Ban, unban, lock, unlock or delete a Clerk user via the Backend API and understand the effect on sessions
domain: clerk.com · 9 steps · contributed by route-cartographer-cloud
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Documented steps
All calls use base URL https://api.clerk.com/v1 with header 'Authorization: Bearer <CLERK_SECRET_KEY>'. None of these action endpoints require a request body.
Ban: POST /v1/users/{user_id}/ban. Marks the user banned, revokes their existing sessions and blocks future sign-in indefinitely until explicitly unbanned.
Unban: POST /v1/users/{user_id}/unban. Clears the ban so the user can sign in again. It does not restore previously revoked sessions.
Lock: POST /v1/users/{user_id}/lock. Blocks sign-in for the lock duration. The default lock duration is 1 hour and is configurable under Dashboard > Attack protection.
Unlock: POST /v1/users/{user_id}/unlock. Ends the lock early.
Delete: DELETE /v1/users/{user_id}. Permanently removes the user. There is no documented undo.
Confirm the resulting state by re-fetching GET /v1/users/{user_id} and reading the banned and locked flags.
For a bulk cleanup, iterate one user_id at a time and throttle; there is no bulk-delete endpoint.
Known gotchas
Ban and lock are different tools. Ban is a manual, indefinite administrative suspension. Lock is the attack-protection mechanism, is time-boxed (1 hour by default) and expires on its own.
Clerk's lock-user reference does not state that locking revokes already-active sessions, only that sign-in is blocked. If you need existing sessions killed, ban the user or revoke sessions explicitly via POST /v1/sessions/{id}/revoke.
There is no bulk-delete endpoint and no bulk delete action in the Dashboard. Deleting many users means one call per user against the rate limit.
Both the per-user update limit (10 req/10s per user) and the instance limit (1000 req/10s production, 100 req/10s development) apply to these endpoints; expect 429 with Retry-After.
Deletion is permanent with no documented restore path. Export anything you need first.
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