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Stack Auth
Open-source Auth0/Clerk Alternative
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Michael Seibel

Stack Auth (YC S24) - Open-source Auth0/Clerk alternative

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Stack Auth is managed user authentication & authorization. It is developer-friendly and fully open-source & self-hostable. Within 5 minutes, you can setup Stack and use its components such as <SignIn /> and <AccountSettings />.

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Zai Shi
Maker
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Hi Product Hunt, Zai & Konsti here! We built many web projects before, and the most annoying part of starting a project is spending countless hours battling with authentication, user management, account settings, and RBAC. None of the open-source solutions have the developer-friendliness and the feature set we'd wish for. We want to solve this problem for everyone with a great all-in-one open-source and self-hostable platform. We have paid managed hosting available on our platform, which will give you the same experience as Clerk or other services. However, we build trust with our customers and avoid vendor lock-in by keeping all infrastructure 100% open-source. If you like what we're building, please try it out in your project! Also, join our Discord to build great things together!
Konstantin Wohlwend
Maker
Konsti here, thanks for all the comments! Lots of people are asking about our competitors, so here's how we're different. Think of a specific competitor and ask yourself: - Are they open-source? - Are they developer-friendly, even for startups and indie devs, letting you get started & scale in minutes? - Besides authentication, do they also do authorization and user management, with features that you'll inevitably need (such as; multi-tenancy with teams/organizations, role-based access control, password authentication, user dashboard, analytics integration)? How many YESes did you get? The answer is YES for Stack Auth on all three.
Joseph Abraham
@fomalhaut Well done on the launch! Wishing you continued success and growth. How did you come up with the idea?
Zai Shi
Maker
@kjosephabraham Thanks! We've both built startups before, and we found that one of the most painful aspects in the early stages was building things that weren't directly related to our core business. We spent a lot of time on tasks like authentication, user management, database migration, analytics, and billing. Our long-term vision is to solve all these problems with a five-minute setup and manage everything within one dashboard. We decided to tackle this from the most core and painful problem, which authentication!
Porush Puri
@fomalhaut Wow, this looks super promising, will use it in my next project. Congratulations on the launch!
Michal Wanto
@fomalhaut Hey Zai Shi, congrats on the launch! However, we also need a better version of auth for mobile development, especially for Expo projects
Robert
Congratulations on the launch, Zai & Konsti! This looks like a fantastic tool for developers. Can the sign-in pages and account settings be customized without using the Stack components? If so, how much flexibility do developers have in tailoring these pages to fit their specific design requirements?
Zai Shi
Maker
@thomas80 Yes, everything on the frontend is 100% customizable! You can call functions like stackApp.signInWithOAuth("google") when you click on your own OAuth login button. Stack components are just prebuilt components using these low-level functions
Archer
Are there specific tools or examples available to help new users get to grips with Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and user management within Stack Auth?
Zai Shi
Maker
@archer1 Our documentation has some examples in the "permissions" section, otherwise there is also an /examples/demo project in the GitHub repo
Madhu Balakrishna
Launching soon!
Congratulations on the launch. This looks clean. Curious to know how different it is from next-auth. also can we customize the sign in pages without using the stack components?
Zai Shi
Maker
@madospace Hi Madhu, thank you for your support! Differences from Next-Auth: We just have more features — for example, we have built-in support for teams/organizations, RBAC, password auth, JWT metadata, and so on and so forth. We are a managed solution for authentication, authorization, and user management, whereas Next-Auth is simply a library for authentication only. About customization: Yes, everything is fully customizable! You can build your own button and call a function like stackApp.signInWithOAuth("google") when clicking it.
Tucker Brown
I'm particularly impressed with how developer-friendly and open-source it is. How does Stack Auth differ from existing solutions like next-auth in terms of both features and ease of use? Are there any unique functionalities that set it apart?
Zai Shi
Maker
@tucker1 thanks! The difference between us and next-auth: we just have more features — for example, we have built-in support for teams/organizations, RBAC, password auth, JWT metadata, and so on and so forth. We are a managed solution for authentication, authorization, and user management, whereas Next-Auth is simply a library for authentication only.
