I Spent Hours Debugging better-auth OAuth… Because I Overthought It

Code X Savage — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 19:47:15 +0000

We’ve all been there: you’re building a Next.js app, hit a wall, and spend hours questioning your entire tech stack—only to realize you overthought the whole thing.
Recently, I was setting up Google OAuth using better-auth. I followed the docs, which clearly showed the authClient.signIn.social() method.

*The Next.js Rabbit Hole
*
My brain made an assumption: "If there is a sign-in endpoint, there must be a separate sign-up endpoint for new users." Believing this, I spent hours debugging and pointing fingers at everything:
Is better-auth bugged?
Is react-hook-form failing to pass data?
Is my database schema blocking new users?

*The Fix
*
I completely overthought it. In better-auth, signIn handles both sign-in AND sign-up automatically. If a user doesn't exist, it creates them. There is no separate sign-up endpoint for OAuth. I was just hitting the wrong endpoint.
The Lesson
If the docs only show one method for OAuth, trust it! It does it all.
Save yourself the headache and don't look for a sign-up endpoint that doesn't exist. 😂

DEV Community: Code X Savage

I Spent Hours Debugging better-auth OAuth… Because I Overthought It