head to head · open source
Keycloak vs gokey
Keycloak has 37,689 GitHub stars, 9,139 forks, 3,292 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gokey has 2,440 stars, 110 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Keycloak leads on adoption by 1,445% (37,689 vs 2,440 stars). Keycloak is written in Java under Apache-2.0; gokey is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause. Keycloak has attracted 24% as many forks as stars, gokey 5%. Keycloak 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
| Keycloak | gokey | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-07-10 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.1K | ⑂ 110 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Keycloak if
- You weight community size — 38K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- 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 Keycloak
Open Source Identity and Access Management Add authentication to applications and secure services with minimum effort. No need to deal with storing users or authenticating users. Keycloak provides user federation, strong authentication, user management, fine grained authorization, and more. Help and Documentation Documentation User Mailing List Mailing list for help and general questions about Keycloak Join keycloak for general questions, or keycloak dev on Slack for design and development discussions, by creating an account at Reporting Security Vulnerabilities If you have found a security vulnerability, please…
read the full Keycloak overview →
About gokey
gokey A simple vaultless password manager in Go gokey is a password manager, which does not require a password vault. Instead of storing your passwords in a vault it derives your password on the fly from your master password and supplied realm string (for example, resource URL). This way you do not have to manage, backup or sync your password vault (or trust its management to a third party) as your passwords are available immediately anywhere. example options o by default gokey outputs generated data to stdout P path to master password file which will be used to generate other passwords/keys or to encrypt seed…
read the full gokey overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Keycloak or gokey more popular?
Keycloak has 37,689 GitHub stars and gokey has 2,440. Keycloak has the larger community by that measure.
Are Keycloak and gokey free?
Both are open source. Keycloak is licensed under Apache-2.0 and gokey under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Keycloak and gokey?
Keycloak is written in Java 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, Keycloak or gokey?
Choose Keycloak if you want the larger community (37,689 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose gokey if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.