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Side-by-side comparison

Pick up to four tools and compare adoption, momentum and maintenance at a glance. The crown marks the leader in each row.

Strategy-based authentication middleware for Express with 500+ strategies; mature but slow-moving.

Framework-agnostic TypeScript auth library with plugins for 2FA, orgs and passkeys; now stewards Auth.js.

Formerly NextAuth.js; widely deployed OAuth/session library, now security-maintained by the Better Auth team.

Hosted auth and user management with drop-in UI components, popular in the Next.js ecosystem.

Head to head

Metric	Passport.js	Better Auth	Auth.js	Clerk
Stars	23.5k	30.6k	28.4k	n/a
Weekly downloads	10.2M	18.9M	9.4M	3.6M
Download growth	+8%	+126%	+33%	+49%
Popularity score	83/100	86/100	84/100	80/100
Forks	1.2k	3.1k	4k	n/a
Open issues	397	980	605	n/a
Last commit	2y ago	6d ago	3mo ago	n/a
Latest version	0.7.0	1.7.21	4.24.15	7.9.25
License	MIT	MIT	ISC	n/a
First released	2011	2024	2018	n/a
Signals	None	Trending	Legacy	None
Listed in	Backend › Authentication Libraries	Backend › Authentication Libraries	Backend › Authentication Libraries	Backend › Authentication Libraries Security & Identity › Identity providers & SSO

Hover for exact values; switch to log scale for tools of very different sizes.

Strategy-based authentication middleware for Express with 500+ strategies; mature but slow-moving.

Framework-agnostic TypeScript auth library with plugins for 2FA, orgs and passkeys; now stewards Auth.js.

Formerly NextAuth.js; widely deployed OAuth/session library, now security-maintained by the Better Auth team.

Hosted auth and user management with drop-in UI components, popular in the Next.js ecosystem.

Metric	Passport.js	Better Auth	Auth.js	Clerk
Stars	23.5k	30.6k	28.4k	n/a
Weekly downloads	10.2M	18.9M	9.4M	3.6M
Download growth	+8%	+126%	+33%	+49%
Popularity score	83/100	86/100	84/100	80/100
Forks	1.2k	3.1k	4k	n/a
Open issues	397	980	605	n/a
Last commit	2y ago	6d ago	3mo ago	n/a
Latest version	0.7.0	1.7.21	4.24.15	7.9.25
License	MIT	MIT	ISC	n/a
First released	2011	2024	2018	n/a
Signals	None	Trending	Legacy	None
Listed in	Backend › Authentication Libraries	Backend › Authentication Libraries	Backend › Authentication Libraries	Backend › Authentication Libraries Security & Identity › Identity providers & SSO

Hover for exact values; switch to log scale for tools of very different sizes.