Auth.js is now part of Better Auth

[balazsorban44]

Auth.js is joining forces with Better Auth

We’re excited to share that Auth.js (formerly NextAuth.js) will now be maintained by the Better Auth team. Auth.js has powered authentication for a huge portion of the web, helping developers ship OAuth and session management fast. As applications and requirements grew more complex, the project’s original scope started to show its limits, and Better Auth emerged with a broader, more modern approach that aligns with where the ecosystem is heading.

We also want to acknowledge the obvious: our pace slowed over the past year. Maintainers moved roles, time was tight, and the surface area outgrew what we could responsibly support. This transition ensures that Auth.js continues to receive security and critical fixes, while giving users a clear, actively maintained path forward.

What this means for you: If you’re using Auth.js today, you can keep using it—maintenance will continue for security and urgent issues. If you’re starting something new (or planning a refresh), we recommend Better Auth as the best way forward for most teams, with migration guides available and more coming.

Finally, thank you to our community—contributors, maintainers, and everyone who opened issues, PRs, and discussions. You carried this project to this point and made a thoughtful transition possible. For more information and a better-auth migration guide, please check out their post here:
https://www.better-auth.com/blog/authjs-joins-better-auth

The Auth.js Team

[SatyamVyas04]

A huge thank you to auth.js for the foundation, and best of luck! Excited to see better-auth lead the way forward :)

[marvkr]

I’m happy that I started my full-stack journey in 2021 using NextAuth. I switched to a paid auth solution when building my startup, only to come back to a free & beautiful solution like Better Auth. I was wondering what had become of Auth.js, and after reading this, I know it won’t just be a memory but a long lasting journey. ❤️

[kulterryan]

😲 Wow… didn’t see this coming! Auth.js has been the backbone of authentication for so many of us—it made OAuth and sessions actually approachable. Thank you for carrying the web on your shoulders all these years 🙏

Excited (and a bit emotional) to see it transition to the Better Auth team. End of an era, but also the start of something even bigger. 🚀

Thanks Auth.js, you’ll always be legendary. 💙

[mohit4bug]

open source is pure gold, it knows when to compete and when to collaborate, merging teams with a single goal to serve the community and people

congratulations to both of them 🎉👏

[SatyamVyas04]

That's a great way to put it ✨

[traez]

Wow! The old Nextjs king of Auth gets bought over by the new king.
Well done to both Teams!

[VDuda]

This seems amazing - would love to know the behind scenes of how this came to a merge. Certainly not typical for OSS projects to get merged like so. I migrated over to better-auth for new projects a month ago, pretty happy with it.

Great decision overall IMO, just wondering how more of this behavior could be promoted.

[mfts]

Thank you for the creation of NextAuth and the continued maintenance.

There may have been jokes about the v5 but everything from v0 to v4 was helluva run!

This is how open source should work ❤️

[mcnaveen]

Thanks for creating NextAuth 🙏

When I tried NextAuth for the first time. I was blown away. Because I was fighting with Firebase Auth

It truly felt like a fresh air

Later I migrated to Better-Auth. Now this is a great news.

[yordis]

Thank you for seeking alignment above everything, I couldn't be any happier to see this happening!

[dotcomnerd]

This is exactly what makes the open-source community so special. Thank you ALL for everythine done auth-related for us over the years, team! Also, congratulations @Bekacru and all the better-auth maintainers for guiding us to a better future (pun intended).

What this means for you: If you’re using Auth.js today, you can keep using it—maintenance will continue for security and urgent issues. If you’re starting something new (or planning a refresh), we recommend Better Auth as the best way forward for most teams, with migration guides available and more coming.

One question, does this absorbent also both recommended + include next-auth@beta / Auth.js v5?

[Bekacru]

We don't have any immediate plans for v5. But we'll keep maintaining both versions

[dotcomnerd]

Sweet, sounds good 👍🏿

[steven-tey]

❤️ appreciate everything you've built over the years @balazsorban44!

