head to head · open source
Zitadel vs product-is
Zitadel has 15,197 GitHub stars, 1,348 forks, 1,171 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. product-is has 882 stars, 1,033 forks, 1,632 open issues and last shipped today. Zitadel leads on adoption by 1,623% (15,197 vs 882 stars). Zitadel is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; product-is is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Zitadel has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, product-is 117%. product-is was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 6 topic tags (authentication, authorization, identity, 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Zitadel | product-is | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 882 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-10-02 | 2026-10-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 1.0K |
| 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 product-is if
- You want the product-is feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and product-is 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 product-is
WSO2 Identity Server is an open source identity and access management platform for Java based on premises and cloud deployments, aimed at teams that need to secure applications, APIs, workforce, consumer, and business customer logins under standards such as OAuth 2.0, OIDC, and SAML 2.0.
read the full product-is overview →
More in Security & Privacy
Related comparisons
More Identity & Access Management (IAM) projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Identity & Access Management (IAM) field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Zitadel or product-is more popular?
Zitadel has 15,197 GitHub stars and product-is has 882. Zitadel has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zitadel and product-is free?
Both are open source. Zitadel is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and product-is under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Zitadel and product-is?
Zitadel is written in Go and product-is in Java. 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 product-is?
Choose Zitadel if you want the larger community (15,197 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose product-is if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.