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Clerk vs SuperTokens

SuperTokens scores higher on the AgentReady, 54/100 against 48/100. They differ on 5 of the 41 signals. Which ones decides whether an agent can adopt them without a person watching.

What each one is

Clerk. Clerk provides full-stack authentication and user management with products such as Organizations, Billing, and more.

SuperTokens. Open source user authentication platform that helps developers build fast, maintain control, and reduce costs.

Where Clerk is ahead

Clerk passes observable execution, and SuperTokens does not. That is operate, whether an agent can run against it in production and recover when a call fails.

Where SuperTokens is ahead

SuperTokens passes search discoverable, and Clerk does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

It also holds understand: pricing understandable. Clerk misses it.

And on adopt, no mandatory sales call and free trial or free allowance. Clerk misses those.

What neither does

Both fail structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented, self-service signup, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified. If your agent needs any of those, you will be building it yourself either way.

Score, pillar by pillar

The AgentReady splits into four pillars, scored separately, because a product can be easy to find and still impossible to adopt.

Discover is whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists. SuperTokens leads 100 to 87. Clerk misses search discoverable; SuperTokens misses nothing.

Understand. SuperTokens leads 31 to 23. Clerk misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented; SuperTokens misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented.

Adopt. SuperTokens leads 60 to 48. Clerk misses self-service signup, no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance, fast time to first request; SuperTokens misses self-service signup, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request.

Operate. Clerk leads 35 to 24. Clerk misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified; SuperTokens misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, observable execution, agent compatibility verified.

Pricing

Clerk does not publish a machine-readable starting price. SuperTokens starts at $0.02/MAU and has a free tier.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

SuperTokens clears more of the signals an agent needs, so it is the safer default for unattended use. Full profiles: Clerk and SuperTokens. Alternatives to each: Clerk, SuperTokens.

An agent can fetch this as data: POST /v1/compare {"slugs": ["clerk", "supertokens"]}