Build a custom flow for handling user impersonation

Available in other SDKs

Warning

This guide is for users who want to build a custom flow. To use a prebuilt UI, use the Account Portal pages or prebuilt components.

Clerk's user impersonation feature allows you to sign in to your application as one of your users, enabling you to directly reproduce and remedy any issues they're experiencing. It's a helpful feature for customer support and debugging.

This guide will walk you through how to build a custom flow that handles user impersonation.

Important

You can perform up to 5 user impersonations per month for free. To increase this limit, refer to the pricing page.

import com.clerk.api.Clerk
import com.clerk.api.auth.signInWithTicket
import com.clerk.api.network.serialization.onFailure
import com.clerk.api.network.serialization.onSuccess
import com.clerk.api.signin.SignIn

suspend fun impersonateUser(actorToken: String) {
  Clerk.auth
    .signInWithTicket(actorToken)
    .onSuccess { signIn ->
      if (signIn.status == SignIn.Status.COMPLETE && signIn.createdSessionId != null) {
        Clerk.auth
          .setActive(sessionId = signIn.createdSessionId)
          .onFailure {
            // See https://clerk.com/docs/guides/development/custom-flows/error-handling
            // for more info on error handling
          }
      }
    }
    .onFailure {
      // See https://clerk.com/docs/guides/development/custom-flows/error-handling
      // for more info on error handling
    }
}

Last updated on Apr 2, 2026

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Build a custom flow for handling user impersonation

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