head to head · open source
pocket-id vs webauthn
pocket-id has 10,162 GitHub stars, 355 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. webauthn has 618 stars, 63 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. pocket-id leads on adoption by 1,544% (10,162 vs 618 stars). pocket-id is written in Go under BSD-2-Clause; webauthn is written in TypeScript under MIT. pocket-id has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, webauthn 10%. pocket-id was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (passkeys), 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
| pocket-id | webauthn | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 10K | ★ 618 |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-07 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 355 | ⑂ 63 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick pocket-id if
- You weight community size — 10K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick webauthn if
- You want the webauthn feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and webauthn fits your workflow better
About pocket-id
Pocket ID Pocket ID is an easy to use OpenID Connect Certified™ and OAuth 2.0 provider that lets users sign in to your applications with passkeys. → Try out the Demo The goal of Pocket ID is to be a simple and easy to use. There are other self hosted OIDC and OAuth 2.0 providers like Keycloak or ORY Hydra but they are often too complex for simple use cases. Additionally, what makes Pocket ID special is that it only supports passkey authentication, which means you don’t need a password. Some people might not like this idea at first, but I believe passkeys are the future, and once you try them, you’ll love them…
read the full pocket-id overview →
About webauthn
@passwordless id/webauthn ========================= This library greatly simplifies the usage of passkeys by invoking the WebAuthn protocol more conveniently. It is open source, opinionated, dependency free and minimalistic. Note: in the latest version 2.4+, the browser field was removed in package.json due to issues how various tooling interpret it. Check out 108 for more details. 👀 Demos Basic Demo Passkeys autocomplete Testing Playground Authenticators list Docs These demos are plain HTML/JS, not minimized. Just open the sources in your browser if you are curious. 📦 Installation Modules (recommended) The…
read the full webauthn overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is pocket-id or webauthn more popular?
pocket-id has 10,162 GitHub stars and webauthn has 618. pocket-id has the larger community by that measure.
Are pocket-id and webauthn free?
Both are open source. pocket-id is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and webauthn under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between pocket-id and webauthn?
pocket-id is written in Go and webauthn 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, pocket-id or webauthn?
Choose pocket-id if you want the larger community (10,162 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose webauthn if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.