal is its strongest feature for selling to enterprises: you send a customer's IT admin a link and they configure SAML or SCIM against their own identity provider, which removes a support task from every deal. Clerk's strength is the front end: prebuilt sign-in, user profile and organization switcher components for React and Next.js that look finished on day one. Clerk counts retained users, people who come back at least a day after signing up, which can be much lower than monthly actives for products with a lot of one-time sign-ups. Both lock you in at the user table: whichever you pick, keep your own users table keyed by your own ids, and store the provider's id as a column, so a later move is a migration and not a rewrite.
Question 1 of 2
Will most revenue come from companies that require SSO?
Choose Clerk if you are pre-enterprise: the free and Pro tiers cover a lot, the UI components save weeks, and the first SSO connection is included in Pro. Choose WorkOS if enterprise customers are the plan: user management is free at almost any startup scale, connection pricing is simple to pass into contracts, and the admin portal lets each customer's IT team set up SSO and SCIM without you. Count connections, not users: at ten enterprise customers with SSO and SCIM, WorkOS lists at $2,500 a month and Clerk at $1,550 including Pro and the B2B add-on. Below a handful of customers the gap is small either way.
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As of November 2, 2026. Provided as is, for general information, and accurate to the best of our knowledge on the date shown. Not legal, compliance, tax, financial or other professional advice. Prices, limits and vendor services change; check current vendor documentation before relying on anything here. Terms of use.