Small business▲+5Since September 2026: 27% → 32%, +5 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
32%from 27% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 6 pointsRank 1 of 46, unchanged
2 categories · RankedClerk
102Judge labels
29First choices
4Negative labels
14 / 14Models named it
2Categories
October 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table v2026-10.8, every buyer segment counted.
Best standing
30% in CIAM for small business buyers
Rank 3 of 70 in the mid-market standingaccepted challenger
3 of 14 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 3% of its 31 labels there were negative.
What the models named instead of Clerk →By buyer segmentA small-business product: leader at small business, not named at enterprise.
Small business1 of 51
30%57 labels
endorsed leader
Mid-market3 of 70
18%31 labels
accepted challenger
Enterprise38 of 69
0%3 labels
under the label threshold
In ciam · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading
Standing by category
Every category where a model named Clerk for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.
| Category | Function | Share | Rank | Negative rate | Labels | Quadrant | Since September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer identity and access management | Identity and access | 18% | 3 of 70 | 3% | 31 | accepted challenger | ▲+11Since September 2026: 7% → 18%, +11 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. |
| Workforce identity and SSO | Identity and access | 0% | 19 of 44 | 0% | 2 | under 10 labels · led by Microsoft Entra ID at 46% | =heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. |
Movement
Since September 2026, Clerk held within the floor in all two categories: no change cleared 11 points.
Best category · CIAM · by segment
Mid-market▲+11Since September 2026: 7% → 18%, +11 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
18%from 7% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 0 pointsRank 4 → 3 of 61
Enterprise=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
0%from 0% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 11 pointsRank 36 → 42 of 62
All categories · Mid-market
| Category | September 2026 | Now | Change | Reading | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CIAM | 7% | 18% | ▲+11Since September 2026: 7% → 18%, +11 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. | Within noise | Rank 4 → 3 of 70 |
| Workforce identity | 0% | 0% | =heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. | Within noise | Rank 29 → 19 of 44 |
Shares here are read over the models both editions asked, so they can differ by a point or two from the standing above, which counts every model in this edition.
The floor is 11 points of share, measured: how far the models move a leader on their own when the same questions are asked twice with nothing changed. A larger change is movement; a smaller one is noise, and both are shown. Movement is read over the twelve models both editions asked; GPT-6 Luna, Muse Glimmer 30B joined this edition and are in the standing but not yet in the comparison. How the floor is measured · The editions
By model
How each model treated Clerk across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.ShowHide
By model
How each model treated Clerk across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.
ShowHide| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Negative | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 7 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Grok 4.20 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Mistral Small | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 1 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 5 |
| Kimi K2 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
By framing
Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.
FramingLabels by classFirst choices
Direct28 labels11
Paraphrase15 labels5
Comparative16 labels12not counted in share
Budget-constrained17 labels9
Scale-constrained13 labels4
Negative13 labels1not counted in share
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative102 labels in all, every segment counted; 29 of the 42 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.
What the models said for it
Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.
“For most companies with limited budgets, Clerk's free tier or self-hosted Keycloak are the two best choices” DeepSeek V4 Flash · CIAM · budget prompt · first choice
“Clerk is my pick for a small team that wants to keep costs low without building much authentication infrastructure.” GPT-6 Luna · CIAM · budget prompt · first choice
“Frontegg and Clerk are particularly well-suited due to their B2B-focused features and ease of integration” Mistral Small · CIAM · paraphrase prompt · first choice
“Start with Clerk if you're on a modern JavaScript stack, or Frontegg if you want a complete B2B solution” Kimi K2 · CIAM · direct prompt · first choice
And against it
Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.
“Choose Clerk only if you are a startup ... not necessarily the cheapest long-term option” Perplexity Sonar · CIAM · budget prompt · soft negative
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Clerk, over the 102 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Clerk was named but was not.ShowHide
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Clerk, over the 102 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Clerk was named but was not.
ShowHideProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head
A head-to-head page exists where both products are among a category's top eight. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.
What carried it into the answer
The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Clerk. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.
Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, five of the fourteen in this edition, so these counts come from 94 of the 102 answers that named Clerk and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
clerk.comYour site46
workos.com40
cybersecuritynews.com38
checkthat.ai37
guptadeepak.com34
mojoauth.com34
startwithidentity.com32
expertinsights.com30
guideflow.com28
loginradius.com28
301 of the 347 domain citations in answers naming Clerk came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
Search and answers
clerk.com is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Clerk takes 18% of first choices and Frontegg takes 21%.ShowHide
Search and answers
clerk.com is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Clerk takes 18% of first choices and Frontegg takes 21%.
ShowHideIn search
Google, US estimatesPosition for “customer identity platform”
–
not in the top ten
Position for “customer identity platforms”
–
not in the top ten
- Searches for its name, Google
- 110,000 a month (“clerk”)
- AI search demand for its name, est.
