Picking wrong costs you twice - once during setup and again when you migrate. So decide on fit, not on whichever the tutorial used.
Auth0 is the default for production. It is the long-term standard (12+ years, owned by Okta), has the most features, is HIPAA-capable, and its email allowlist is free via Actions. The cost is setup time: configuration is spread across the Dashboard, Actions and APIs, so it takes longer to wire up. In exchange it is the most flexible and the most likely to still exist in ten years - which matters for a thing you would rather never migrate.
Clerk is the fastest to set up. An AI coder wires it up in minutes and the React components are excellent. The catch to check for your use case: allowlists have sat behind its paid tier, which is exactly the kind of "basic feature, surprising invoice" that makes a provider choice expensive later. Good for a quick temporary lockdown.
Supabase Auth is a sensible pick if you are already on Supabase (allowlist via row-level security). Neon Auth (built on Better Auth) is interesting for branchable auth in dev workflows but has been in Beta - treat accordingly.
One caveat that outlives any comparison: free tiers, monthly-active-user limits and which features sit behind a paid plan change often. Use the shape of this decision - default to the flexible long-lived one, reach for the fast one when speed is the point, stay with your existing stack if you are already in it - but verify current pricing yourself rather than trusting any published figure, including this one.
Full item with the decision framework: https://www.tigzig.com/security/auth. Related: do you need OAuth at all.
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