head to head · open source
SuperTokens vs tinyauth
SuperTokens has 15,344 GitHub stars, 785 forks, 155 open issues and last shipped yesterday. tinyauth has 8,478 stars, 289 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped today. SuperTokens leads on adoption by 81% (15,344 vs 8,478 stars). SuperTokens is written in Java under a custom or non-standard licence; tinyauth is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. SuperTokens has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, tinyauth 3%. tinyauth was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (authentication), 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
| SuperTokens | tinyauth | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 8.5K |
| License | Custom / other | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-05 | 2026-11-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 785 | ⑂ 289 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick SuperTokens if
- You weight community size — 15K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick tinyauth if
- You want the tinyauth feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and tinyauth fits your workflow better
About SuperTokens
Open Source auth provider Add secure login and session management to your apps. SDKs available for popular languages and front end frameworks e.g. Node.js, Go, Python, React.js, React Native, Vanilla JS, etc. Supertokens architecture is optimized to add secure authentication for your users without compromising on user and developer experience Three building blocks of SuperTokens architecture 1. Frontend SDK: Manages session tokens and renders login UI widgets 2. Backend SDK: Provides APIs for sign up, sign in, signout, session refreshing, etc. Your Frontend will talk to these APIs 3. SuperTokens Core: The HTTP…
read the full SuperTokens overview →
About tinyauth
Tinyauth The tiniest OpenID Certified™ authorization and authentication server you have ever seen. Tinyauth is the simplest and tiniest authentication and authorization server you have ever seen. It is designed to both work as an authentication middleware for your apps, offering support for OAuth, LDAP and access controls, and as a standalone authentication server. It supports all the popular proxies like Traefik, Nginx and Caddy. [!WARNING] Tinyauth is in active development and configuration may change often. Please make sure to carefully read the release notes before updating. [!NOTE] This is the main…
read the full tinyauth overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is SuperTokens or tinyauth more popular?
SuperTokens has 15,344 GitHub stars and tinyauth has 8,478. SuperTokens has the larger community by that measure.
Are SuperTokens and tinyauth free?
Both are open source. SuperTokens has no licence declared in this registry, and tinyauth is licensed under AGPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between SuperTokens and tinyauth?
SuperTokens is written in Java and tinyauth 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, SuperTokens or tinyauth?
Choose SuperTokens if you want the larger community (15,344 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose tinyauth if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.