head to head · open source
Keycloak vs tinyauth
Keycloak has 37,722 GitHub stars, 9,151 forks, 3,292 open issues and last shipped yesterday. tinyauth has 8,478 stars, 289 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped today. Keycloak leads on adoption by 345% (37,722 vs 8,478 stars). Keycloak is written in Java under Apache-2.0; tinyauth is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. Keycloak has attracted 24% 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 (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
| Keycloak | tinyauth | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 8.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-05 | 2026-11-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.2K | ⑂ 289 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Keycloak if
- You weight community size — 38K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 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 Keycloak
Open Source Identity and Access Management Add authentication to applications and secure services with minimum effort. No need to deal with storing users or authenticating users. Keycloak provides user federation, strong authentication, user management, fine grained authorization, and more. Help and Documentation Documentation User Mailing List Mailing list for help and general questions about Keycloak Join keycloak for general questions, or keycloak dev on Slack for design and development discussions, by creating an account at Reporting Security Vulnerabilities If you have found a security vulnerability, please…
read the full Keycloak 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 Keycloak or tinyauth more popular?
Keycloak has 37,722 GitHub stars and tinyauth has 8,478. Keycloak has the larger community by that measure.
Are Keycloak and tinyauth free?
Both are open source. Keycloak is licensed under Apache-2.0 and tinyauth under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Keycloak and tinyauth?
Keycloak 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, Keycloak or tinyauth?
Choose Keycloak if you want the larger community (37,722 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose tinyauth if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.