head to head · open source
authelia vs webauthn
authelia has 29,055 GitHub stars, 1,492 forks, 137 open issues and last shipped today. webauthn has 612 stars, 60 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. authelia leads on adoption by 4,648% (29,055 vs 612 stars). authelia is written in Go under Apache-2.0; webauthn is written in TypeScript under MIT. authelia has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, webauthn 10%. authelia was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (authentication, passkeys), 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 | webauthn | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 612 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-23 | 2026-05-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 60 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick authelia if
- You weight community size — 29K 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 webauthn if
- You want the webauthn feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and webauthn fits your workflow better
About authelia
Authelia is an open source authentication and authorization server written in Go that provides single sign on and multi factor authentication for web applications through a web portal, aimed at self hosters and platform teams who need to protect services sitting behind a reverse proxy.
read the full authelia overview →
About webauthn
The @passwordless id/webauthn library is an open source, dependency free TypeScript helper that wraps the WebAuthn protocol so passkey registration, authentication and verification take only a few lines of code, and it is aimed at web developers who want passwordless sign in in the browser and on the server without hand writing the protocol.
read the full webauthn overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is authelia or webauthn more popular?
authelia has 29,055 GitHub stars and webauthn has 612. authelia has the larger community by that measure.
Are authelia and webauthn free?
Both are open source. authelia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and webauthn under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between authelia and webauthn?
authelia is written in Go and webauthn in TypeScript. 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 webauthn?
Choose authelia if you want the larger community (29,055 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose webauthn if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.