At our company we use better auth for every product that has any kind of user account logic. It’s great since it’s drop-in, the plugins give so much functionality that you’d have to roll on your own in so little time and the integrations with ORMs like drizzle and prisma mean that your schemas stay the SSOT that they should be, even for auth. It’s extensible where it needs to be and brings defaults that are more than sane. Also the RPC-like TypeScript client that you also get for free is so good I don’t know how I could live without that.
Glazing over, I just wanted to give props and say that whatever good happens to better-auth, it deserves it.
I am also interested on how they plan to monetise it. I love the library and the success story but hope that the weight of this VC money doesn’t impact its awesomeness
Will this be monetized with the classic SSO enterprise subscription play? Would be nice if they are transparent on how they plan to make money.
The DX is quite nice, even though not well suited for existing projects as it is hard to migrate existing users. There is no easy way to keep existing sessions or do a legacy login, then migrate a user to the new better-auth supplied hashing function.
What is your personal framework for determining if a founder is an outlier or not? Given how many people you've seen go through YC, and chatting with most of the batch, what stands out to you?
For folks that are using better-auth: are you using anything to build your frontend with? Or just writing it from scratch?
I was interested in trying this out but was kinda surprised to find this is just an sdk with no components.
I remember how basically better auth got a huge lead because lucia was shutdown by its dev for their own reasons which I admittedly have forgotten but they made sense and the community had accepted it.
But those who hadn't started using better auth more. And now I guess its crazy how I felt as if this would be just a small project like lucia in the sense of its just created for the passion and the art, but now it has raised 5 mill$ , I wonder if the community wanted this to be an artisanal like project like lucia before its end or what the community thinks of this move. Since VC and open source have some inherent compromises with each other and I guess I just wanted to write this to hear more about people who are using better auth in prod and what they think of what this VC funding.
This is why I love Lucia. They took the "teach a man to fish" route when they converted to a docs only approach. Now I've got my own auth system and understand a lot more about security.
I wonder how many users of Better Auth are individuals using it for their hobby projects and how many are companies/freelancers making money. Everyone is expecting great software but almost no one is contributing back in any way. If people were supporting such projects, there would be no need for vc money, right?
As an indie hacker using better auth, I’m somewhat skeptical of there now being VC money in the mix (enshittifcation is a process that starts with VC money).
But from my time working for enterprise, they often prefer OSS products that are well-funded for their stacks so they can rely on them for a longer amount of time. So I’d suppose this would help in that regard. Also having a cloak-like SaaS solution might be nice for those who don’t want to host their own infra, though I‘d advise against relying on third parties for auth.
Thanks for your comment! You really nailed as to what sort of discussion I wanted I guess.
I agree so much with the enshittifcation but like, I never understand why atleast open source projects need VC funding/ if they really want to earn money, might as well bootstrap it and try to get some Business customers for support etc.
But if you are saying that to get business customers, I need vc funding, then I guess it forces some enshittifcation.
I am okay with having a SaaS solution but what I truly don't understand is why we need vc funding.
I truly love developers wanting to earn money with open source. I appreciate them because they are essentially giving us gifts and being altruistic and I want to live in a world where people who can, do support them. But I am not okay with is some corporation now deciding the direction to go for open source (and that corporation doesn't care about the craft or the community, they want money.. they want returns since its just a number to them really) and that force of direction really alienates communities and just forks appear and just tbh it becomes messy.
I am more than curious as to why enterprises want VC funded OSS products. Yes you rely on them for a longer amount of time, but it also increases the chances of rugpull quite significantly imo. I don't think that one should just get VC funding just because entreprises like it. Should they?
Maybe I am so alienated with startup culture but I just want anything I build to not burn piles of cash that I need to rely on someone else, and I'd rather be profitable from (day one?) with my own bootstraped company / basically being a indie hacker like you I suppose. I get why some companies need VC funding and they become startups but I don't think that literally everything should be startup I am not sure.
Readit News
Glazing over, I just wanted to give props and say that whatever good happens to better-auth, it deserves it.
Launch HN: Better Auth (YC X25) – Authentication Framework for TypeScript - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44030492 - May 2025 (106 comments)
Better Auth – Authentication library for TypeScript - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42272707 - Nov 2024 (32 comments)
Show HN: Comprehensive authentication library for TypeScript - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41678652 - Sept 2024 (44 comments)
I am also interested on how they plan to monetise it. I love the library and the success story but hope that the weight of this VC money doesn’t impact its awesomeness
It most certainly will at some point.
Any more I'm missing?
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The DX is quite nice, even though not well suited for existing projects as it is hard to migrate existing users. There is no easy way to keep existing sessions or do a legacy login, then migrate a user to the new better-auth supplied hashing function.
I found this https://better-auth-ui.com/
But those who hadn't started using better auth more. And now I guess its crazy how I felt as if this would be just a small project like lucia in the sense of its just created for the passion and the art, but now it has raised 5 mill$ , I wonder if the community wanted this to be an artisanal like project like lucia before its end or what the community thinks of this move. Since VC and open source have some inherent compromises with each other and I guess I just wanted to write this to hear more about people who are using better auth in prod and what they think of what this VC funding.
I agree so much with the enshittifcation but like, I never understand why atleast open source projects need VC funding/ if they really want to earn money, might as well bootstrap it and try to get some Business customers for support etc.
But if you are saying that to get business customers, I need vc funding, then I guess it forces some enshittifcation.
I am okay with having a SaaS solution but what I truly don't understand is why we need vc funding.
I truly love developers wanting to earn money with open source. I appreciate them because they are essentially giving us gifts and being altruistic and I want to live in a world where people who can, do support them. But I am not okay with is some corporation now deciding the direction to go for open source (and that corporation doesn't care about the craft or the community, they want money.. they want returns since its just a number to them really) and that force of direction really alienates communities and just forks appear and just tbh it becomes messy.
I am more than curious as to why enterprises want VC funded OSS products. Yes you rely on them for a longer amount of time, but it also increases the chances of rugpull quite significantly imo. I don't think that one should just get VC funding just because entreprises like it. Should they?
Maybe I am so alienated with startup culture but I just want anything I build to not burn piles of cash that I need to rely on someone else, and I'd rather be profitable from (day one?) with my own bootstraped company / basically being a indie hacker like you I suppose. I get why some companies need VC funding and they become startups but I don't think that literally everything should be startup I am not sure.