One license, no surprises
Subscribe per app, then bolt on only the features you actually need. No per-MAU tax. Cancel anytime — your infrastructure keeps running forever.
Unlike Clerk and Auth0, we never charge per monthly active user — your costs stay flat as you grow.
Get your app license
$15/mo covers your app and two environments.
Add power-ups
Bolt on only the features your product actually needs.
Invite your team
Two seats included. Add more at $9/seat/mo.
App licenses
Community
Solo hackers & MVPs. Give back to the better-auth community.
- ✓Social providers & email OTP
- ✓Dashboard access
- ✓1 environment
- ✓Always latest version
- ✓Community support (GitHub/Discord)
Pro
Serious devs — full Dev → Prod lifecycle.
- ✓All Launch plugins
- ✓Service-to-service auth (JWKS)
- ✓2 environments included
- ✓Version pinning
- ✓2 seats included
- ✓Email support
Extra environment
Need a separate staging environment? Add one to your Pro license.
Pro includes 2 seats. Add more at the org level — not per app.
Extra seat
Org-level dashboard access
+$9/mo
Bolt onto any Pro app, per environment.
Hardened Security Pack
Startups heading toward a SOC 2 audit.
- ✓Automated quarterly secret rotation
- ✓AES-GCM encrypted KV at rest
- ✓Auth event history & audit logs
B2B / SaaS Pack
Coming soonPricing coming soon
Multi-tenancy, RBAC, and SAML for B2B founders.
Growth Pack
Coming soonPricing coming soon
Apps scaling revenue and operations.
Elastic Shard Pack
Coming soonPricing coming soon
Break the 10 GB D1 limit with transparent sharding.
See how it stacks
How bao compares
| Feature | bao | Clerk / Auth0 |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing basis | Per-app subscription + optional add-ons | MAU (the "success tax") |
| Full lifecycle cost | ~$209 yr 1, $180/yr after | $300+/yr recurring |
| Key ownership | You — in your own KV | Vendor holds your keys |
| Data residency | 100% your Cloudflare account | Vendor's database |
| Lock-in | None — code & data are yours | High — data migration hell |
Common questions
What exactly counts as an "app"?▾
An app is a single, isolated deployment on your Cloudflare infrastructure — one Worker + D1 + KV. Each app maps to one environment (production, staging, or dev). A Pro license includes production + one additional environment. Extra environments are $29 one-time each.
Why a subscription instead of a one-time license?▾
bao provisions your auth infrastructure via a GitHub Action we maintain. Once deployed, the runtime is 100% yours on your Cloudflare account — but the delivery pipeline isn't static. We continuously update the Action to track better-auth upstream changes, ship security patches, and land new features. The $15/mo covers that maintained delivery pipeline, not access to something we control.
Do I need a license for my dev environment?▾
No. The Pro license includes production + one non-production environment. Most apps only need one dev environment, so the license covers you. If you need a separate staging environment, it's $29 one-time.
Do I pay for monthly active users?▾
No. bao is priced by app and feature packs — never per-MAU. Your users live in your Cloudflare D1 database, not ours.
Who pays for the Cloudflare infrastructure?▾
You do — directly to Cloudflare. bao deploys to your account. For most apps, Workers, D1, and KV usage fits comfortably within Cloudflare's free tier.