head to head · open source
Better Auth vs passforios
Better Auth has 30,041 GitHub stars, 2,903 forks, 723 open issues and last shipped today. passforios has 1,645 stars, 114 forks, 176 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. Better Auth leads on adoption by 1,726% (30,041 vs 1,645 stars). Better Auth is written in TypeScript under MIT; passforios is written in Swift under MIT. Better Auth has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, passforios 7%. 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 | passforios | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Swift |
| Last push | 2026-09-22 | 2026-08-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 114 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Better Auth if
- You weight community size — 30K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick passforios if
- You want the passforios feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- You evaluated both and passforios fits your workflow better
About Better Auth
Better Auth is a framework agnostic authentication and authorization framework written in TypeScript. It targets the broader JavaScript/TypeScript ecosystem and is designed to integrate with any backend or frontend framework, including Next.js, Express, SvelteKit, and others. It provides a unified API surface for core identity workflows such as sign up, sign in, session management, and passwordless flows.
read the full Better Auth overview →
About passforios
Pass for iOS is an open source iOS client for ZX2C4's Pass command line password manager, built for people who already keep credentials in a GPG encrypted, Git versioned password store and want to view, copy, or edit them from an iPhone or iPad.
read the full passforios overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Better Auth or passforios more popular?
Better Auth has 30,041 GitHub stars and passforios has 1,645. Better Auth has the larger community by that measure.
Are Better Auth and passforios free?
Both are open source. Better Auth is licensed under MIT and passforios under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Better Auth and passforios?
Better Auth is written in TypeScript and passforios in Swift. 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 passforios?
Choose Better Auth if you want the larger community (30,041 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose passforios if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.