BoilerplateHub

Best Authentication for Expo SaaS in 2026

How do users sign in? These 3 options list first-party Expo support. Community ports are deliberately left out, because glue you maintain yourself is not the same as support.

Expo's value comes from managing the native layer for you, and almost every agent failure here is an agent stepping around that management because older React Native advice told it to. The agent needs to know the SDK version, whether the project uses continuous native generation or has committed native directories, and whether the target runtime is Expo Go or a development build. Package versions are pinned to the SDK, so installing with the wrong tool is enough to break a build that was previously fine.

Quick picks

Best overall

Supabase Auth

The user table is a Postgres table, so foreign keys to it just work.

Best free or open source

Clerk

Prebuilt sign-in, sign-up and profile components mean almost no UI work.

Worth a look

Better Auth

User and session tables sit in your database, so joins are ordinary SQL.

All 3 options

1. Clerk

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Drop-in hosted auth with prebuilt sign-in components, so you ship login on day one instead of building it.

Cost shape: Generous free tier measured in monthly retained users, then paid plans that bill per retained user above the included allowance, with paid add-ons for organizations, admin tooling and billing.

Strengths

  • ✓Prebuilt sign-in, sign-up and profile components mean almost no UI work.
  • ✓Organizations, invitations and roles are built in rather than bolted on later.
  • ✓Middleware helpers make protecting Next.js routes close to a one-liner.

Tradeoffs

  • ✗Users live in Clerk, so joining auth data to your own tables needs syncing.
  • ✗The prebuilt components fight you once your design diverges from theirs.
  • ✗Per-active-user pricing scales with growth even when auth stays trivial.

2. Better Auth

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Open source TypeScript auth library that keeps sessions and users in your own database, extended through plugins.

Cost shape: The library itself is free and open source and runs on your own database and server. There is now a separate optional hosted dashboard with a free tier and paid plans for teams.

Strengths

  • ✓User and session tables sit in your database, so joins are ordinary SQL.
  • ✓Plugin system covers passkeys, two factor and organizations without vendor lock-in.
  • ✓Fully typed API surface, so misuse usually shows up at compile time.

Tradeoffs

  • ✗You run and patch the auth code yourself, including security updates.
  • ✗Login screens are your responsibility, since the library ships logic not UI.
  • ✗Younger project, so APIs still move and older guides go stale quickly.

3. Supabase Auth

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Auth that ships inside Supabase, with users stored in your Postgres and row level security wired to the session.

Cost shape: Included with the Supabase project you already pay for, with additional cost only at higher active-user tiers.

Strengths

  • ✓The user table is a Postgres table, so foreign keys to it just work.
  • ✓Row level security policies read the session directly, pushing authorization into the database.
  • ✓One vendor for auth, storage and database keeps the moving parts low.

Tradeoffs

  • ✗Bundled with Supabase, so adopting it usually means adopting the whole platform.
  • ✗Auth schema lives in a managed namespace you cannot freely reshape.
  • ✗Row level security is powerful but easy to get subtly wrong.

Pricing described qualitatively because published plans change often. Data checked 2026-08-25.

Side by side

Option Cost shape Main tradeoff
Clerk Generous free tier measured in monthly retained users, then paid plans that bill per retained user above the included allowance, with paid add-ons for organizations, admin tooling and billing. Users live in Clerk, so joining auth data to your own tables needs syncing.
Better Auth The library itself is free and open source and runs on your own database and server. There is now a separate optional hosted dashboard with a free tier and paid plans for teams. You run and patch the auth code yourself, including security updates.
Supabase Auth Included with the Supabase project you already pay for, with additional cost only at higher active-user tiers. Bundled with Supabase, so adopting it usually means adopting the whole platform.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best authentication for Expo?

Supabase Auth is the safest default because it works across the widest range of projects: Auth that ships inside Supabase, with users stored in your Postgres and row level security wired to the session. That said, Bundled with Supabase, so adopting it usually means adopting the whole platform. If that matters to you, one of the others below is the better call.

Is there a free option for Expo?

Clerk is the one to look at. Generous free tier measured in monthly retained users, then paid plans that bill per retained user above the included allowance, with paid add-ons for organizations, admin tooling and billing. The tradeoff: Users live in Clerk, so joining auth data to your own tables needs syncing.

How many authentication options actually support Expo?

3 of the options we track list first-party support for Expo. We only count documented support, not community ports, so the real number is sometimes higher if you are willing to maintain the glue yourself.

Go deeper

Head to head

→ Better Auth vs Clerk→ Clerk vs Supabase Auth→ Better Auth vs Supabase Auth

Other layers for Expo

Same layer, other frameworks

Next.jsNuxt
Expo boilerplates → Agent setup for Expo → Stack recommender →