head to head · open source
casbin vs Zitadel
casbin has 20,399 GitHub stars, 1,756 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. Zitadel has 15,060 stars, 1,317 forks, 1,171 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. casbin leads on adoption by 35% (20,399 vs 15,060 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| casbin | Zitadel | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 20K | ★ 15K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-11 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.8K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| 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 is an Apache licensed authorization library for Go that helps developers enforce access control models such as ACL, RBAC, and ABAC inside their own applications rather than in a separate service.
read the full casbin overview →
About Zitadel
Zitadel is an open source identity and access management platform written in Go and released under the AGPL 3.0 license. It lives in the open source IAM ecosystem and provides identity infrastructure for developers who need to operate an authentication and authorization layer themselves.
read the full Zitadel overview →
More in Security & Privacy
Related comparisons
More Identity & Access Management (IAM) projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Identity & Access Management (IAM) field.
Frequently asked questions
Is casbin or Zitadel more popular?
casbin has 20,399 GitHub stars and Zitadel has 15,060. 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 (20,399 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.