head to head · open source
authelia vs webauthn
authelia has 29,580 GitHub stars, 1,537 forks, 137 open issues and last shipped yesterday. webauthn has 618 stars, 63 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. authelia leads on adoption by 4,686% (29,580 vs 618 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 | ★ 30K | ★ 618 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-07 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 63 |
| 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 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
<img alt="SLSA 3" src="
read the full authelia overview →
About webauthn
@passwordless id/webauthn ========================= This library greatly simplifies the usage of passkeys by invoking the WebAuthn protocol more conveniently. It is open source, opinionated, dependency free and minimalistic. Note: in the latest version 2.4+, the browser field was removed in package.json due to issues how various tooling interpret it. Check out 108 for more details. 👀 Demos Basic Demo Passkeys autocomplete Testing Playground Authenticators list Docs These demos are plain HTML/JS, not minimized. Just open the sources in your browser if you are curious. 📦 Installation Modules (recommended) The…
read the full webauthn overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is authelia or webauthn more popular?
authelia has 29,580 GitHub stars and webauthn has 618. 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 (29,580 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose webauthn if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.