head to head · open source
Better Auth vs gokey
Better Auth has 30,583 GitHub stars, 3,060 forks, 723 open issues and last shipped today. gokey has 2,440 stars, 110 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Better Auth leads on adoption by 1,153% (30,583 vs 2,440 stars). Better Auth is written in TypeScript under MIT; gokey is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause. Better Auth has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, gokey 5%. Better Auth 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
| Better Auth | gokey | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-07-10 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 110 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Better Auth if
- You weight community size — 31K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- 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 Better Auth
Discord · Website · Issues Better Auth Better Auth is a framework agnostic authentication (and authorization) framework for TypeScript. It provides a comprehensive set of features out of the box and includes a plugin ecosystem that simplifies adding advanced functionalities with minimal code in a short amount of time. Whether you need 2FA, multi tenant support, or other complex features, it lets you focus on building your actual application instead of reinventing the wheel. Why Better Auth Authentication in the TypeScript ecosystem is a half solved problem. Other open source libraries often require a lot of…
read the full Better Auth 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 Better Auth or gokey more popular?
Better Auth has 30,583 GitHub stars and gokey has 2,440. Better Auth has the larger community by that measure.
Are Better Auth and gokey free?
Both are open source. Better Auth is licensed under MIT and gokey under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Better Auth and gokey?
Better Auth is written in TypeScript 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, Better Auth or gokey?
Choose Better Auth if you want the larger community (30,583 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose gokey if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.