head to head · open source
authelia vs Zitadel
authelia has 29,482 GitHub stars, 1,531 forks, 137 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Zitadel has 15,499 stars, 1,413 forks, 1,171 open issues and last shipped yesterday. authelia leads on adoption by 90% (29,482 vs 15,499 stars). authelia is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Zitadel is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. authelia has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, Zitadel 9%. Zitadel was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (2fa, authentication, mfa, 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 | Zitadel | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 15K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 Zitadel if
- You want the Zitadel feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Zitadel fits your workflow better
About authelia
<img alt="SLSA 3" src="
read the full authelia overview →
About Zitadel
The Identity Infrastructure for Developers ZITADEL is an open source identity and access management platform built for teams that need more than basic auth. Whether you're securing a SaaS product, building a B2B platform, or self hosting a production IAM stack — ZITADEL gives you everything out of the box: SSO, MFA, Passkeys, OIDC, SAML, SCIM, and a battle tested multi tenancy model. No vendor lock in. No compromise on control. Just a robust, API first identity platform you can own. 🏡 Website 💬 Chat 📋 Docs 🧑💻 Blog 📞 Contact Why ZITADEL We built ZITADEL to handle the hardest IAM challenges at scale —…
read the full Zitadel overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is authelia or Zitadel more popular?
authelia has 29,482 GitHub stars and Zitadel has 15,499. authelia has the larger community by that measure.
Are authelia and Zitadel free?
Both are open source. authelia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Zitadel under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between authelia and Zitadel?
authelia is written in Go and Zitadel 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 Zitadel?
Choose authelia if you want the larger community (29,482 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Zitadel if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.