head to head · open source
teleport vs opa
teleport has 20,924 GitHub stars, 2,158 forks, 3,262 open issues and last shipped yesterday. opa has 12,244 stars, 1,685 forks, 310 open issues and last shipped yesterday. teleport leads on adoption by 71% (20,924 vs 12,244 stars). teleport is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; opa is written in Go under Apache-2.0. teleport has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, opa 14%. opa 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
| teleport | opa | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 12K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 1.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick teleport if
- You weight community size — 21K 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 opa if
- You want the opa feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and opa fits your workflow better
About teleport
Teleport is an open source, identity aware access plane that provides connectivity, authentication, access control, and audit for servers, Kubernetes clusters, databases, Windows desktops, web applications, and cloud APIs, and it is aimed at platform, security, and infrastructure teams that need to protect access to that infrastructure.
read the full teleport overview →
About opa
Open Policy Agent (OPA) is an open source, general purpose policy engine that enables unified, context aware policy enforcement across the entire stack. It lives in the cloud native ecosystem as a graduated project in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation landscape, and it is written in Go under the Apache 2.0 license. Policy is expressed declaratively in the Rego language, and the project ships alongside a CLI, an HTTP REST API, a Go SDK, and editor tooling rather than as a single binary alone. The repository has been active for roughly eleven years, with 12,234 stars, 1,679 forks, and a last push dated 15 Septe…
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Frequently asked questions
Is teleport or opa more popular?
teleport has 20,924 GitHub stars and opa has 12,244. teleport has the larger community by that measure.
Are teleport and opa free?
Both are open source. teleport is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and opa under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between teleport and opa?
teleport is written in Go and opa 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, teleport or opa?
Choose teleport if you want the larger community (20,924 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose opa if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.