What each week held
Withheld: something was read in 1 week of the last 12. A series needs at least 2 to say anything a single reading does not.
What it declares
- pre-built sign-in/sign-up UI components
- social/federated login
- passwordless/magic link login
- MFA/2FA
- session management
- email verification and password reset
- usage-based free-tier MAU pricing
- self-hosting option
As the company’s own pages describe it. Forge did not test any of these.
What users raised
- vendor lock-in risk
- pricing scales sharply at higher MAU tiers
- migration difficulty away from managed provider
- security risk of DIY implementations
- time cost of building auth from scratch
- complexity of advanced features (MFA, SAML) on self-built systems
Themes people raised in public. A complaint is somebody’s opinion, not a measurement of the product.
Everything on record
4 observed claims. Newest first; the tag on each row is what kind of claim you are reading.
- COMPLAINTUSER OPINIONSep 30, 2026
A recurring theme in older Indie Hackers threads is concern about vendor lock-in and difficulty migrating away from a managed auth provider once adopted, alongside worry about losing UX flexibility over time.
Lock-in concern is a persistent friction point that could push some builders toward OSS options like NextAuth or Better Auth.
www.indiehackers.com/post/auth-as-a-service-or-not-auth-as-a-service-2551e0428f - PRICINGFACTSep 30, 2026
Free-tier MAU thresholds vary widely across providers commonly recommended to solo builders: Supabase Auth is free up to roughly 50,000 MAUs with a $25/month Pro plan covering 100,000 MAUs, Firebase Auth's Spark plan is free to about 50,000 MAUs, and Clerk offers a free tier of about 10,000 MAUs before costs rise sharply at scale (estimated ~$1,825 at 100K MAUs).
Pricing thresholds directly affect which provider a solo builder picks as their project grows past hobby scale.
www.nucamp.co/blog/top-10-authentication-services-and-libraries-in-2026-from-free-to-enterprise - PRODUCTCOMPANY CLAIMSep 30, 2026
Clerk, Firebase Auth, Supabase Auth, Kinde, Auth0, Better Auth, NextAuth, and Keycloak are positioned along a spectrum from easiest/most managed to most control/self-hosted, with Clerk and Firebase cited as the top picks for beginners and side projects due to pre-built sign-in components and zero-backend setup.
Establishes which tools solo builders are actively comparing when adding sign-in, useful as a baseline for tracking future positioning shifts.
dev.to/md8_habibullah/auth-in-2026-from-drop-in-to-full-control-pick-your-poison-55k1 - DISCOURSEUSER OPINIONSep 30, 2026
Across multiple recent dev-blog comparisons and HN/Indie Hackers threads, the prevailing advice for solo builders is to avoid building auth from scratch. One 2026 guide states: "Stop building your own auth" and frames it as a fully solved problem not worth spending time on.
Solo builders evaluating auth are likely to default to managed services rather than custom builds as the baseline expectation.
dev.to/masatoman/auth-for-indie-hackers-2026-clerk-vs-supabase-auth-vs-nextauth-v5-3fmg
A record of what Forge read in public about Solo builders adding sign-in — its own pages and what people wrote about it. Nothing here is a test of the product, a ranking or a score, and Forge has no relationship with this company.