head to head · open source
Ory vs privacyidea
Ory has 13,883 GitHub stars, 1,186 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. privacyidea has 1,774 stars, 361 forks, 193 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ory leads on adoption by 683% (13,883 vs 1,774 stars). Ory is written in Go under Apache-2.0; privacyidea is written in Python under AGPL-3.0. Ory has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, privacyidea 20%. privacyidea 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 | privacyidea | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 14K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-07-29 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 361 |
| 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 privacyidea if
- You want the privacyidea feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and privacyidea 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 privacyidea
privacyIDEA is an open source, self hosted multi factor authentication platform, written in Python and licensed under AGPL 3.0, for organisations that need to add a second factor to many different applications at once while keeping sensitive user data inside their own infrastructure.
read the full privacyidea overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ory or privacyidea more popular?
Ory has 13,883 GitHub stars and privacyidea has 1,774. Ory has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ory and privacyidea free?
Both are open source. Ory is licensed under Apache-2.0 and privacyidea under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ory and privacyidea?
Ory is written in Go and privacyidea in Python. 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 privacyidea?
Choose Ory if you want the larger community (13,883 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose privacyidea if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.