head to head · open source
Zitadel vs pwd.sh
Zitadel has 15,536 GitHub stars, 1,418 forks, 1,171 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. pwd.sh has 1,564 stars, 132 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 20 days ago. Zitadel leads on adoption by 893% (15,536 vs 1,564 stars). Zitadel is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; pwd.sh is written in Shell under MIT. Zitadel has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, pwd.sh 8%. Zitadel was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | pwd.sh | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Shell |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 132 |
| 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 pwd.sh if
- You want the pwd.sh feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You evaluated both and pwd.sh 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 pwd.sh
pwd.sh is a Bash script to manage text secrets, such as passwords, using GnuPG. Each secret is saved to a randomly named file in a directory. An encrypted index maps usernames to secrets contained in files. Both the index and files can be decrypted directly with GnuPG without pwd.sh. Install Download from Releases, or to use the latest version, clone the repository: Or download the script directly: Use Run the script interactively using ./pwd.sh or symlink to a directory in PATH : w write (create) a secret r read (access) a secret l list secret names and paths s generate a random secret u generate a random…
read the full pwd.sh 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 pwd.sh more popular?
Zitadel has 15,536 GitHub stars and pwd.sh has 1,564. Zitadel has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zitadel and pwd.sh free?
Both are open source. Zitadel is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and pwd.sh under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Zitadel and pwd.sh?
Zitadel is written in Go and pwd.sh in Shell. 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 pwd.sh?
Choose Zitadel if you want the larger community (15,536 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose pwd.sh if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.