head to head · open source
UnKey vs Phase
UnKey has 5,438 GitHub stars, 636 forks, 163 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Phase has 923 stars, 70 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. UnKey leads on adoption by 489% (5,438 vs 923 stars). UnKey is written in Go under a custom or non-standard licence; Phase is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence. UnKey has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, Phase 8%. UnKey was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (open-source), 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
| UnKey | Phase | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 5.4K | ★ 923 |
| License | Custom / other | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 636 | ⑂ 70 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick UnKey if
- You weight community size — 5.4K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Phase if
- You want the Phase feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Phase fits your workflow better
About UnKey
Unkey is a developer platform for modern APIs, written in Go and published as a source available repository on GitHub. It brings several pieces of API infrastructure into one place: instant API deployment, globally distributed gateways that route and authenticate traffic, API key issuance and verification, ratelimiting, permissions and role based access control, usage analytics, and audit logs. The project describes itself as unifying infrastructure so that teams can ship faster, and it lives in the security and privacy space, specifically secrets management and API key management, alongside the broader API gatew…
read the full UnKey overview →
About Phase
Phase is an open source secrets management platform, written in TypeScript, that lets fast moving engineering teams secure, deploy, and manage application secrets and environment variables from development through to production.
read the full Phase overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is UnKey or Phase more popular?
UnKey has 5,438 GitHub stars and Phase has 923. UnKey has the larger community by that measure.
Are UnKey and Phase free?
Neither UnKey nor Phase declares a licence in this registry, so check each project's own repository before relying on either for a commercial use. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between UnKey and Phase?
UnKey is written in Go and Phase in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, UnKey or Phase?
Choose UnKey if you want the larger community (5,438 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Phase if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.