# European alternatives to Clerk in 2026

Last updated: 2026-11-10

If you want hosted sign-in with prebuilt UI like Clerk, **Hanko** is a German company whose cloud runs in Frankfurt, and **Zitadel** offers an EU data region under Swiss terms. If you need enterprise single sign-on, **Cloud-IAM** and **Clever Cloud**, two French companies, run Keycloak for you. If you'd rather own everything, **Keycloak** on your own server costs only a server and your time, and **Nhost** suits apps that want auth bundled with a Postgres backend.

## Clerk alternatives at a glance

| Platform | Company | Where user data sits | Free tier | First paid plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hanko | Hanko GmbH, Kiel, Germany | AWS, Frankfurt region | 10,000 monthly active users | Pro, $29 a month, then $0.01 per extra active user |
| Zitadel | CAOS Ltd., St. Gallen, Switzerland, per its terms | Your choice of EU, US, Switzerland or Australia | Up to 100 daily active users | Pro at US$100 a month |
| Cloud-IAM | Cloud-IAM SAS, Rennes, France | The cloud and region you choose | Freemium, up to 100 users, no SLA or backups | Starter from €225 a month |
| Clever Cloud | Clever Cloud, Nantes, France | Clever Cloud datacenters | First 100 active users at €0 | Tiered price per active user |
| Keycloak | Open-source project, self-hosted | The server you pick | No licence fee | Hosting and your time |
| Nhost | Nhost AB, Stockholm, Sweden | Not stated on its pricing page | Unlimited users, 1 project | Pro from $25 a month |
| Clerk, for reference | Clerk, Inc., terms under Delaware law | Not stated | 50,000 retained users per app | Pro, $25 a month or $20 billed annually |

Prices are from each provider's own page, checked on 9 and 10 November 2026.

## What to check when you leave Clerk

- **The company on the contract.** Clerk's terms are with Clerk, Inc. under Delaware law, and its DPA sends EU personal data to Clerk, Inc. in the US under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. A European alternative should name a European company and governing law in its own terms.
- **Who runs the servers.** A German or French company can still host on a US cloud. Hanko runs on AWS in Frankfurt; Cloud-IAM lets you pick the cloud.
- **How users are counted.** Clerk bills monthly retained users, Hanko monthly active users, Zitadel daily active users, and Cloud-IAM total user accounts. One app can land on very different bills.
- **Prebuilt UI or bring your own.** Clerk's drop-in components are a big part of its appeal. Hanko ships its own UI elements; Keycloak gives you themeable hosted login pages instead.
- **Enterprise sign-in.** If your customers ask for SAML or LDAP, Keycloak and the services built on it support both, while Hanko charges per SAML connection.

## 1. Hanko

Hanko GmbH is registered in Kiel, Germany, and builds an open-source auth service that supports passkeys, passwords, passwordless sign-in, social login and MFA. According to its pricing page, every Hanko Cloud project lives on AWS in Frankfurt, Germany. The open-source version can also run on your own servers.

- **Best for:** consumer and SaaS apps that want a Clerk-like hosted service with passkeys first, from a German company.
- **Price:** you pay nothing on Starter up to 10,000 monthly active users across 2 projects. Pro costs $29 a month, each active user past the first 10,000 adds $0.01, and every SAML SSO connection is another $49 a month.
- **What it lacks:** European-owned servers, because the cloud sits on AWS. Webhooks, the admin API and custom SMTP appear only in the Pro feature list.

## 2. Zitadel

Zitadel is an identity platform you can use as a cloud service or run yourself. You pick where data lives from four options on its pricing page: EU, US, Switzerland and Australia, and stored users aren't capped. The contract is a different matter: the terms, last updated in November 2023, are with CAOS Ltd. of St. Gallen under Swiss law, yet the website footer lists an office in San Francisco. Ask which entity will sign your order.

- **Best for:** B2B apps with many customer tenants that want an EU data region and the option to move to self-hosting later.
- **Price:** the free tier allows 100 daily active users and 3 identity providers. Pro costs US$100 a month, includes 25,000 daily active users and lets you use your own domain.
- **What it lacks:** an EU-based contract partner. Where procurement asks for EU law, a Swiss entity may need a separate sign-off.

## 3. Cloud-IAM

Cloud-IAM is a French company, registered in Rennes, that runs managed Keycloak on the cloud and region you pick, with upgrades, backups and monitoring handled for you. Its site states ISO 27001:2022 certification and lists SecNumCloud 3.2 and HDS as compliant, with 3DS Outscale and Scaleway among the European clouds you can pick.

- **Best for:** companies that need SSO across several apps, LDAP or Active Directory links, and a French provider with certifications.
- **Price:** Freemium has no listed price, no SLA, no backups and a 100-user cap. Starter begins at €225 a month with a 99% uptime SLA and daily backups, and Essential at €495 a month. Prices follow total user accounts, not monthly active users.
- **What it lacks:** Clerk-style drop-in UI components. You work with Keycloak's login pages and themes.

## 4. Keycloak on Clever Cloud

Clever Cloud, a French cloud provider with its own datacenters, sells Keycloak as an add-on. Each instance gets its own Java app, database and file system, can run as a cluster across several nodes, and supports OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML v2, TOTP, WebAuthn and passkeys. It can also connect to Active Directory or OpenLDAP. Clever Cloud handles updates and regular backups.

