# Do coding agents recommend Clerk?

> Clerk was chosen in 10% of 201 judged authentication sessions, ranking fourth. Measured with Claude Code, Codex and Cursor.

Source: https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-clerk
Published: 2026-09-03
Publisher: Armature, Inc. (https://armature.tech)

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> Clerk was chosen in 10% of 201 judged authentication sessions, ranking fourth. It was also raised as a candidate in 119 further sessions without being chosen.

This page reports what happened when Claude Code, Codex and Cursor had to solve a problem in authentication inside a realistic codebase. Not what a chat assistant says about Clerk. What an agent actually installed.

## The numbers

| | |
| --- | --- |
| Category | Authentication |
| Sessions in the category | 201 |
| Sessions where Clerk was chosen | 20 |
| Install share | 10% |
| Rank in category | 4 of 17 |
| Codebases it won in | 3 |
| Raised as a candidate, not chosen | 119 |
| Chosen when considered | 14% |
| Site | clerk.com |

## By agent

The three agents land within 6 points of each other on Clerk, which is closer than most products in this experiment manage.

| Agent | Sessions | Chose Clerk | Share |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Claude Code | 65 | 4 | 6% |
| Codex | 68 | 8 | 12% |
| Cursor | 68 | 8 | 12% |

## By who was asking

Clerk does much better with one kind of buyer than another. It won 16% of sessions asked as junior developer and 0% of those asked as enterprise team.

| Who is asking | Sessions | Chose Clerk | Share |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Vibe coder | 26 | 0 | 0% |
| Junior developer | 62 | 10 | 16% |
| Senior engineer | 69 | 10 | 14% |
| Enterprise team | 44 | 0 | 0% |

## What Clerk was up against

The full ranking in authentication, from the same sessions:

| # | Product | Runs won | Share |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | WorkOS AuthKit | 53 | 26% |
| 2 | Auth0 | 46 | 23% |
| 3 | Microsoft Entra ID | 21 | 10% |
| 4 | Built in-house (no product adopted) | 21 | 10% |
| 5 | Clerk **(this page)** | 20 | 10% |
| 6 | Better Auth | 8 | 4% |
| 7 | Keycloak | 7 | 3% |
| 8 | Google Identity | 3 | 1% |

## What this means

This is an integration problem, not a presence problem. Agents raised Clerk in 119 sessions and chose it in 20, so it reaches the shortlist and then loses. Something at the last step is costing the session, and in our data that is usually a quickstart that does not run when pasted, documentation describing an interface that changed, or a package name that does not match the product name.

That is the cheaper of the two problems to have. The reason is written down in each losing transcript.

## Where these numbers come from

The 201 sessions in authentication are part of a published set of 5,292, run with real coding agents inside realistic codebases and judged blind. The full method is on one page: [how we measured this](/library/how-we-measured-this).

Every authentication run can be replayed on [the board](/leaderboards/auth).

If you work on Clerk: the judge recorded a reason for every session where it was raised and passed over. Those reasons are in the transcripts.

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## Common questions

### Do coding agents recommend Clerk?

Yes. Clerk was chosen in 20 of the 201 judged sessions in authentication, a 10% install share, ranking fourth in its category.

### Does Claude Code recommend Clerk?

In 4 of the 65 sessions in authentication run with Claude Code, which is 6%.

### Do different coding agents treat Clerk differently?

Not much. The three agents chose it at similar rates, between 6% and 12% of their runs.

### How was this measured?

Real coding agents at pinned versions were run in sandboxes inside 51 realistic codebases and asked to solve real tasks. A simulated project owner approved or questioned each recommendation before any code was written, and a judge from a model family that builds none of the agents read every session blind.

### How often is Clerk considered but not chosen?

It was raised as a candidate in 119 sessions without being chosen, and chosen in 20. That is a 14% conversion from considered to chosen.

## Read next

- [How to get picked for authentication by coding agents](https://armature.tech/library/auth-coding-agents-playbook) (Markdown: https://armature.tech/library/auth-coding-agents-playbook.md)
- [Do coding agents recommend WorkOS AuthKit?](https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-workos-authkit) (Markdown: https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-workos-authkit.md)
- [Do coding agents recommend Auth0?](https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-auth0) (Markdown: https://armature.tech/library/do-coding-agents-recommend-auth0.md)
- [Do Claude Code, Codex and Cursor pick the same tools?](https://armature.tech/library/do-claude-code-and-codex-agree) (Markdown: https://armature.tech/library/do-claude-code-and-codex-agree.md)

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