head to head · open source
Authentik vs tinyauth
Authentik has 26,250 GitHub stars, 2,110 forks, 1,074 open issues and last shipped today. tinyauth has 8,478 stars, 289 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped today. Authentik leads on adoption by 210% (26,250 vs 8,478 stars). Authentik is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; tinyauth is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. Authentik has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, tinyauth 3%. Authentik was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (authentication, oidc), 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
| Authentik | tinyauth | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 8.5K |
| License | Custom / other | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-06 | 2026-11-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.1K | ⑂ 289 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Authentik if
- You weight community size — 26K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- 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 Authentik
What is authentik? authentik is an open source Identity Provider (IdP) for modern SSO. It supports SAML, OAuth2/OIDC, LDAP, RADIUS, and more, designed for self hosting from small labs to large production clusters. Our enterprise offering is available for organizations to securely replace existing IdPs such as Okta, Auth0, Entra ID, and Ping Identity for robust, large scale identity management. Installation Docker Compose: recommended for small/test setups. See the documentation. Kubernetes (Helm Chart): recommended for larger setups. See the documentation and the Helm chart repository. AWS CloudFormation: deploy…
read the full Authentik 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 Authentik or tinyauth more popular?
Authentik has 26,250 GitHub stars and tinyauth has 8,478. Authentik has the larger community by that measure.
Are Authentik and tinyauth free?
Both are open source. Authentik 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 Authentik and tinyauth?
Authentik is written in Python 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, Authentik or tinyauth?
Choose Authentik if you want the larger community (26,250 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.