head to head · open source
casbin vs Zitadel
casbin has 20,475 GitHub stars, 1,767 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Zitadel has 15,507 stars, 1,416 forks, 1,171 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. casbin leads on adoption by 32% (20,475 vs 15,507 stars). casbin is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Zitadel is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. casbin has attracted 9% 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 2 topic tags (authentication, authorization), 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
| casbin | Zitadel | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 20K | ★ 16K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.8K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick casbin if
- You weight community size — 20K 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 casbin
Apache Casbin ==== News : still worry about how to write the correct Apache Casbin policy? Apache Casbin online editor is coming to help! Try it at: Apache Casbin is a powerful and efficient open source access control library for Golang projects. It provides support for enforcing authorization based on various access control models. All the languages supported by Apache Casbin: Table of contents Supported models How it works? Features Installation Documentation Online editor Tutorials Get started Policy management Policy persistence Policy consistence between multiple nodes Role manager Benchmarks Examples…
read the full casbin 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 casbin or Zitadel more popular?
casbin has 20,475 GitHub stars and Zitadel has 15,507. casbin has the larger community by that measure.
Are casbin and Zitadel free?
Both are open source. casbin is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Zitadel under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between casbin and Zitadel?
casbin 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, casbin or Zitadel?
Choose casbin if you want the larger community (20,475 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.