head to head · open source
Zitadel vs casdoor
Zitadel has 15,507 GitHub stars, 1,416 forks, 1,171 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. casdoor has 14,751 stars, 1,886 forks, 97 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Zitadel leads on adoption by 5% (15,507 vs 14,751 stars). Zitadel is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; casdoor is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Zitadel has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, casdoor 13%. casdoor was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (authentication, mfa), 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
| Zitadel | casdoor | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 15K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 1.9K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Zitadel if
- You weight community size — 16K 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 casdoor if
- You want the casdoor 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 casdoor 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 casdoor
An open source, self hosted identity and access management platform Casdoor is a single sign on (SSO) and authentication server with a web console. It speaks OAuth 2.0 , OIDC , SAML 2.0 , CAS , LDAP , SCIM 2.0 , WebAuthn , TOTP/MFA and MCP , and connects to Google Workspace, Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD), GitHub and many other identity providers. Website · Documentation · Live demo · Discord The sign in page your users see: password, email/SMS code, WebAuthn and Face ID, plus every social provider you enable. Admin console. Users, tokens, organizations and providers at a glance…
read the full casdoor overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zitadel or casdoor more popular?
Zitadel has 15,507 GitHub stars and casdoor has 14,751. Zitadel has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zitadel and casdoor free?
Both are open source. Zitadel is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and casdoor under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Zitadel and casdoor?
Zitadel is written in Go and casdoor 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 casdoor?
Choose Zitadel if you want the larger community (15,507 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose casdoor if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.