head to head · open source
Ory vs melody-auth
Ory has 13,883 GitHub stars, 1,186 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. melody-auth has 639 stars, 66 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 18 days ago. Ory leads on adoption by 2,073% (13,883 vs 639 stars). Ory is written in Go under Apache-2.0; melody-auth is written in TypeScript under MIT. Ory has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, melody-auth 10%. melody-auth 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
| Ory | melody-auth | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 14K | ★ 639 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-07-29 | 2026-09-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 66 |
| 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 melody-auth if
- You want the melody-auth feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and melody-auth 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 melody-auth
Melody Auth is an MIT licensed, TypeScript written OAuth 2.0 and authentication server that runs on both Cloudflare Workers and Node.js, and it is aimed at teams that want to host their own identity provider instead of renting one.
read the full melody-auth overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ory or melody-auth more popular?
Ory has 13,883 GitHub stars and melody-auth has 639. Ory has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ory and melody-auth free?
Both are open source. Ory is licensed under Apache-2.0 and melody-auth under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ory and melody-auth?
Ory is written in Go and melody-auth in TypeScript. 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 melody-auth?
Choose Ory if you want the larger community (13,883 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose melody-auth if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.