Is Better Auth free for authentication?

Yes, Self-hosted (open source) costs nothing.

Better Auth pricing

How Better Auth charges, what to know before you commit, and what you'd pay at your usage — next to what the alternatives would cost for the same thing.

How it charges

Checked 2026-10-03 on www.better-auth.com ↗ · USD, list prices

In short

The framework is free and open source; optional managed infrastructure is free on Starter or $20/month on Pro, plus usage charges for audit logs, security detections, email and SMS.

Free plan: Yes
Side project: $0/mo Self-hosted (open source)
Growing: $0/mo Self-hosted (open source)
Scaling: $0/mo Self-hosted (open source)

What the model leaves out

The Better Auth framework is free and open source, running in your own app and database — hosting costs are yours. Its optional managed infrastructure (dashboard, audit logs, security detection) is priced per event and connection, not per user — Starter free, Pro $20/mo with unlimited seats — and isn't modeled.

Before you commit

Starter's free infrastructure allows 1 dashboard seat, 10,000 audit logs a month with 1-day retention, and 1,000 security detections.
Pro charges $0.0001 per audit-log event beyond 20,000 and $0.001 per security detection beyond 10,000 a month.
Self-service SSO and Directory Sync include 1 connection each on Pro, then $50/month per connection.
Transactional email and SMS sent through the infrastructure cost $0.001 per email and $0.09 per SMS.