Configure Organizations

Global organization settings control how Organizations work across your entire application. These settings determine who can create organizations, how members join them, what roles they receive, and which features are available. You'll configure most of these when you first enable Organizations, though you can adjust them later as your needs evolve.

Enable Organizations

Organizations are disabled by default. When you enable organizations, Clerk offers two workspace models:

• Personal accounts disabled (recommended): Every user must belong to an organization. After signing up, users are prompted to create or join an organization through the session tasks flow before they can access your application.

  Important

  Personal accounts being disabled by default was released on August 22, 2025. Applications created before this date will not see the Allow personal accounts setting, because personal accounts were enabled by default.

• Personal accounts enabled: Users can operate in their own individual workspace or join organizations. They start in their personal account and can switch to organizations using the <OrganizationSwitcher /> component.

Most B2B and multi-tenant applications disable personal accounts. This ensures proper data isolation and team structure from the start. You should only enable personal accounts if your app serves both individual users and teams (like a tool that works for solo users but also has team features).

To enable organizations:

1. In the Clerk Dashboard, navigate to the Organizations Settings⁠ page.
2. Select Enable Organizations.
3. In the modal, toggle Allow personal accounts based on your decision above.
4. Select Enable.

Clerk measures Organizations by Monthly Active Organizations (MAOs). Refer to the overview page for pricing details and limits.

Organization Options

Once organizations are enabled, you can configure core features and behaviors. These settings control membership limits, verified domains, organization slugs, and whether to allow personal accounts alongside organizations.

Membership limits

By default, each organization can have up to 5 members. You can increase this limit as your customer base grows, or set different limits for individual organizations if you have different pricing tiers. There is no limit to the number of organizations a user can be a member of.

To change the global default:

1. In the Clerk Dashboard, navigate to the Organizations Settings⁠ page.
2. In the Default membership limit section, update the membership limit.
   • Free plan: Maximum 5 members per organization
   • Pro plan: Unlimited members per organization

You can override this limit for individual organizations:

1. In the Clerk Dashboard, select Organizations⁠.
2. Select the organization you want to update.
3. In the Membership limit section, update the limit for that specific organization.

Learn more about adding members to organizations.

Personal accounts

You can change the personal accounts setting after initial setup. This is useful if your product strategy evolves. For example, if you initially served only teams but now want to support individual users as well.

To change this setting:

1. In the Clerk Dashboard, navigate to the Organizations Settings⁠ page.
2. Toggle Allow personal accounts.

Refer to the Enable Organizations section above for a detailed explanation of how personal accounts work.

Verified domains

Verified domains allow automatic or suggested organization membership for users with specific email domains (like @acme.com). This is useful for company-wide rollouts where you want to streamline enrollment for employees with company email addresses. Members with the "Manage domains" system permission can manage verified domains and enrollment modes.

Learn more about verified domains.

Organization slugs

Organization slugs are human-readable URL identifiers (like acme-corp) that help users reference which organization they're working in. Enable this feature if you need organization-specific URLs or if users frequently switch between multiple organizations. This is disabled by default for applications created after October 7, 2025.

Learn more about using organization slugs in URLs.

User-created Organizations

After configuring organization features, you'll want to control who can create organizations. By default, end users can create organizations in your application, but you can restrict this if you prefer to manually provision organizations for customers.

Allow user-created Organizations

By default, users can create organizations in your application. You might want to disable this if you prefer to manually provision organizations for customers through the Clerk Dashboard or your own admin interface.

To change this setting:

1. In the Clerk Dashboard, navigate to the Organizations Settings⁠ page.
2. Toggle Allow user-created organizations.

You can also override this permission for specific users in their profile page under User permissions.

Learn more about creating organizations.

Organization creation limit

When user-created organizations are enabled, each user can create up to 100 organizations by default. You can configure this to set a lower limit or allow unlimited organizations.

To change the default limit:

1. In the Clerk Dashboard, navigate to the Organizations Settings⁠ page.
2. In the Organization limit section, choose between:
   • Users can create unlimited organizations
   • Users can create a limited number of organizations (specify the limit)

If you need users to create more than 100 organizations, contact support⁠ to have the limit raised.

To override this limit for a specific user:

1. In the Clerk Dashboard, select Users⁠.
2. Select the user you want to update.
3. In the User permissions section, configure their organization creation limit.

Default roles

When users create or join organizations, they need to be assigned a role. These settings determine which roles are automatically assigned in different scenarios, whether someone is creating a new organization or joining an existing one.

Default role for members

The default role for members is assigned to users when they join an organization through invitations or verified domain enrollment. By default, this is set to Member.

This role is used:

• When sending invitations from the <OrganizationProfile /> component (pre-filled as default)
• When users auto-join via verified domains
• As the suggested role for new organization members

To change the default role:

1. In the Clerk Dashboard, navigate to Roles & Permissions⁠.
2. Select the three dots next to the role you want to set as default.
3. Choose Set as Default role.

Learn more about roles and permissions.

Creator's initial role

The creator's initial role is assigned to users when they create a new organization. By default, this is set to Admin, giving them full control over the organization they created.

This role must have at least these system permissions:

• Manage members (org:sys_memberships:manage)
• Read members (org:sys_memberships:read)
• Delete organization (org:sys_profile:delete)

To change the creator role:

1. In the Clerk Dashboard, navigate to Roles & Permissions⁠.
2. Ensure the role has the required system permissions listed above.
3. Select the three dots next to the role you want to set as creator role.
4. Choose Set as Creator role.

Learn more about roles and permissions.

Allow new members to delete organizations

This setting controls whether organization members can delete organizations.

Allow new members to delete Organizations

By default, any member with the "Delete organization" system permission can delete an organization. You can disable this if you want to prevent accidental data loss or require your own approval process before organizations are removed.

To prevent members from deleting organizations:

1. In the Clerk Dashboard, navigate to the Organizations Settings⁠ page.
2. Disable Allow new members to delete organizations.

Learn more about roles and permissions.

Next steps

Now that you've configured global settings, you can:

• Create your first organization and start adding members
• Add members to your organization with invitations, verified domains, or SSO
• Configure access control with custom roles and permissions