head to head · open source
Zitadel vs oauth2-proxy
Zitadel has 15,507 GitHub stars, 1,416 forks, 1,171 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. oauth2-proxy has 15,319 stars, 2,259 forks, 285 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Zitadel leads on adoption by 1% (15,507 vs 15,319 stars). Zitadel is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; oauth2-proxy is written in Go under MIT. Zitadel has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, oauth2-proxy 15%. oauth2-proxy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (oauth2, oidc), 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
| Zitadel | oauth2-proxy | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 15K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Zitadel if
- You weight community size — 16K 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 oauth2-proxy if
- You want the oauth2-proxy feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and oauth2-proxy fits your workflow better
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 →
About oauth2-proxy
OAuth2 Proxy is a flexible, open source tool that can act as either a standalone reverse proxy or a middleware component integrated into existing reverse proxy or load balancer setups. It provides a simple and secure way to protect your web applications with OAuth2 / OIDC authentication. As a reverse proxy, it intercepts requests to your application and redirects users to an OAuth2 provider for authentication. As a middleware, it can be seamlessly integrated into your existing infrastructure to handle authentication for multiple applications. OAuth2 Proxy supports a lot of OAuth2 as well as OIDC providers…
read the full oauth2-proxy overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zitadel or oauth2-proxy more popular?
Zitadel has 15,507 GitHub stars and oauth2-proxy has 15,319. Zitadel has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zitadel and oauth2-proxy free?
Both are open source. Zitadel is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and oauth2-proxy under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Zitadel and oauth2-proxy?
Zitadel is written in Go and oauth2-proxy 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 oauth2-proxy?
Choose Zitadel if you want the larger community (15,507 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose oauth2-proxy if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.