head to head · open source
Ory vs dex
Ory has 13,883 GitHub stars, 1,186 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. dex has 11,105 stars, 1,982 forks, 547 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Ory leads on adoption by 25% (13,883 vs 11,105 stars). Ory is written in Go under Apache-2.0; dex is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Ory has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, dex 18%. dex was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (hacktoberfest), 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
| Ory | dex | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 14K | ★ 11K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-07-29 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 2.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Ory if
- You weight community size — 14K 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 dex if
- You want the dex feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and dex fits your workflow better
About Ory
Ory Kratos is headless cloud native authentication and identity management system written in Go. It sits inside Ory stack and Security & Privacy / Identity & Access Management category. It exposes identity work over HTTP APIs. Services consume login, registration, recovery, verification, profile management instead of reimplementing them.
About dex
Dex is an OpenID Connect (OIDC) and OAuth 2.0 identity provider written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 licence, built for teams that want one authentication endpoint in front of many upstream identity sources instead of one integration per application.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ory or dex more popular?
Ory has 13,883 GitHub stars and dex has 11,105. Ory has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ory and dex free?
Both are open source. Ory is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dex under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ory and dex?
Ory is written in Go and dex 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, Ory or dex?
Choose Ory if you want the larger community (13,883 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dex if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.