head to head · open source
Zitadel vs jans
Zitadel has 15,268 GitHub stars, 1,364 forks, 1,171 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jans has 652 stars, 176 forks, 489 open issues and last shipped today. Zitadel leads on adoption by 2,242% (15,268 vs 652 stars). Zitadel is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; jans is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Zitadel has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, jans 27%. jans was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (identity, oauth2, openid-connect), 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 | jans | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 652 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-10-09 | 2026-10-10 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 176 |
| 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 jans if
- You want the jans feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and jans fits your workflow better
About Zitadel
Zitadel is an open source identity and access management platform written in Go and released under the AGPL 3.0 license. It lives in the open source IAM ecosystem and provides identity infrastructure for developers who need to operate an authentication and authorization layer themselves.
read the full Zitadel overview →
About jans
Janssen is a Linux Foundation open source identity and access management project for teams that need to run OAuth 2.0/OpenID Connect single sign on, low code authentication flows, and policy based authorization on infrastructure they control.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zitadel or jans more popular?
Zitadel has 15,268 GitHub stars and jans has 652. Zitadel has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zitadel and jans free?
Both are open source. Zitadel is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and jans under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Zitadel and jans?
Zitadel is written in Go and jans in Java. 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 jans?
Choose Zitadel if you want the larger community (15,268 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose jans if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.