Seat-based Plans

Clerk Billing Plans can use seat-based configuration to:

• Limit how many seats an Organization can have
• Charge Organizations based on the number of purchased seats
• Combine seat limits and per-seat pricing on the same Plan

This makes it possible to tailor Plans to Organizations based on size, or to offer pricing that scales with growth.

Create a seat-based Plan

A seat-based Plan consists of configuring seat limits and per-seat pricing:

• Seat limits determine the maximum number of seats an Organization may have.
• Per-seat pricing determines how much an Organization is charged for each seat.

Seat limits can be configured on their own or alongside per-seat pricing. If you want to do per-seat pricing without a seat limit, you can set the seat limit to unlimited members.

1. In the Clerk Dashboard, navigate to the New Organization Plan⁠ page.
2. Enable Seat-based and choose how many seats the Plan allows:
   • To cap the number of seats, select Custom limit and enter the desired value.
   • To allow an unlimited number of seats, select Unlimited members.
   Note

   The B2B Authentication add-on⁠ is required to set a custom limit greater than 20 seats or to allow unlimited members.

3. If you want to charge Organizations based on the number of purchased seats, enable Per-seat fee and configure the pricing:
   • Cost per member seat monthly: Enter the price per seat.
   • Included seats: Enter how many seats are included in the Plan before per-seat charges apply.

SDK version requirements

To use seat-based Billing Plans, you need to use one of the following Clerk SDK versions:

• @clerk/react v6.9.0 or higher
• @clerk/nextjs v7.5.1 or higher
• @clerk/expo v3.4.1 or higher
• @clerk/react-router v3.4.1 or higher
• @clerk/tanstack-react-start v1.4.1 or higher

Seat-based Billing Plans also require @clerk/clerk-js v6.16.0 or higher and @clerk/ui v1.16.0 or higher. If you've pinned these dependencies, update them before attempting to use seat-based Billing Plans.

How per-seat pricing works

When an Organization subscribes to a Plan with per-seat pricing, each provisioned seat contributes to the Subscription cost according to the parameters configured on the Plan. Plans may also include a recurring base fee and included seats in addition to seat-based charges. For example, a Plan may include the first five seats for $10 a month and charge $5 a month for any additional seats.

Seat purchases

When an Organization subscribes to a per-seat Plan, it purchases an initial quantity of seats during checkout:

• The number of purchased seats covers the current number of members in the Organization plus any pending invitations.
• If an Organization has no unused seats left, when the user tries to add a new member, they will be prompted to purchase an additional seat. This user will need the org:sys_billing:read and org:sys_billing:manage System Permissions to purchase additional seats; admins have these permissions by default.
• Additional seats are added to the existing Subscription and are prorated based on the amount of time that has passed in the current billing period.
• If the Plan also has a seat limit configured, Organizations cannot purchase more seats than the Plan's maximum allowed seat count.
• Purchased seats cannot be reduced mid-period.
• If a member is removed mid-billing period, the seat becomes available for reuse within the Organization and persists on the Subscription until renewal.

When an Organization subscribes to a Plan with a seat limit but no per-seat fee, its seat limit will be set to the Plan's seat limit.

Recurring billing

At the beginning of each new billing period, the Subscription's seat quantity is automatically adjusted to match the number of members currently in the Organization (subject to any included-seat minimums) before the renewal charge is calculated. This means that seats that were purchased but never occupied during the previous billing period will not automatically renew. Organizations can continue purchasing additional seats throughout the billing period as their membership grows.

This automatic seat adjustment will never reduce the Organization's seats below what it still needs. If the Plan has no per-seat fee, no seat adjustment is made. If the Plan includes free seats, the seat count will not be reduced below the number of included seats.

Seat limit management

Organization invitations

Organizations can invite members up to their purchased seat count. Once all seats are occupied, additional invitations will be blocked until one of the following happens:

• Additional seats are purchased
• Existing members are removed from the Organization
• Pending invitations are revoked

Plan changes

If an Organization wants to switch to a Plan with a seat limit and has more members than allowed by the Plan, it must remove members from the Organization before switching Plans.

If an Organization wants to switch from a seat-limited Plan to a Plan without seat limits and is currently over the default membership limit for Organizations, it must remove members before switching Plans.

Example pricing models

Per-seat pricing can be configured in a variety of ways depending on how you'd like to monetize Organization growth. Plans can include a recurring base fee, per-seat charges, included seats, seat limits, or any combination of these.