SHSelfHostIndex

Caddy Security vs Open Policy Agent

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted identity & sso options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
CA Caddy Security Authentication and authorization plugin for Caddy VS OP Open Policy Agent General-purpose policy engine for cloud-native stacks
FeatureCaddy SecurityOpen Policy Agent
CategoryIdentity & SSOIdentity & SSO
LicenseApache-2.0Apache-2.0
LanguageGoGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM128 MB256 MB
Deploymentbinary, sourcedocker, kubernetes, binary
GitHub stars★ 2,213★ 12,086
First released20212016
ReplacesCloudflare AccessAWS IAM policies

Why pick each one

Choose Caddy Security if…

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • Active community (2.2k GitHub stars)
  • Written in Go
  • Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM
Caddy Security details

Choose Open Policy Agent if…

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Kubernetes-ready with Helm charts available
  • Mature project with 12.1k GitHub stars
Open Policy Agent details

Frequently asked questions

Is Caddy Security or Open Policy Agent better?

Neither is universally better. Open Policy Agent has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are Caddy Security and Open Policy Agent free and open-source?

Yes. Caddy Security is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Open Policy Agent under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Caddy Security and Open Policy Agent with Docker?

Caddy Security: check the project docs for container support. Open Policy Agent: yes.

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