Migrate to Kinde from Clerk

Migrate your users from Clerk to Kinde. Clerk supports exporting hashed passwords, and Kinde supports bcrypt — so your users can sign in with their existing passwords without a forced reset.

What you need

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• A Kinde account with Admin access
• Kinde account configured to match your current auth provider - see before you migrate
• Clerk account with user export permissions

Key considerations

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• bcrypt passwords are fully supported — Kinde imports bcrypt hashes directly. Users keep their existing password with no reset required.
• No drip-feed needed — because passwords can be migrated cleanly, a straightforward bulk import is the recommended approach for most Clerk migrations.
• File format — Clerk exports a CSV file. You’ll need to map the Clerk column names to Kinde’s expected column names before importing.

Migration guide

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1. Export users from Clerk

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1. Sign in to your Clerk dashboard.
2. Select the application you are exporting users from.
3. Go to Configure > Settings.
4. Under User exports, select Export users.
5. When the export is ready, select Download. This downloads a CSV file.

See Clerk’s documentation on exporting users.

2. Map Clerk columns to Kinde’s CSV format

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Rename the columns in your Clerk export to match what Kinde expects. The only required column is email — everything else is optional but recommended.

Clerk column	Rename to	Notes
primary_email_address	email	Required — primary sign-in identifier
	email_verified	TRUE or FALSE
id	id	Keep as-is — helps match records on re-import
first_name	first_name	Keep as-is
last_name	last_name	Keep as-is
primary_phone_number	phone	International format, e.g. +61555111555
password_digest	hashed_password	bcrypt hash — preserves existing passwords
password_hasher	hashing_method	Value will be bcrypt

For the full list of supported CSV fields — including organizations, roles, and permissions — see Prepare your CSV in the bulk import guide.

Enable password authentication first

If you are importing hashed passwords, enable password authentication in Kinde before importing. See Password authentication.

3. Import into Kinde

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1. In Kinde, go to Users, then select Import users.
2. Select Custom CSV.
3. Follow the on-screen prompts to upload your file.
4. Review any errors reported after import. Fix the CSV and re-import to resolve them.

See the bulk import guide to learn more.

4. Test the migration

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1. Sign in to Kinde with a user from your Clerk export.
2. Verify they can sign in with their existing Clerk credentials.
3. Notify users of any changes to their sign-in experience before going live.

Troubleshooting

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Review the CSV for missing or duplicated values before importing. Kinde flags errors during import and reports them. Most errors can be fixed by editing the CSV and re-importing — records already imported without changes are skipped.

Get support

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If you need help with your migration, contact Kinde support.