Val Town moves from Supabase to Clerk to Better Auth
Original: From Supabase to Clerk to Better Auth
Why This Matters
Highlights real-world challenges with third-party auth services for social platforms
Val Town documented their authentication migration journey, moving from Supabase to Clerk in 2023, then switching to Better Auth in 2024 due to architectural conflicts. Clerk's rate limits and user table replacement approach caused production issues.
Val Town detailed their authentication service evolution in a blog post by Tom MacWright. After moving from Supabase to Clerk in 2023, they encountered significant issues with Clerk's architecture. The core problem was Clerk attempting to replace traditional users and sessions tables, with severe rate limiting of 5 requests per second for user data APIs. This particularly impacted Val Town's social features, where pages display multiple users' avatars and information. The rate limits forced complex workarounds including syncing Clerk data to their database via webhooks, creating temporary states where users had Clerk accounts but incomplete Val Town profiles. User settings became split between Clerk-controlled authentication and Val Town-specific features like usernames. Despite acknowledging Clerk's recent $50M funding success, Val Town closed their migration issue by switching to Better Auth, citing improved reliability and architectural compatibility.