WordPress to Cloudflare/Supabase: Killing the $1,800/mo Clerk Bill

Clerk wanted $1,800/mo for 50k MAU. For a WordPress blog with a login wall on three membership tiers. That's not SaaS pricing - that's a shakedown.

Migrated to Cloudflare Access + Supabase Auth in a weekend. Cloudflare Zero Trust handles the auth gateway at $0 - it sits in front of /members/ and validates JWTs before the request hits origin. Supabase Auth stores user profiles and session data. Total infra cost: $25/mo (Supabase Pro).

The architecture is dead simple:

• Cloudflare Access issues JWT via any OIDC provider (GitHub, Google, email magic link)
• Supabase Row Level Security maps the JWT claims to membership tiers
• WordPress reads tier from a custom header injected by Cloudflare, serves gated content

$1,775/mo saved. The product team called it 'unconventional.' I called it arithmetic.