head to head · open source
Zitadel vs Ory
Zitadel has 15,041 GitHub stars, 1,309 forks, 1,171 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ory has 13,880 stars, 1,186 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Zitadel leads on adoption by 8% (15,041 vs 13,880 stars). Zitadel is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; Ory is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Zitadel has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Ory 9%. Zitadel was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (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.
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Side by side
| Zitadel | Ory | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 14K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-07-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 Ory if
- You want the Ory 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 Ory 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 Ory
Ory Kratos is headless cloud native authentication and identity management system written in Go. It sits inside Ory stack and Security & Privacy / Identity & Access Management category. It exposes identity work over HTTP APIs. Services consume login, registration, recovery, verification, profile management instead of reimplementing them.
More in Security & Privacy
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zitadel or Ory more popular?
Zitadel has 15,041 GitHub stars and Ory has 13,880. Zitadel has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zitadel and Ory free?
Both are open source. Zitadel is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Ory under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Zitadel and Ory?
Zitadel is written in Go and Ory 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 Ory?
Choose Zitadel if you want the larger community (15,041 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Ory if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.