head to head · open source
Zitadel vs pwd.sh
Zitadel has 15,081 GitHub stars, 1,323 forks, 1,171 open issues and last shipped today. pwd.sh has 1,563 stars, 136 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. Zitadel leads on adoption by 865% (15,081 vs 1,563 stars). Zitadel is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; pwd.sh is written in Shell under MIT. Zitadel has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, pwd.sh 9%. Zitadel 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Zitadel | pwd.sh | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Shell |
| Last push | 2026-09-23 | 2026-08-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 136 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Zitadel if
- You weight community size — 15K 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 pwd.sh if
- You want the pwd.sh feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You evaluated both and pwd.sh fits your workflow better
About Zitadel
Zitadel is an open source identity and access management platform written in Go and released under the AGPL 3.0 license. It lives in the open source IAM ecosystem and provides identity infrastructure for developers who need to operate an authentication and authorization layer themselves.
read the full Zitadel overview →
About pwd.sh
pwd.sh is a Bash script that manages text secrets such as passwords by storing each one in a GnuPG symmetric encrypted file, and it is for people who work in a terminal and prefer to keep their own encrypted store rather than hand it to a hosted password service.
read the full pwd.sh overview →
More in Security & Privacy
Related comparisons
More Identity & Access Management (IAM) projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Identity & Access Management (IAM) field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Zitadel or pwd.sh more popular?
Zitadel has 15,081 GitHub stars and pwd.sh has 1,563. Zitadel has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zitadel and pwd.sh free?
Both are open source. Zitadel is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and pwd.sh under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Zitadel and pwd.sh?
Zitadel is written in Go and pwd.sh in Shell. 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 pwd.sh?
Choose Zitadel if you want the larger community (15,081 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose pwd.sh if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.