- **Best for:** teams that already host on Clever Cloud and want sign-in next to their apps and databases.
- **Price:** tiered per active user, with the first 100 at €0 and falling unit prices from 101 upward. The page also shows a €47 line without saying what it covers, so confirm the total with Clever Cloud before you commit.

## 5. Keycloak on your own server

Keycloak is the open-source identity server behind both managed options above, and a Cloud Native Computing Foundation incubation project. It handles single sign-on and sign-out across apps, identity brokering and social login. It also connects to existing LDAP or Active Directory servers. A small European VPS is enough to start: Hetzner's cheapest listed cloud server, the CPX02, costs €5.49 a month excl. VAT when placed in Helsinki, or €6.49 in the German locations, though the entry plans were listed as unavailable to order on 10 November 2026.

- **Best for:** teams with ops experience that want full control of user data and no per-user bill.
- **Price:** no licence fee. Your bill is the server, a database for Keycloak and the hours you spend on upkeep.
- **What it lacks:** someone else to patch it. Upgrades, backups and uptime are yours, and an outage locks every user out.

## 6. Nhost

Nhost AB, registered in Stockholm, sells authentication as part of a backend that also includes Postgres, storage and functions. Auth covers email and password, magic links, social OAuth, WebAuthn and 2FA, with no cap on total users on any plan. Read more in [European Firebase alternatives](/i/european-firebase-alternatives).

- **Best for:** new apps that want sign-in and the database from the same EU company.
- **Price:** the free Starter plan runs 1 project and pauses it after a week without activity. Pro costs from $25 a month, and $15 of compute credits come with it.
- **What it lacks:** a standalone auth product. You take the whole backend, which is more than a Clerk replacement if you already have a database.

## Where Eurobase fits

Eurobase doesn't offer sign-in, so it isn't ranked here. Its job is hosting the app that calls your auth provider: Next.js and other frameworks on Workers, plus containers, on European infrastructure run by Scaleway, a French provider. You store your provider's keys as environment variables and verify sessions in your own code. Plans are Free, Starter at €10 and Pro at €20 a month + VAT; see [plans](/docs/plans). If your app already uses Supabase Auth, the [Eurobase + Supabase docs](/docs/supabase) explain what works from a Worker and from a container.

## How to move off Clerk

1. Pick the new provider and create a test project in its EU region.
2. Export your users from Clerk, check whether the export includes password hashes and whether the new provider can import them. If not, plan a password reset or a passkey enrolment for everyone.
3. Recreate your social login apps with the new callback URLs, and SAML connections if you have them.
4. Swap Clerk's components and middleware for the new provider's SDK or hosted login page, then test sign-up, sign-in, sign-out and session refresh.
5. Switch over, keep the Clerk account for a short period in case you need to roll back, then delete the user data there.

## Frequently asked questions

### Does Clerk store data in the EU?

Clerk's pricing page and terms don't mention an EU data region. Its DPA names Clerk, Inc. in San Francisco as the importer of EU personal data, relying on the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, with standard contractual clauses as the fallback.

### Is Ory a European company?

No. Ory's company details page names Ory Corp, a US corporation in Scottsdale, Arizona, and its terms of service are governed by Delaware law.

### Which Clerk alternative has drop-in UI components?

Hanko is a close match, with its own UI elements for sign-up, sign-in and profile. Keycloak-based services, Cloud-IAM and Clever Cloud included, give you hosted login pages you can theme instead of components inside your app.

### Does an EU region make a US auth provider GDPR-safe?

A region decides where the data sits, not which law the company answers to. Read [EU region vs EU company](/i/eu-region-vs-eu-company-cloud-act) before you decide, and the [GDPR hosting checklist](/i/gdpr-hosting-checklist) for the rest of your stack.

## Sources

- [Hanko pricing](https://www.hanko.io/pricing) and [Hanko legal notice](https://www.hanko.io/legal-notice)
- [Zitadel pricing](https://zitadel.com/pricing) and [Zitadel terms of service](https://zitadel.com/docs/legal/terms-of-service)
- [Cloud-IAM](https://www.cloud-iam.com/), [Cloud-IAM pricing](https://www.cloud-iam.com/pricing) and [Cloud-IAM legal notice](https://www.cloud-iam.com/legal-notice)
- [Clever Cloud Keycloak as a Service](https://clever.cloud/product/keycloak/)
- [Keycloak](https://www.keycloak.org/) and [Hetzner Cloud](https://www.hetzner.com/cloud/)
- [Nhost pricing](https://nhost.io/pricing) and [Nhost terms](https://nhost.io/legal/terms-of-service)
- [Clerk pricing](https://clerk.com/pricing), [Clerk terms](https://clerk.com/legal/terms) and [Clerk DPA](https://clerk.com/legal/dpa)
- [Ory company details](https://www.ory.com/legal/company) and [Ory terms of service](https://www.ory.com/legal/tos)
- [Eurobase Workers](/docs/workers), [Eurobase plans](/docs/plans) and [Eurobase + Supabase](/docs/supabase)