[draneone]

Thanks ALL for the hard work! That was a journey and you guys saved me so many hours across years with your awesome project. <3
I switched to a better-auth this year for new projects, but auth.js is still in my heart too.

[zlwaterfield]

This is amazing to see the OSS world coming together. Props to the Auth.js team for their work over the years and stoked for @Bekacru to be leading the charge now!

[ian]

Thanks to all the contributors over the years for producing the first great auth library for Next.js. This was a huge value add during a time of manual authentication systems, well before the landscape of clerk or workos or auth0.

Happy to see this project land with the better auth team.

[rahulxdemon]

Nextauth to auth.js to better-auth

[marcklingen]

Thank you for building NextAuth/Auth.js 🙏 docs an community support have always been incredible and allowed us to customize/extend it way more than we expected

[Axyl1410]

Your dedication has been the heart of this project. Thank you for laying the foundation

[n10l]

I have been using NextAuth for years. Thanks to all contributors who made it possible. I am bit sad as its going to BetterAuth, and its better to have options, so today I am launching AirAuth https://github.com/n10l/airauth Looking for people to contribute and take it further as next open source alternative. Stay tuned, a big update coming next week.

[fizzvr]

Ok thanks a lot!!

[gavinthomas-valtech]

Questions - Does Better auth support jwt sessions in cookies?

https://next-auth.js.org/configuration/callbacks#jwt-callback

my understanding is better auth is more geared around utilising databases or existing auth providers?

"Better Auth requires a database to store user data. You can easily configure Better Auth to use SQLite, PostgreSQL, or MySQL, and more!"

We aren't using a database directly in our project with NextAuth

[Axyl1410]

i thing better auth mandatory to configure a database, If your project is using next auth without a database adapter, it is running in JWT Sessions mode.

[gavinthomas-valtech]

So i should be able to continue using next auth v5 rather than migrating to better auth as we don't use a database?

[Axyl1410]

"you can keep using it—maintenance will continue for security and urgent issues". "We don't have any immediate plans for v5. But we'll keep maintaining both versions", maybe you can still use next auth, I have used better auth and found that saving it in the database is quite useful for me.

[Vinnl]

From https://www.better-auth.com/blog/authjs-joins-better-auth

we strongly recommend new projects to start with Better Auth unless there are some very specific feature gaps (most notably stateless session management without a database). Our roadmap includes bringing those capabilities into Better Auth,

[eliaquin-exit83]

From https://www.better-auth.com/blog/authjs-joins-better-auth

we strongly recommend new projects to start with Better Auth unless there are some very specific feature gaps (most notably stateless session management without a database). Our roadmap includes bringing those capabilities into Better Auth,

In other words, Auth.js is in maintenance mode now.

[bernardstein]

WHERE IS V5 bro is V5 coming out of beta?

[userdansilva]

I am thinking the same thing. We are kind lost in the limbo of auth framework: we cannot use NextAuth because was replaced by Authjs, we cannot use Authjs in production while is beta, we cannot use BetterAuth because has no provider for Auth0.

[Bekacru]

You can use generic-oauth-plugin for auth0 with better-auth. We'll exported configurations soon for everything we don't support through the social providers.

[userdansilva]

thanks @Bekacru! I'll try it out

[JRetza]

there's still radio silence on the original question and i think it's an important one - next-auth/authjs has been in beta for almost 2 years!! like really?

when is there going to be a stable release?

[Painwraith]

Our team is using AuthJS with an external identity provider. Curious what will happen to AuthJS.

[Nayeem-XTREME]

How can I migrate from a "jwt" base authentication with "credential" sigin-in in "better-auth"? Any guidelines?

[AussieWebDev]

i think better-auth requires a database, so all your active users will need to login again after migration

[PeterMarinov]

+1. A migration from Auth.js to Better Auth depends on the ability to skip a database and delegate persistence to an API. I’m still verifying if this is supported.

