Clerk vs Cursor

User management and authentication as a service
vs. AI-native code editor — VS Code fork with deep AI integration

Pricing tiers

Clerk

Free

50k MAU included. No SSO/SAML. Perfect for side projects and early prototypes.

Free

Pro

$25/mo (or $20/mo annual). 50k MAU, $0.02 each after. 1 enterprise SSO connection per app. Webhooks, JWT templates, custom session duration.

$25/mo

Business

$300/mo (or $250/mo annual). Advanced organizations, enhanced support, additional enterprise features.

$300/mo

Enterprise

Custom. Volume MAU discounts, SLA, workspace-wide SAML SSO, dedicated support.

Custom

Clerk website ↗

Cursor

Hobby (Free)

Free. Limited Agent requests + Tab completions. No credit card.

Free

Pro

$20/month. Extended Agent limits, frontier models, MCPs + skills + hooks, cloud agents.

$20/mo

Teams

$40/user/month. Shared chats + commands + rules, centralized billing, RBAC, SAML/OIDC SSO.

$40/mo

Pro+ (Recommended)

$60/month. Everything in Pro + 3x usage on OpenAI, Claude, Gemini.

$60/mo

Ultra

$200/month. 20x usage multiplier + priority access to new features.

$200/mo

Enterprise

Custom. Pooled usage, SCIM, AI code tracking API + audit logs, priority support.

Custom

Cursor website ↗

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing hobby on Clerk vs hobby on Cursor.

Metric	Clerk	Cursor
mao	100 orgs/month	—
mau	50000 users/month	—
sso connections	0 connections	—

Features

Clerk · 15 features

Account Portal — Hosted sign-in/user profile pages at accounts.yourapp.com — zero UI code, fully …
Bot Protection — Cloudflare Turnstile CAPTCHA integrated into sign-up.
Clerk Billing — Built-in Stripe-powered billing: subscriptions, plans, proration — ties directly…
Enterprise SSO (SAML/OIDC) — SAML and OIDC for enterprise customers. Per-domain connection. Pro+ (1 included)…
Impersonation — Act as a user from dashboard to debug. Logged.
JWT Templates — Custom JWT issuance for third-party backends (Supabase, Hasura, Firebase, Convex…
Machine Tokens (M2M) — API keys and machine tokens for service-to-service auth in addition to user sess…
Multi-Factor Auth — TOTP (authenticator apps), SMS OTP, backup codes. Forced or optional per user.
Organizations (B2B) — Multi-tenant orgs with roles, permissions, invitations, domain allowlist, and pe…
Passkeys (WebAuthn) — Passwordless passkey sign-in with per-device biometrics.
Prebuilt Components — Drop-in React components: <SignIn/>, <SignUp/>, <UserButton/>, <OrganizationSwit…
Sessions — Server-side session tokens. Sliding expiration by default; configurable absolute…
User Management — Full user CRUD, metadata (public/private/unsafe), email/phone verification, ban/…
Waitlist Mode — Collect sign-ups before opening the app. Approve waitlist entries to activate ac…
Webhooks — Events: user.created/updated/deleted, session.created, organization.* — delivere…

Cursor · 15 features

Agent Mode — Autonomous multi-file editing + tool use. Runs terminal commands with confirmati…
Background Agents — Run agents in the cloud to tackle longer tasks async.
BugBot (PR reviews) — AI reviewer on GitHub PRs.
Chat (⌘L) — Conversational chat with codebase context.
Cmd-K Inline Edit — Highlight code + ⌘K → natural language edit instruction.
Codebase Indexing — Embedding-based semantic search over your codebase.
Composer — Multi-file edit sessions with full context.
.cursorrules / Project Rules — Custom system prompts per project to steer the AI.
MCP Support — Add Model Context Protocol servers to extend agent capabilities.
Privacy Mode — Data never used for training; zero-retention routing.
Skills & Hooks — User-defined skills library + lifecycle hooks.
Tab (multi-line completion) — Predictive completions including next-edit suggestions.
Team Shared Context — Share chats, commands, rules across team.
VS Code Extension Compat — Most VS Code extensions work via the marketplace.
YOLO Mode — Auto-approve all agent actions (for trusted workflows).

Developer interfaces

Kind	Clerk	Cursor
CLI	—	Cursor CLI
SDK	@clerk/astro, @clerk/backend / @clerk/clerk-sdk-node, @clerk/chrome-extension, @clerk/clerk-expo, @clerk/clerk-js (vanilla), @clerk/clerk-react, @clerk/clerk-react-native, @clerk/nextjs, @clerk/nuxt, @clerk/remix, clerk-sdk-go, clerk-sdk-python, clerk-sdk-ruby, @clerk/tanstack-start, @clerk/vue	—
REST	Backend REST API, Frontend API	—
MCP	Clerk MCP	Cursor MCP support
OTHER	Webhooks (Svix)	Cursor Desktop App, Cursor Rules (.cursorrules), Privacy Mode

Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Clerk and Cursor are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.

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