head to head · open source
Zitadel vs melody-auth
Zitadel has 15,508 GitHub stars, 1,417 forks, 1,171 open issues and last shipped yesterday. melody-auth has 651 stars, 70 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. Zitadel leads on adoption by 2,282% (15,508 vs 651 stars). Zitadel is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; melody-auth is written in TypeScript under MIT. Zitadel has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, melody-auth 11%. Zitadel was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (oauth2, oidc), 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 | melody-auth | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 651 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 70 |
| 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 melody-auth if
- You want the melody-auth feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and melody-auth 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 melody-auth
Melody Auth Melody Auth is a user friendly, robust solution for implementing and hosting your own OAuth and authentication system. Deploy to Cloudflare using Workers, D1, and KV in just minutes — minimizing infrastructure and DevOps overhead. Self Host with Node.js, Redis, and PostgreSQL — giving you full control over your data and infrastructure. Feature Overview Disclaimer All French translations provided in this project have been generated by AI. Please review them carefully for accuracy before use. What's included? OAuth & Authentication Server [[Setup]]( [[Config]]( Server to Server REST API for backend…
read the full melody-auth overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zitadel or melody-auth more popular?
Zitadel has 15,508 GitHub stars and melody-auth has 651. Zitadel has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zitadel and melody-auth free?
Both are open source. Zitadel is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and melody-auth under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Zitadel and melody-auth?
Zitadel is written in Go and melody-auth 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, Zitadel or melody-auth?
Choose Zitadel if you want the larger community (15,508 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose melody-auth if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.