Austin
Congrats on the launch! What security measures does Stack Auth implement to ensure user data is protected, especially since it's self-hostable?
Zai Shi
Maker
@austin22 Hi austin, so there are a few points: 1. we try to use existing battle tested open-source libraries as foundations 2. we write tests and do good security practices 3. we have a great community helping us to find potential problems!
Paige Scott
Have you considered creating a community toolkit or additional resources to aid new users? Guidelines, examples, or best practices would be particularly helpful.
Max
Thanks for you project! We've built many web projects before, and the most annoying part of starting a project is the endless hours of struggling with authentication, user management, account settings, and RBAC. None of the existing open-source solutions have the developer-friendliness and feature set that we would like to see. Good luck
George Strunin
Hey Zai & Konsti! This is awesome! 🤩 ✨ Saved it for myself, definitely see it being a huge time-saver. I’ve battled with these things too many times, so I get how resource-heavy it can be. Love that it's open-source and self-hostable 💪
I’ve used similar features in Auth0, but Stack’s open-source approach and customization options seem like a step up in terms of flexibility.
Bon
I've used Auth0 and Supabase Auth. I just tried Stack Auth, and it’s very simple and intuitive. I've decided to use it in my next project. What's even more impressive is that it's open source! Congrats on the launch, great job!!!!!!
Zai Shi
Maker
@bonvisions Glad you like it! Thanks so much!
Sahiiii
Hey, Congratulations on your launch! This is an awesome idea but are the components customizable and how's this different from the other products that are already in the market?
Konstantin Wohlwend
Maker
@zara_bottom Hey Zara, thanks! Indeed the components are quite customizable. They are shadcn/ui components by default but you can do a lot of things; you can check out the Customization section of our docs! https://docs.stack-auth.com Regarding other products, it depends on the exact competitor you're talking about, but for each the reason is a combination of one of these three: We are open-source, we have features beyond authentication (eg. RBAC, organizations, user management), and we are very developer-friendly.
Philip Miglinci
Congrats on the Launch 🎉 Looking forward to consider StackAuth in my next next.js project :-)
blank
Hey @fomalhaut, this looks fantastic! 🎉 Solving the pain points around authentication and user management is crucial, especially for developers who want to focus on building their product rather than getting bogged down in the backend complexities. I love that Stack Auth is fully open-source and self-hostable – that aligns perfectly with the growing trend of wanting more control over our tech stacks and avoiding vendor lock-in. The fact that you can get started in just five minutes is a huge bonus too! It definitely speaks to the kind of efficiency we all crave in our development workflows. I’d love to see more about the integration flow and any unique features you’re rolling out. Have you thought about a community toolkit or examples to help new users get to grips with RBAC and user management? Looking forward to trying it out in my projects and joining the Discord as well!
Zai Shi
Maker
@blankwebdev thanks! About community toolkit: we do have future plans integrating Slack/Discord/Telegram auth so people can build community management tools more easily! About examples: our GitHub has an "examples" folder, and there are also some community built projects in the readme
Kyrylo Silin
Hey Zai and Konsti, How does your self-hosting option compare to managed hosting in terms of setup complexity and ongoing maintenance? Do you have plans to support additional authentication methods beyond the standard ones? Congrats on the launch!
Konstantin Wohlwend
Maker
@kyrylosilin Self-hosting definitely takes a bit more effort to setup than managed, but its dependencies are nicely dockerized which makes things much easier. If you wanna go this route, I'd recommend you to join our Discord — there are a number of people self-hosting there. Which authentication methods do you have in mind? Generally we'll support anything if there's demand for it!
Ghost Kitty
Comment Deleted
Tiger L
Kudos to the Stack Auth team on this launch. With a decade in tech development, I've dealt with my fair share of complex authentication systems. Would love to try integrating this into my projects.
Konstantin Wohlwend
Maker
@tigerl Glad you think so! Feel free to reach out to us with any questions or feedback.
Morgan nabors
Design of Stack’s dashboard looks very user-friendly. It’s refreshing to see a tool that combines simplicity
Johanna John
I am impressed with how quickly you can set this up. It’s great to see a tool that’s both powerful and user-friendly for developers.
Jack Michalak
Great to see this, I had been very frustrated with the auth options recently, and it's exciting it's open source as well.