head to head · open source
Zitadel vs gokey
Zitadel has 15,067 GitHub stars, 1,319 forks, 1,171 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. gokey has 2,436 stars, 109 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Zitadel leads on adoption by 519% (15,067 vs 2,436 stars). Zitadel is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; gokey is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause. Zitadel has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, gokey 4%. Zitadel 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
| Zitadel | gokey | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-07-10 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 109 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Zitadel if
- You weight community size — 15K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- 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 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 →
About gokey
gokey is a vaultless password and key generator written in Go that derives passwords and cryptographic private keys on demand from a master password or a seed file instead of storing them in a vault, aimed at developers and system administrators who want deterministic credentials available anywhere without managing, backing up, or syncing a password store.
read the full gokey overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zitadel or gokey more popular?
Zitadel has 15,067 GitHub stars and gokey has 2,436. Zitadel has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zitadel and gokey free?
Both are open source. Zitadel is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and gokey under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Zitadel and gokey?
Zitadel is written in Go 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, Zitadel or gokey?
Choose Zitadel if you want the larger community (15,067 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose gokey if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.