[opensourcedex]

Ory is a free, open source identity & access management (iam) project written in Go and released under Apache-2.0. It has 13,880 GitHub stars, 1,186 forks and 224 open issues, and was last pushed 2 months ago. On this registry it ranks #8 of 11 tracked projects in Identity & Access Management (IAM), with 5 head-to-head comparisons available. It gained 9 stars over the last 6 tracked days.

Ory — A certified and battle-tested identity solution

What is Ory?

What it is

Ory Kratos is headless cloud native authentication and identity management system written in Go. It sits inside Ory stack and Security & Privacy / Identity & Access Management category. It exposes identity work over HTTP APIs. Services consume login, registration, recovery, verification, profile management instead of reimplementing them.

Concrete problem: apps need identity flows, but each app rebuilds same flows. Kratos centralizes self service login, account verification and recovery, multi factor authentication, profile and account management, identity schemas and traits, admin APIs. GitHub description says it can replace Homegrown, Auth0, Okta, Firebase. README says it works with browser based and native app flows, scales to large numbers identities and devices, fits Kubernetes and managed platforms.

Key capabilities

  • API first identity and user management for cloud native applications.
  • Handles self service login, registration, account verification, recovery, and profile management flows.
  • Supports multi factor authentication; GitHub description names Passkeys, Social Sign In, OIDC, Magic Link, SMS, SAML, TOTP.
  • Models identities with schemas and traits, gives admin APIs for lifecycle management.
  • Exposes browser based and native app flows, so UI frameworks call HTTP APIs instead of embedding identity logic.
  • Integrates with Ory Hydra for OAuth2 and OpenID Connect, and with Ory stack for access control.

Who uses it and how

  • Application teams use Kratos as backend identity service for login, registration, recovery, verification, profile management flows.
  • Teams moving from Auth0, Okta, or similar OAuth2 / OpenID Connect providers pair Ory Hydra with Kratos: Hydra issues tokens, Kratos stores identities and credentials.
  • Cloud native teams deploy Kratos in Kubernetes or managed platforms, point client configuration and endpoints to Hydra while migrating identities into Kratos.
  • Operators using Ory Network run Ory Identities, API compatible service powered by Kratos, for hosted identity and credential management.

Getting started

README says use Ory Network hosted service or self-host Ory Kratos under own control, with or without Ory Enterprise License. It points to Ory Kratos install guide and free developer account for Ory Network.

When to use it — and when not to

Use Kratos when need headless identity APIs in Go, want keep browser and native app flows, plan pair it with Hydra for OAuth2 or OpenID Connect. It can replace Homegrown, Auth0, Okta, or Firebase at protocol and identity-flow level, but does not remove work choosing managed or self-host operation. Self-hosting gives full control over infrastructure, deployment, and customization, yet excerpt does not list database, SMTP, or storage setup; repo metadata shows 0 contributors, 224 open issues, and 0 years repo age, so operational maturity may need extra review.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

Ory Kratos - Cloud native identity and user management

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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?

Ory Kratos is an API first identity and user management system that follows cloud architecture best practices. It focuses on core identity workflows that almost every application needs:

  • Self service login and registration
  • Account verification and recovery
  • Multi factor authentication
  • Profile and account management
  • Identity schemas and traits
  • Admin APIs for lifecycle management

We recommend starting with the Ory Kratos introduction docs to learn more about its architecture, feature set, and how it compares to other systems.

Why Ory Kratos

Ory Kratos is designed to:

  • Remove identity logic from your application code and expose it over HTTP APIs
  • Work well with any UI framework through browser based and native app flows
  • Scale to large numbers of identities and devices
  • Integrate with the rest of the Ory stack for OAuth2, OpenID Connect, and access control
  • Fit into modern cloud native environments such as Kubernetes and managed platforms

Migrating from Auth0, Okta, and similar providers

If you are migrating from Auth0, Okta, or another identity provider that uses OAuth2 / OpenID Connect based login, consider using Ory Hydra + Ory Kratos together:

  • Ory Hydra acts as the OAuth2 and OpenID Connect provider and can replace most authorization server and token issuing capabilities of your existing IdP.
  • Ory Kratos provides identity, credentials, and user-facing flows (login, registration, recovery, verification, profile management).