If someone with more expertise can provide guidance, this will really help the community.

[PeterMarinov]

For those facing the same question, here’s a reference discussion - better-auth/better-auth#2202 (comment)

[ruckc]

I am actually quite sad by this news. I've found that @auth.js is much more flexible for my needs, than better-auth. better-auth provides a do it my way approach, while @auth.js was just focused on the OAuth/OIDC flows, with the database layer being tailorable if you want it.

[Bekacru]

You can keep using auth.js. If we require moving to better-auth, we'll provide the same flow.

[Exp1ry]

Can we atleast get a confirmation whether AuthJS V5 will be stepping out of beta? Personally, I am using AuthJS V5 (with lots enterprise logic) for my production application and have faced no security issues.

Switching to BetterAuth would be problematic for me, as AuthJS v5 is deeply rooted in my app.

[AussieWebDev]

how do we know better-auth is more or less secure than authjs? going by usage numbers, authjs would have found more edge security issues.
i do appreciate that better-auth has a $5m funding, and plans to monetise on infrastructure, so certainly agree they're the better long term trusted provider

[sbaechler]

It looks like better-auth does indeed have some security issues:

https://zeropath.com/blog/breaking-authentication-unauthenticated-api-key-creation-in-better-auth-cve-2025-61928 (9.3)

The endpoint that created API-Keys did not check if the user was authenticated. (up to version 1.3.26)

[Painwraith]

Has anyone heard anything on whether NextAuth V5 will be completed and exit beta?

[Bekacru]

We'll have an update soon

[jai-adapptor]

Hi @Bekacru, appreciate the work being put into this project.

Would you be able to say which is more likely to happen sooner:

• Stable release of NextAuth v5
• Feature in Better Auth that allows a token flow via an API (i.e, not a direct database connection from Next.js)

[Bekacru]

Feature in Better Auth that allows a token flow via an API (i.e, not a direct database connection from Next.js)

This is already available in better-auth@beta. It’s actively being worked on, but it’ll be stabilized before the 1.4 release. You can find the canary docs here:

https://canary.better-auth.com/docs/concepts/session-management#stateless-session-management

[n2o]

It was possible with next-auth 5.0.0-beta.30 to use an own database of users (in my case a Strapi instance), you call it "Bring your own database" as a feature of auth.js. Is this still possible with better-auth? I did not find anything about it in the docs of better-auth. So we have to stick to the beta and see if better-auth also decouples from their databases or did I just miss anything? :-) Thanks

[martinestiga]

I think I have the same problem as @n2o. I want to have my own authentication function like I did in NextAuth (https://authjs.dev/getting-started/authentication/credentials#authorize). Will that be possible with Better Auth? I couldn't find anything in the documentation.

[lilac]

Can anyone explain why recommending migration to better-auth? I've used both in my projects, but I think next-auth has better overall DX. For example the organization is first-class citizen and built-in in next-auth, where in better-auth it's a plugin that requires very careful setup to make it work.

[thaoms]

I'm also not interested in moving to better-auth, auth.js is just so much better. Will we still see a stable release?

[Exp1ry]

Doesn't look like it unfortunately.. I've been waiting for over a year. I tried better-auth then uninstalled it. Its nothing compared to AuthJS.

[anerrorexe-byte]

Use V4.

[Exp1ry]

V5 is better IMO.

[anerrorexe-byte]

Have you used both extensively? V5 has major problems and advising people to use it is bad advice.

[Exp1ry]

I use V5 in production with hundreds of users with no issues. I've also used V4 extensively. I however do not use any adapter implementation and have rolled my own custom session management in the backend. I use AuthJS purely as a front-end authentication layer. NO authorization happens here.

[dimitriBouteille]

It’s crazy to see that some of the front packages have a lifespan of a few years .... 😮‍💨