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Better Auth, by a self-taught Ethiopian dev, raises $5M from Peak XV, YC

(techcrunch.com)
282 points bundie | 2 comments | 25 Jun 25 18:07 UTC | HN request time: 0.613s | source
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zeroq ◴[26 Jun 25 10:09 UTC] No.44385875[source]▶
I'm not sold on Better Auth.

Recently I wanted to add auth to my pet project, and between (a) using better-auth, then integrating 3rd party mailer service, and rolling out my main dashboard (b) leeching off free tier of Auth0 or Clerk and getting all batteries included I've chose the latter.

The fact that better-auth doesn't come with barebone dashboard is criminal.

For pet project it doesn't matter if I have to integrate Resend or Clerk, it's still some mental overhead I have to account for, but with Clerk at least I don't have to manage my users using sql queries.

People say it's better because you can embed it in your app. I don't buy that either. If I'd have to rollout better-auth I'd do that as a separate app, just to encapsulate database, dashboard, and integrations.

Anyway, glad it's getting traction, I just don't get all the hype around it.

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1. vlucas ◴[26 Jun 25 14:40 UTC] No.44387916[source]▶
Comparing Better-Auth to Clerk or Auth0 misses the point entirely.

People choose Better-Auth because they want to own their user auth and users table themselves. Auth can be complex, but it's such a key and important piece of your business that outsourcing it to a 3rd party should be much closer to a last resort than a first impulse. If that 3rd party ever shuts down, has downtime, or your account gets suspended for whatever reason, users won't even be able to login to your app. That is a HUGE risk that I am not sure you are accounting for.

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2. zeroq ◴[30 Jun 25 01:54 UTC] No.44418431[source]▶
I get what you're saying, but the same can be said about any 3rd party vendor.

Even if you host your app on AWS or CloudFlare you can face some major downtimes like recently. Sure it's less likely for AWS to go out of business than some mom-and-pop auth service. But if you stick with major, overcharging, players like Auth0 you should be good.

Sure, it cost a lot, but I recently had a conversation with a entrepreneur who makes a really, really good life out of an online shop and she said something between the lines of "I fking hate shopify, they steal my money, I need to get out of that platform!". Sure they take her money, but they provide the whole foundation for her business, and the cut is like 3%. Payment provider takes similar cut. You can say they are leeching of her business, but without them - and she made a concious choice to only sell her products on her online platform - her business doesn't exist.

I have the same outlook at auth providers. Sure you can do it yourself, same as hosting, monitoring, etc. But most people these days decide to outsource that chore to someone else for a change. Auth0 et al. have a hefty free tier to lock you in, and then they charge you premium, but I'm very happy to take that bet in a not-so-serious scenario, because at the time I have to pay premium I'd better be making some serious money I can share with them.

Again - same argument can be made about AWS. It might be cheaper to own the infra, but in the transitional stage I likely won't be afford to staff a competent devops to do all the chores. And sure, couple steps later I'm locked in for life, but hey, if they didn't helped me at first I wouldn't be able to get there.