Guide
Clerk shows a "development keys" warning on my live app
Your live app shows a Clerk development-keys warning, or new users appear in the development instance instead of the production one. This applies to apps from AI builders that use Clerk and are deployed on Vercel.
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Why it happens
Clerk gives you two sets of keys, one for development and one for production. Clerk's own docs call forgetting to switch to the production instance's keys a common mistake when deploying.
Possible causes
- The Vercel project still holds the development keys, so the live site keeps running on the development instance.
- The production instance was never created, or its setup was not finished and deployed.
- The app runs on a free vercel.app address, which Clerk cannot use for a production instance: it needs a domain you own.
- Settings that do not copy from development to production, such as SSO connections, integrations and paths, were never set again.
- Social sign-in still relies on shared development credentials, which Clerk says are not secure in production.
- Webhook endpoints still point at the development instance.
You can't see it yourself
You're signed in, your customers aren't. Everything works for you because the development instance is built to be forgiving. The difference is in the keys and instance your customers actually use.
Find out in 2 minutes which of these is breaking your app. Test my app, free
Related: It works in the preview but breaks after I deploy · v0: environment variables missing on the published app · Sign-up or login broken after publishing: users bounce back to login or land on localhost
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