- 59,082 a month
- Organic visits to its site
- about 46,225 a month
- Searches its site ranks for
- 1,695 · 186 in the top three
- Sites linking to it
- 5,266
- Paid Google search
- No ads found in the estimate; that does not mean it runs none
In answers
This editionShare of first choices
18%
rank 3 of 70 in CIAM
Segment leader
21%
Frontegg
- First choices
- 29 across its categories
- Named in
- 102 answers
- Its own site cited
- in 94 of the answers that named it
Search figures are US estimates from DataForSEO, read September 28, 2026; AI search demand is its modeled, directional estimate, not a count of queries to any assistant. The answers are this edition's. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
What it publishes
ShowHide
What it publishes
ShowHideAddresses on clerk.com
3,193
subdomains included
Content
1,186
counted in the table below
Documentation
1,929
Product · Integration
1 · 0
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Report or ebook | 640 | 78 | 2026-09-28 | ||
| Blog | 279 | 15 | 2026-09-11 | ||
| Conference or event | 215 | 63 | 2026-09-28 | ||
| Glossary or explainer | 25 | 9 | 2026-09-29 | ||
| Comparison | 24 | 12 | 2026-07-09 | ||
| Template or tool | 3 | 3 | 2026-07-06 |
Most recent
- 2026-09-29Cipher suite glossary or explainer
- 2026-09-29Dkim glossary or explainer
- 2026-09-29Dmarc glossary or explainer
- 2026-09-29Spf glossary or explainer
- 2026-09-29Identity provider glossary or explainer
- 2026-09-29Service provider glossary or explainer
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page clerk.com exposes, subdomains included. Kind is read from the address and title. The last 90 days, the latest date and the twelve months count pages by when they were published, from the site's feeds, a date in the address, or the page's own publication date, read from up to a hundred of its most recently changed pages; a page that says only when it last changed is counted in its kind but not in when, so the recent counts are a floor, and a kind none of whose pages gives a publication date reads undated. An event counts as online when its address or title says so (webinar, on demand, virtual or online summit); a conference, summit, trade show, expo or roadshow that does not say so is counted as a conference or event, which on a vendor's site is mostly in person. Read September 29, 2026.
Follow Clerk
An email the morning each edition publishes: where this product moved, where it held, and by how much against the noise floor. One address, confirmed by a click; a stop link in every email.
Already following? Everything you follow, with a stop for each.
The company
Clerk is its own company.ShowHide
The company
Clerk is its own company.
ShowHideIn its own words
Stated by the vendor, not checked- Positioning
- The easiest way to add authentication and user management to your application.
- For
- developers building authentication and user management into their application
- Price stated
- Free for your first 50,000 monthly retained users and 100 monthly retained orgs. clerk.com
- Starting price
- 0 clerk.com/pricing
- Free plan or trial
- Free for your first 50,000 monthly retained users and 100 monthly retained orgs. clerk.com
- Certifications
- SOC 2 type 2 compliantCCPA compliantSOC2GDPRHIPAASOC 2 Type II certified
- Customers named
- SupabaseVercelStripeReplit
- Not stated on the pages read
- Integrations, hosting
What Clerk's own pages state, read September 28, 2026: clerk.com, clerk.com/pricing, trust.clerk.com, clerk.com/platform. A claimed page can correct any of them.
Is this your product?
Claim this page
Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Clerk's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Clerk, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.
What a new claim receivesHide what a new claim receives
A new claim receives the current edition's vendor brief for Clerk by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:
- where Clerk is named, by buyer and by framing, and which cells hold its first choices;
- the claims the models make when they name it, ranked, with the strongest and the weakest quoted;
- its vocabulary against the segment leader's, and the pages the models cited;
- who was chosen in the answers that did not name Clerk, and every reason the record gives;
- a battlecard for each top rival: the head-to-head split, why they win, and the reservation quoted against them;
- one page of published figures cleared to show a buyer.
Badges
Wins only: a badge exists where Clerk is ranked in a category's top three this edition. Three sizes, one file each, light and dark; the code is under each.ShowHide
Badges
Wins only: a badge exists where Clerk is ranked in a category's top three this edition. Three sizes, one file each, light and dark; the code is under each.
ShowHideClerk is among the products AI models recommend first in Customer identity and access management this edition. Each badge says so in the buyer's words, names the edition, and links to the standing. The next edition issues a new badge; this one stays true as a record of October 2026.
Wide · 320 × 104 Website, beside other badges
Square · 240 × 240 LinkedIn, slides
Compact · 200 × 56 Email signature, footer
Badges read on light and dark pages. Alt text carries the claim, the category, the edition and the index, so it stays a citation where the image does not load.