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Launch HN: Stack Auth (YC S24) – An Open-Source Auth0/Clerk Alternative

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Launch HN: Stack Auth (YC S24) – An Open-Source Auth0/Clerk Alternative

#1

Post by n2d4 »

Hi HN! We're Zai and Konsti, and we're building Stack Auth (https://stack-auth.com/), an open-source managed authentication and authorization platform. Basically, we build your login and signup pages, and everything that comes with that.

Our GitHub repo is at https://github.com/stack-auth/stack, and there’s a zero-budget demo video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTkjdPf2E2Q

Stack Auth was born out of years of frustration with the incumbents. We wanted to build something that is developer-friendly and open-source at the same time.

The dominant player in this space is Auth0, who appeals to enterprises but lags behind in developer-friendliness and has strong vendor lock-in. A newer one is Clerk, which markets directly to devs, but is still entirely proprietary. Open-source solutions like Supabase Auth or Auth.js/NextAuth are only authN, and don't provide the rest of the toolchain.

On the other hand, building your own auth infrastructure is tedious work. Rolling your own crypto is already hard enough, but on top you'll have to deal with OAuth flows, access tokens, RBAC, permission syncing, API keys, and so on. Most handcrafted OAuth or password-based applications in the wild are vulnerable in at least some of these areas.

To us, the solution to this was obvious, so we decided to build it. Stack Auth is 100% open-source, licensed under MIT and AGPL. You can self-host, or choose to use our managed hosting. If you choose the latter, there's no lockin. You can export all your data and/or start self-hosting at any time.

Also, we're more than just authentication — we have authorization (orgs, teams, permissions, RBAC) and user management (impersonation, user dashboard, webhooks).

One interesting feature is what we call "connected accounts": we can manage and refresh your OAuth access tokens even for services that your users don't use for sign in, such as when accessing GMail or OneDrive APIs.

We also put a lot of weight into integrating deeply into the tech stack itself. For now, we support Next.js frontends with a bunch of components and hooks for sign-in, password reset, and organizations. Though, we do have a well-documented REST API (https://docs.stack-auth.com/rest-api/auth), so you can access Stack from any language.

For more info, check out our GitHub repo above, or our documentation (https://docs.stack-auth.com).

Would love to hear about your own stories and opinions on auth. Thanks all!

Launch HN: Stack Auth (YC S24) – An Open-Source Auth0/Clerk Alternative
github.com

Re: Launch HN: Stack Auth (YC S24) – An Open-Source Auth0/Clerk Alternative

#4

Post by candiddevmike »

I don't think your differentiators are enough for folks to pull the trigger on something like this. There are a ton of folks in the space--supabase, supertokens, ory to name a few, not including the cloud providers who offer this service as well--how do you differentiate yourself from them?

Re: Launch HN: Stack Auth (YC S24) – An Open-Source Auth0/Clerk Alternative

#7

Post by n2d4 »

telesilla wrote: post #3

How does this compare to Ory Kratos, also an open source option - https://www.ory.sh/comparisons/ory-versus-auth0/

Kratos is geared towards enterprises and less developer-friendly. We integrate very closely into the tech stack that we currently target, which is Next.js + Postgres, and want to make setup as straight-forward as possible.

I would say we are to Ory what Clerk is to Auth0.

Re: Launch HN: Stack Auth (YC S24) – An Open-Source Auth0/Clerk Alternative

#8

Post by esafak »

I'd suggest preparing a comparison table on the home page, at least against open source competitors, to help prospects decide. You emphasize completeness (authz + authn), and simplicity here:

   The dominant player in this space is Auth0, who appeals to enterprises but lags behind in developer-friendliness and has strong vendor lock-in. A newer one is Clerk, which markets directly to devs, but is still entirely proprietary. Open-source solutions like Supabase Auth or Auth.js/NextAuth are only authN, and don't provide the rest of the toolchain.
Your pricing seems multi-tenant friendly. What other differentiating factors can you think of?

Re: Launch HN: Stack Auth (YC S24) – An Open-Source Auth0/Clerk Alternative

#9

Post by n2d4 »

mmcclure wrote: post #6

Looks nice, congratulations on the launch! I suspect the answer is "no" here, but can Stack be used as an OAuth provider itself? I think all I see in the documentation is using other OAuth providers for authentication.

In theory yes — actually, we already are an OAuth provider behind the scenes — though we haven't documented this anywhere yet. What would you use it for?

Re: Launch HN: Stack Auth (YC S24) – An Open-Source Auth0/Clerk Alternative

#10

Post by n2d4 »

esafak wrote: post #8

I'd suggest preparing a comparison table on the home page, at least against open source competitors, to help prospects decide. You emphasize completeness (authz + authn), and simplicity here: The dominant player in this space is Auth0, who appeals to enterprises but lags behind in developer-friendliness and has strong vendor lock-in. A newer one is Clerk, which markets directly to devs, but is still entirely propriet…

Appreciate the feedback! We have the following in our GitHub README, which we should probably copy to our frontpage:

    > # How is this different from X?
    >
    > Ask yourself about X:
    >
    > - Is X open-source?
    >
    > - Is X developer-friendly, well-documented, and lets you get started in minutes?
    >
    > - Besides authentication, does X also do authorization and user management (see feature list below)?
    >
    > If you answered "no" to any of these questions, then that's how Stack Auth is different from X.
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