head to head · open source
Zitadel vs Ory
Zitadel has 15,499 GitHub stars, 1,413 forks, 1,171 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ory has 13,950 stars, 1,212 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. Zitadel leads on adoption by 11% (15,499 vs 13,950 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 | 2026-11-02 | 2026-07-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 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
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 Ory
Chat · Discussions · Newsletter · Docs · Try Ory Network · Jobs Ory Kratos is an API first identity and user management system for cloud native applications. It centralizes login, registration, recovery, verification, and profile management flows so your services consume them instead of reimplementing them. Table of contents What is Ory Kratos? Why Ory Kratos Migrating from Auth0, Okta, and similar providers Deployment options Use Ory Kratos on the Ory Network Self host Ory Kratos Quickstart Who is using it? What is Ory Kratos? Ory Kratos is an API first identity and user management system that follows cloud…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zitadel or Ory more popular?
Zitadel has 15,499 GitHub stars and Ory has 13,950. 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 (15,499 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.