head to head · open source
Zitadel vs privacyidea
Zitadel has 15,060 GitHub stars, 1,317 forks, 1,171 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. privacyidea has 1,774 stars, 361 forks, 193 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Zitadel leads on adoption by 749% (15,060 vs 1,774 stars). Zitadel is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; privacyidea is written in Python under AGPL-3.0. Zitadel has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, privacyidea 20%. privacyidea was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (2fa, authentication, fido2, mfa), 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 | privacyidea | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 361 |
| 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 privacyidea if
- You want the privacyidea feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and privacyidea 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 privacyidea
privacyIDEA is an open source, self hosted multi factor authentication platform, written in Python and licensed under AGPL 3.0, for organisations that need to add a second factor to many different applications at once while keeping sensitive user data inside their own infrastructure.
read the full privacyidea overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zitadel or privacyidea more popular?
Zitadel has 15,060 GitHub stars and privacyidea has 1,774. Zitadel has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zitadel and privacyidea free?
Both are open source. Zitadel is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and privacyidea under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Zitadel and privacyidea?
Zitadel is written in Go and privacyidea in Python. 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 privacyidea?
Choose Zitadel if you want the larger community (15,060 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose privacyidea if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.