head to head · open source
authelia vs caddy-security
authelia has 29,627 GitHub stars, 1,535 forks, 137 open issues and last shipped yesterday. caddy-security has 2,281 stars, 105 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. authelia leads on adoption by 1,199% (29,627 vs 2,281 stars). authelia is written in Go under Apache-2.0; caddy-security is written in Go under Apache-2.0. authelia has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, caddy-security 5%. authelia was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (authentication, ldap, oauth2), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| authelia | caddy-security | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 2.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-11 | 2026-10-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 105 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick authelia if
- You weight community size — 30K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick caddy-security if
- You want the caddy-security feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and caddy-security fits your workflow better
About authelia
<img alt="SLSA 3" src="
read the full authelia overview →
About caddy-security
caddy security Security App with Authentication and Authorization Plugins for Caddy v2. It includes: Authentication Plugin for implementing Form Based, Basic, Local, LDAP, OpenID Connect, OAuth 2.0, SAML Authentication Authorization Plugin for HTTP request authorization based on JWT/PASETO tokens Credentials Plugin for managing credentials for various integrations To retain sessions and generated signing keys across restarts, enable persistent runtime state. It supports portals and direct OAuth policies without a portal. Persistent deployments require a complete stop/start; overlapping reload is rejected. Please…
read the full caddy-security overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is authelia or caddy-security more popular?
authelia has 29,627 GitHub stars and caddy-security has 2,281. authelia has the larger community by that measure.
Are authelia and caddy-security free?
Both are open source. authelia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and caddy-security under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between authelia and caddy-security?
authelia is written in Go and caddy-security in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, authelia or caddy-security?
Choose authelia if you want the larger community (29,627 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose caddy-security if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.