head to head · open source
Authentik vs gokey
Authentik has 26,220 GitHub stars, 2,102 forks, 1,074 open issues and last shipped today. gokey has 2,440 stars, 110 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Authentik leads on adoption by 975% (26,220 vs 2,440 stars). Authentik is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; gokey is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause. Authentik has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, gokey 5%. Authentik was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Authentik | gokey | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | Custom / other | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-07-10 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.1K | ⑂ 110 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Authentik if
- You weight community size — 26K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick gokey if
- You want the gokey feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and gokey fits your workflow better
About Authentik
What is authentik? authentik is an open source Identity Provider (IdP) for modern SSO. It supports SAML, OAuth2/OIDC, LDAP, RADIUS, and more, designed for self hosting from small labs to large production clusters. Our enterprise offering is available for organizations to securely replace existing IdPs such as Okta, Auth0, Entra ID, and Ping Identity for robust, large scale identity management. Installation Docker Compose: recommended for small/test setups. See the documentation. Kubernetes (Helm Chart): recommended for larger setups. See the documentation and the Helm chart repository. AWS CloudFormation: deploy…
read the full Authentik overview →
About gokey
gokey A simple vaultless password manager in Go gokey is a password manager, which does not require a password vault. Instead of storing your passwords in a vault it derives your password on the fly from your master password and supplied realm string (for example, resource URL). This way you do not have to manage, backup or sync your password vault (or trust its management to a third party) as your passwords are available immediately anywhere. example options o by default gokey outputs generated data to stdout P path to master password file which will be used to generate other passwords/keys or to encrypt seed…
read the full gokey overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Authentik or gokey more popular?
Authentik has 26,220 GitHub stars and gokey has 2,440. Authentik has the larger community by that measure.
Are Authentik and gokey free?
Both are open source. Authentik has no licence declared in this registry, and gokey is licensed under BSD-3-Clause. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Authentik and gokey?
Authentik is written in Python and gokey 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, Authentik or gokey?
Choose Authentik if you want the larger community (26,220 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose gokey if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.