This combination is often a drop-in replacement for OAuth2 and OpenID Connect capabilities at the protocol level. In practice, you update client configuration and endpoints to point to Hydra, migrate identities into Kratos, and keep your applications speaking the same OAuth2 / OIDC protocols they already use.

Deployment options

You can run Ory Kratos in two main ways:

  • As a managed service on the Ory Network
  • As a self hosted service under your own control, with or without the Ory Enterprise License

Use Ory Kratos on the Ory Network

The Ory Network is the fastest way to use Ory services in production. Ory Identities is powered by the open source Ory Kratos server and is API compatible.

The Ory Network provides:

  • Identity and credential management that scales to billions of users and devices
  • Registration, login, and account management flows for passkeys, biometrics, social login, SSO, and multi factor authentication
  • Prebuilt login, registration, and account management pages and components
  • OAuth2 and OpenID Connect for single sign on, API access, and machine to machine authorization
  • Low latency permission checks based on the Zanzibar model with the Ory Permission Language
  • GDPR friendly storage with data locality and compliance in mind
  • Web based Ory Console and Ory CLI for administration and operations
  • Cloud native APIs compatible with the open source servers
  • Fair, usage based pricing

Sign up for a free developer account to get started.

Self-host Ory Kratos

You can run Ory Kratos yourself for full control over infrastructure, deployment, and customization.

The install guide explains how to:

  • Install Kratos on Linux, macOS, Windows, and Docker
  • Configure databases such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, and CockroachDB
  • Deploy to Kubernetes and other orchestration systems
  • Build Kratos from source

This guide uses the open source distribution to get you started without license requirements. It is a great fit for individuals, researchers, hackers, and companies that want to experiment, prototype, or run unimportant workloads without SLAs. You get the full core engine, and you are free to inspect, extend, and build it from source.

If you run Kratos as part of a business-critical system, for example login and account recovery for all your users, you should use a commercial agreement to reduce operational and security risk. The Ory Enterprise License (OEL) layers on top of self-hosted Kratos and provides:

  • Additional enterprise features that are not available in the open source version such as SCIM, SAML, organization login ("SSO"), CAPTCHAs and more
  • Regular security releases, including CVE patches, with service level agreements
  • Support for advanced scaling, multi-tenancy, and complex deployments
  • Premium support options with SLAs, direct access to engineers, and onboarding help
  • Access to a private Docker registry with frequent and vetted, up-to-date enterprise builds

For guaranteed CVE fixes, current enterprise builds, advanced features, and support in production, you need a valid Ory Enterprise License and access to the Ory Enterprise Docker registry. To learn more, contact the Ory team.

Quickstart

Install the Ory CLI and create a new project to try Ory Identities.

# Install the Ory CLI if you do not have it yet:
bash <(curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ory/meta/master/install.sh) -b . ory
sudo mv ./ory /usr/local/bin/

# Sign in or sign up
ory auth

# Create a new project
ory create project --create-workspace "Ory Open Source" --name "GitHub Quickstart"  --use-project
ory open ax login

Who is using it?

The Ory community stands on the shoulders of individuals, companies, and maintainers. The Ory team thanks everyone involved - from submitting bug reports and feature requests, to contributing patches and documentation. The Ory community counts more than 50.000 members and is growing. The Ory stack protects 7.000.000.000+ API requests every day across thousands of companies. None of this would have been possible without each and everyone of you!

The following list represents companies that have accompanied us along the way and that have made outstanding contributions to our ecosystem. If you think that your company deserves a spot here, reach out to [email protected] now!

Name Logo Website Case Study
OpenAI OpenAI
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openai.com OpenAI Case Study
Fandom

<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ory/meta/master

readme truncated — read the full docs on github

Frequently asked questions

Is Ory free to use?

Ory is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does Ory do?

A certified and battle-tested identity solution

What is Ory written in?

Ory is primarily written in Go. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/ory/kratos, and it has 13,880 GitHub stars.