head to head · open source
tinyauth vs vouch-proxy
tinyauth has 8,282 GitHub stars, 273 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped today. vouch-proxy has 3,282 stars, 337 forks, 65 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. tinyauth leads on adoption by 152% (8,282 vs 3,282 stars). tinyauth is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; vouch-proxy is written in Go under MIT. tinyauth has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, vouch-proxy 10%. tinyauth was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (authentication, golang, nginx, sso), 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
| tinyauth | vouch-proxy | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.3K | ★ 3.3K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-23 | 2026-07-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 273 | ⑂ 337 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick tinyauth if
- You weight community size — 8.3K 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 vouch-proxy if
- You want the vouch-proxy feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and vouch-proxy fits your workflow better
About tinyauth
Tinyauth is a small Go authentication and authorization server that runs either as authentication middleware in front of self hosted applications or as a standalone authentication server, and it is aimed at self hosters and homelab operators who want OpenID Certified™ single sign on without deploying a large identity platform.
read the full tinyauth overview →
About vouch-proxy
Vouch Proxy is a Go based single sign on gateway that protects websites behind Nginx by validating OAuth and OpenID Connect logins through Nginx's auth request module, and it is built for operators who already run Nginx and want one login layer in front of everything they host.
read the full vouch-proxy overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is tinyauth or vouch-proxy more popular?
tinyauth has 8,282 GitHub stars and vouch-proxy has 3,282. tinyauth has the larger community by that measure.
Are tinyauth and vouch-proxy free?
Both are open source. tinyauth is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and vouch-proxy under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between tinyauth and vouch-proxy?
tinyauth is written in Go and vouch-proxy 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, tinyauth or vouch-proxy?
Choose tinyauth if you want the larger community (8,282 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose vouch-proxy if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.