head to head · open source
Zitadel vs Authgear
Zitadel has 15,493 GitHub stars, 1,412 forks, 1,171 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Authgear has 2,139 stars, 130 forks, 368 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Zitadel leads on adoption by 624% (15,493 vs 2,139 stars). Zitadel is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; Authgear is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Zitadel has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Authgear 6%. Zitadel was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 6 topic tags (2fa, authentication, identity, login), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Zitadel | Authgear | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-31 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 130 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Zitadel if
- You weight community size — 15K 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 Authgear if
- You want the Authgear 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 Authgear fits your workflow better
About Zitadel
The Identity Infrastructure for Developers ZITADEL is an open source identity and access management platform built for teams that need more than basic auth. Whether you're securing a SaaS product, building a B2B platform, or self hosting a production IAM stack — ZITADEL gives you everything out of the box: SSO, MFA, Passkeys, OIDC, SAML, SCIM, and a battle tested multi tenancy model. No vendor lock in. No compromise on control. Just a robust, API first identity platform you can own. 🏡 Website 💬 Chat 📋 Docs 🧑💻 Blog 📞 Contact Why ZITADEL We built ZITADEL to handle the hardest IAM challenges at scale —…
read the full Zitadel overview →
About Authgear
📘 Docs ☁️ SaaS Cloud ✨ Demo 💬 Discord Authgear: Open source alternative to Auth0 / Clerk / Firebase Auth Authgear is an open source extensible turnkey solution for all of your consumer authentication needs. Authgear gets you started in 5 minutes with developer friendly SDKs and a comprehensive portal. Available for self hosting and on Authgear Cloud. With a wide range of out of the box features, it's perfect for SaaS product and multi apps ecosystem, such as: Passwordless login: Magic link/OTP with Email, SMS, WhatsApp Passkeys Pre built signup/login page Pre built user account settings page Biometric Login on…
read the full Authgear overview →
More in Security & Privacy
Related comparisons
More Identity & Access Management (IAM) projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Identity & Access Management (IAM) field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Zitadel or Authgear more popular?
Zitadel has 15,493 GitHub stars and Authgear has 2,139. Zitadel has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zitadel and Authgear free?
Both are open source. Zitadel is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Authgear under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Zitadel and Authgear?
Zitadel is written in Go and Authgear 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, Zitadel or Authgear?
Choose Zitadel if you want the larger community (15,493 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Authgear if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.