Hanko vs Clerk
Hanko is a European alternative to Clerk: same security & identity use case, headquartered in Germany and governed by EU GDPR, while Clerk is based in the United States.
By the EU Alternatives team Last updated
Open source authentication solution with passkeys, 2FA, SSO support. GDPR compliant, built in Europe. Switch between self-hosted and cloud anytime.
- Jurisdiction
- EU / EEA
- Primary privacy law
- EU GDPR
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- No
- Open source
- Yes
- Free tier
- No
Drop-in authentication with prebuilt sign-in components, session handling and organisation support that saves a small team weeks of work, especially on Next.js. The Hobby plan is genuinely free up to 50,000 monthly retained users, and Pro is 25 dollars a month plus 0.02 per extra user. Clerk, Inc. is a Delaware company operating from San Francisco, so your user directory lives under US law.
- Jurisdiction
- United States
- GDPR by default
- Requires DPA + TIA
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- Yes
Hanko vs Clerk at a glance
| Hanko | Clerk | |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters | Germany | United States |
| Data jurisdiction | EU / EEA | United States |
| Primary privacy law | EU GDPR | Requires DPA + transfer assessment |
| US CLOUD Act exposure | No | Yes |
| Best for | Teams that need security & identity built for European data-protection requirements | Teams already invested in the Clerk ecosystem |
Choose Hanko if…
- You want a provider governed by a European privacy regime
- GDPR or public-sector data-protection requirements apply to you
- Open-source code and self-hosting matter to you
- You'd rather back the European tech ecosystem
Stick with Clerk if…
- You depend on integrations only available in the Clerk ecosystem
- Your organisation has no EU data-residency constraints
- Migration costs outweigh the jurisdiction benefits for now
About Hanko
Hanko is an open-source authentication and user management platform from Kiel, Germany, built as a modern, privacy-first alternative to Auth0, Clerk, and Cognito. It puts passkeys front and centre while still supporting passwords, passcodes, and OAuth social logins.
Developers get Hanko Elements, a set of framework-agnostic Web Components that drop into any frontend in minutes, plus a full backend API for custom flows. The Passkey API can also be bolted onto existing auth systems without a full migration.
Key features:
- Passkey-first authentication with FIDO2-certified, phishing-resistant biometric login
- Multiple auth methods including passwords, email passcodes, OAuth (Google, Apple, GitHub), and 2FA
- Hanko Elements, framework-agnostic Web Components for React, Vue, Angular, and more
- Flexible hosting, either self-hosted (AGPLv3) or Hanko Cloud with no lock-in migration
- User management with profiles, sessions, and audit logs out of the box
- GDPR compliant with EU infrastructure and data minimalism by design
Trusted by 10,000+ developers and used in production by SAP and Volt.io. The core is fully open source under AGPLv3 and MIT licences, with GitHub stars growing fast.
Why choose Hanko over Clerk?
The decisive argument is data jurisdiction. Clerk is headquartered in the United States, which means personal data processed through it can be subject to non-EU legal regimes: the US CLOUD Act, FISA 702, or similar laws depending on the provider. After the 2020 Schrems II ruling, EU organisations must carry out a transfer impact assessment for every such data flow.
Hanko removes that overhead. As a Germany-based provider, it operates under EU GDPR, and data stays inside the EU/EEA by default. For regulated sectors such as health, public administration, and finance, that's not a nice-to-have but a requirement. For everyone else, it's concentration-risk insurance: you avoid depending on a single jurisdiction that can change the rules without warning.