head to head · open source
Zitadel vs melody-auth
Zitadel has 15,060 GitHub stars, 1,317 forks, 1,171 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. melody-auth has 639 stars, 66 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 18 days ago. Zitadel leads on adoption by 2,257% (15,060 vs 639 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 10%. 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 | ★ 15K | ★ 639 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 66 |
| 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 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
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 melody-auth
Melody Auth is an MIT licensed, TypeScript written OAuth 2.0 and authentication server that runs on both Cloudflare Workers and Node.js, and it is aimed at teams that want to host their own identity provider instead of renting one.
read the full melody-auth overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zitadel or melody-auth more popular?
Zitadel has 15,060 GitHub stars and melody-auth has 639. 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 (15,060 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.