head to head · open source
Better Auth vs tinyauth
Better Auth has 30,597 GitHub stars, 3,063 forks, 723 open issues and last shipped yesterday. tinyauth has 8,471 stars, 289 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Better Auth leads on adoption by 261% (30,597 vs 8,471 stars). Better Auth is written in TypeScript under MIT; tinyauth is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. Better Auth has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, tinyauth 3%. Better Auth was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (authentication, oidc, sso), 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
| Better Auth | tinyauth | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 8.5K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-05 | 2026-11-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 289 |
| 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 tinyauth if
- You want the tinyauth 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 tinyauth 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 tinyauth
Tinyauth The tiniest OpenID Certified™ authorization and authentication server you have ever seen. Tinyauth is the simplest and tiniest authentication and authorization server you have ever seen. It is designed to both work as an authentication middleware for your apps, offering support for OAuth, LDAP and access controls, and as a standalone authentication server. It supports all the popular proxies like Traefik, Nginx and Caddy. [!WARNING] Tinyauth is in active development and configuration may change often. Please make sure to carefully read the release notes before updating. [!NOTE] This is the main…
read the full tinyauth overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Better Auth or tinyauth more popular?
Better Auth has 30,597 GitHub stars and tinyauth has 8,471. Better Auth has the larger community by that measure.
Are Better Auth and tinyauth free?
Both are open source. Better Auth is licensed under MIT and tinyauth under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Better Auth and tinyauth?
Better Auth is written in TypeScript and tinyauth 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 tinyauth?
Choose Better Auth if you want the larger community (30,597 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose tinyauth if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.