head to head · open source
Zitadel vs pocket-id
Zitadel has 15,507 GitHub stars, 1,416 forks, 1,171 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. pocket-id has 9,965 stars, 349 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Zitadel leads on adoption by 56% (15,507 vs 9,965 stars). Zitadel is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; pocket-id is written in Go under BSD-2-Clause. Zitadel has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, pocket-id 4%. pocket-id was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | pocket-id | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 10.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 349 |
| 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 pocket-id if
- You want the pocket-id feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and pocket-id 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 pocket-id
Pocket ID Pocket ID is an easy to use OpenID Connect Certified™ and OAuth 2.0 provider that lets users sign in to your applications with passkeys. → Try out the Demo The goal of Pocket ID is to be a simple and easy to use. There are other self hosted OIDC and OAuth 2.0 providers like Keycloak or ORY Hydra but they are often too complex for simple use cases. Additionally, what makes Pocket ID special is that it only supports passkey authentication, which means you don’t need a password. Some people might not like this idea at first, but I believe passkeys are the future, and once you try them, you’ll love them…
read the full pocket-id overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zitadel or pocket-id more popular?
Zitadel has 15,507 GitHub stars and pocket-id has 9,965. Zitadel has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zitadel and pocket-id free?
Both are open source. Zitadel is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and pocket-id under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Zitadel and pocket-id?
Zitadel is written in Go and pocket-id 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 pocket-id?
Choose Zitadel if you want the larger community (15,507 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose pocket-id if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.